Nasher Public: Christian Cruz’s Basket Performance

Christian Cruz activates her Nasher Public installation with durational performances intended to highlight the labor of pink collar work. This timelapse captures Cruz’s Basket Performance, which includes stacking laundry baskets on her head in a careful balancing act that requires concentration and solitude. Facing the corner, the artist’s back is to the viewer—a vulnerable position that underscores her isolation and sense of confinement.

For her Nasher Public installation, Christian Cruz returns to two works from her 2020 solo exhibition at the Dallas-based gallery, ex ovo, and expands them in scale and concept. Comprising a suspended cloth sculpture and a column of stacked plastic laundry baskets, Cruz’s Nasher Public installation, titled “Pink Collar // Children’s Linen,” focuses on the unseen and undervalued labor performed by domestic workers.

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Christian Cruz (born 1989) is an educator, independent writer, and award-winning multi-media artist. Her work takes the form of performance, installation, video, and photography within a visual arts context. She attended Columbia College Chicago for Visual Arts Management and held the only poetry residency at The National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago. In 2013, Cruz hosted and produced Forañeo at Centro de Cultura Digital in Mexico City. She has performed nationally and internationally in galleries, museums, universities, festivals, and public spaces. In 2020, Cruz created Artist Mama Fund for single mothers who are artists; and Dallas Performance Art Index, an online archive of performance artists in Dallas, Texas. This year, Cruz has been awarded the Bridge Grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, a childcare grant from Parent Artist Advocacy League for Performance Arts, the PNC Artist Grant from Aurora Dallas, and the Artist Grant from Nasher Sculpture Center among others. Cruz was an EmergeNYC fellow and is currently in virtual residence with INVERSE at The Momentary in Bentonville, Arkansas. She is a mother and a survivor. “Pink Collar // Children’s Linen” will be on view December 4, 2021 – January 30, 2022.

Nasher Public is a public art initiative which aims to generate access to public art by North Texas artists at the Nasher Sculpture Center and throughout the greater Dallas community.