Collaborative Performance
Four Hand Draw (2017-2026)
A collaborative choreographic process and performance work exploring co-emergent
practice, relational aesthetics, power sharing, and the politics of touch.
Performances:
Four Hand Draw, 2026
Performers: Tony Orrico and Melinda Jean Myers
Approx. 40 minutes
D5 Live Arts Festival, St. Julien-Molin-Molette, France
May 14-17, 2026
14th UP-ON Performance Art Festival, Chengdu, China
October 12-21, 2026
Video Work:
Four Hand Draw, 2026
Three-channel color video with sound, RT 37:46*
*To be presented over three separate monitors
Video Work Triptych
Solo Pop-up Exhibition at D5 Live Arts Festival, St. Julien-Molin-Molette, France
Tony Orrico: Neither and Both
May 14-17, 2026
Neither and Both is a pop-up exhibition of five recent intaglio prints by the artist depicting amalgamations of hair in interlocking quiffs, braids, and portions awry. The works examine gender and nonconforming expressions as conditions made legible through the persistence of binary structures. Across the prints, dense accumulations of hair solidify into forms that reference objects, bodies, and topographies. Negative space remains the only promise of instability capable of engendering a subjectivity not yet fully imaginable.
Solo Performance at Shanghai Power Station of Art (PSA), Shanghai, China
Poetry in Action (ReActor Festival)
September 20-25, 2026
Penwald: 8: 12 x 12 on knees, 2011 / 2026
Performance, graphite on paper
Approx. 4 hours
240 x 240 inches
Other notable performances:
Penwald: 8: 12 by 12 on knees (SCAD, Savannah, GA) 2014
Penwald: 8: 12 by 12 on knees (Cultural Center, Chicago, IL) 2013
Penwald: 8: 12 by 12 on knees (MUNAL, Mexico City, MX) 2012
Process video
Group Exhibition at Johnson County Historic Poor Farm Asylum, Iowa City, IA
Iowa Art Field
October 30 – November 8, 2025
Curated by Nicholas Cladis (USA) and Sugimoto Hiroshi (Japan)
Presented by Public Space One
Exhibition Locations: Johnson County Historic Poor Farm, City Park Log Cabins, and Public Space One’s Close House
Participating Artists: Savanah Bustillo, Nicholas Cladis, Jeremy Chen, Lydia Diemer, Bea Drysdale, John Engelbrecht, Matthew “Em” Garcia, Hannah Givler, Sugimoto Hiroshi, Tony Orrico, Paige Wilkinson.
Iowa Art Field is a group exhibition on view this week across three historic sites in Iowa City. The exhibition presents site-responsive installation and drawing by eleven artists, hosted by Public Space One with support from the City of Iowa City Public Art Matching Grant.
At the Johnson County Historic Poor Farm, my works are situated in and around the Historic Asylum which was built circa 1855 and used to confine those controversially labeled to be—insane. The reflection of my works come into dialogue with the site and its marking by policy, labor, and a complicated legacy of confinement and survival.
These works respond to the site’s layered history through drawing and process. The exhibition presents new works on paper adapted from previous series. Textile: ERASURE IS MARK MAKING, 2025 acts as a mental loom, connecting observations and reflections from Orrico's time drawing in the space. It considers thought as movement, and collective memory as both permanence and deviation.
The passing light (1–6), 2025 series comprises performed processes created over several visits, in dialogue with the architecture and its enduring atmosphere. Each drawing attempts to capture the shifting presence of light as a witnessing and connective force across time and people. One hand draws as the other erases—both gestures leaving a trace.
Together, these works echo the site’s quiet persistence, honoring its rhythms of labor, solitude, and continuity. The handmade paper for these works was made in collaboration with Nicholas Cladis.
Exhibition Tour and Process Video
Solo Performance at D5 Live Arts Festival in Saint-Julien-Molin-Molette, France
Tel un papillon de nuit, nous retournons au système / Like moth, we return to the system
June 1, 2025
Approx. 90 min
A durational solo performance at the D5 Live Arts Festival which brought together dance, sound, and visual artists from several continents.
A site-responsive performance drawing and installation responding to the former silk factory, recognizing the moth—sometimes a symbol of transformation—as the oppressed subject of silk production.
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Extended video of excerpts
Curation during Trisha Brown Co. UI Residency + Floor of the Forest, Iowa City, IA
Project Director:
Trisha Brown’s Floor of the Forest (1970)
VAB Lasansky Atrium
Performance Dates: Saturday, Nov. 1 – Friday, Nov. 7, 2025
Daily Activations: 12:40–1:40 PM and 2:10–3:10 PM
With special permission from the Trisha Brown Dance Company, I restaged Trisha Brown’s iconic apparatus and performance installation work, Floor of the Forest. This work was first performed in 1970 at 80 Wooster Street in New York City’s SoHo and has toured major international art museums for decades.
Performed by students across Dance, Theater, Photography, Ceramics, Painting, Printmaking, and Sculpture & Intermedia, the presentation took place for one week in the University of Iowa Visual Arts Building atrium.
Project Coordinator:
Trisha Brown Dance Company – In Plain Site
Nov. 4, 2025 at 6:00 PM | Hancher Auditorium, Smith Lobby
Nov. 5, 2025 at 6:00 PM | VAB Lasansky Atrium
Trisha Brown Co. performs a survey of her early experimental and stage works as installations across all five levels of the Visual Arts Building as well as in the lobby of Hancher Auditorium.
Selected
Artist Series #6 - Tony Orrico
Otazu Foundation Art Collection and Vineyard
Series Artists: AS #1 – Pablo Armesto, AS #2 – Hans Peter Feldmann , AS #3 – Hector Zamora, AS #4 – Alfredo Jaar, AS #5 Asier Mendizabal
A line of wines inspired by the passion for creating experiences. Each year, the winery works with a different artist to achieve a liquid experience that is able to synthesize the values of the winery and the work that the artists develop within our spaces.
These are unique wines, the result of only three barrels of Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. Its 900 bottles, individually numbered, are intervened each year by a renowned international artist who personally designs the label.
