52 Walker is pleased to announce its sixteenth exhibition, which will feature the work of Los Angeles–based artist EJ Hill (b. 1985). With a practice that includes performance, installation, sculpture, and painting, Hill is known for works that consider the corporeal, the social, the spiritual, and the spatial—and how these elements shape subjectivities and experiences. Central to Low-slung Promises on the Tongues of the Devout will be a new commission incorporating both discrete objects displayed throughout the gallery and an endurance performance by Hill that will take place every day the gallery is open, for the run of the show, marking his first endurance performance in seven years. The exhibition title Low-slung Promises on the Tongues of the Devout touches upon Hill’s religious upbringing and the transmission of dogma more broadly. Raised and educated in the Catholic faith from childhood through adolescence, Hill reconsiders the principles that articulate the backbone of his moral code and examines the unwavering conviction with which organized religions bestow the promise of salvation.

EJ Hill: Low-slung Promises on the Tongues of the Devout is curated by Ebony L. Haynes and presented by 52 Walker.

In this particular moment, when many are experiencing times of unrest and strife, Hill proffers his performance—which will take place every day for the duration of the exhibition—as an act of healing. Drawing from his 2018 Made in L.A. Biennial presentation Excellentia, Mollitia, Victoria, Hill will kneel upon the ground in a posture of prayer for the entire day. Kneeling implies prayer, but also destitution, the servility of genuflection, a gesture of respect, or even protest. Remaining still for several hours, Hill enters a meditative state through which he invites a transfer of various energies within the gallery to take place. By putting himself in a position of suffering and grieving, Hill attempts to harness and transmute these painful emotions into a ritual kind of catharsis. Accompanying Hill’s installation and performance are paintings physically composed of kneeler pads, specifically those upon which one sits in prayer at a church pew. Also on view are paintings and drawings of joyfully rendered clouds and flowers, some in the artist’s signature pink and some in bright hues of orange, blue, and purple, their patterns mimicking the interlocking panes of stained-glass church windows. As with much of his practice, Hill creates these colorful works at moments in which he is responding to grief, searching for transcendence, and yearning for liberation.