VALS: EJ Hill

UCLA Visiting Artist Lecture Series. Free and open to the public.

With a practice that includes performance, installation, sculpture, and painting, the Los Angeles–based artist EJ Hill (b. 1985) is known for works that consider the corporeal, the social, the spiritual, and the spatial—and how these elements shape subjectivities in varied systems and contexts. Slow and methodical in his approach, Hill makes works that stretch the bounds of linear time. The artist’s strenuous performances often test his physical and mental limits, and are informed by the likes of Marina Abramović, Chris Burden, Pope.L, Linda Montano, and Tehching Hsieh, who have likewise probed the affective and relational textures of contemporary life. Hill’s objects also materialize these concerns: neons highlight aphoristic text, floral still lifes burst with riotous color, and roller-coaster sculptures activate the contradictory emotions of terror and pleasure.

EJ Hill has exhibited widely since 2013, when his first solo exhibition Dear John was presented at Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles. In 2022, Hill’s first institutional solo exhibition, Brake Run Helix, was presented at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) in North Adams, Massachusetts. Following this presentation, For the Birds Trapped in Airports published Hill’s first monograph This Means Everything to Me in April 2025 in collaboration with MASS MoCA. Also in 2025, Hill presented a solo exhibition, Low-slung Promises on the Tongues of the Devout at David Zwirner Tribeca (formerly 52 Walker) and a two-person exhibition of work with Martin Gonzales, Velvet Faith, at Dallas Contemporary. A Monument for New Orleans East (The Carousel Project), a major public work by Hill, will be unveiled at the Joe W. Brown Memorial Park in New Orleans in late 2026. Hill has also been included in numerous significant group exhibitions and international recurring exhibitions, including Tenses: Artists in Residence 2015–16, Studio Museum in Harlem (2016); Future Generation Art Prize at the 57th Venice Biennale (2017); Made in L.A. 2018, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2018); Lost Without Your Rhythm, Aspen Art Museum (2018); Prospect 5: Yesterday we said tomorrow, New Orleans (2021); Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet as It’s Kept, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2022); and When Forms Come Alive, Hayward Gallery, London (2024). Hill received a BFA from Columbia College Chicago (2011) and an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles (2013).

UCLA Margo Leavin Graduate Art Studios
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