Gillian Wearing: Elevator Music 53: Gillian Wearing — Dancing in Peckham: The Tang Museum, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY

In Gillian Wearing’s video Dancing in Peckham, the artist dances alone before a camera in the center of a South London shopping mall. Only the ambient shuffle of passersby, rather than music, accompanies her movements. Some shoppers turn to watch the artist, while others walk past without a backwards glance. Decades before the ubiquity of social media dance trends like flash mobs and TikTok dances, Wearing probes the boundaries of what it means to perform in public. Who is she, and why is she dancing?

Gillian Wearing (born 1963, Birmingham, United Kingdom) came of age as a member of the Young British Artists, a group of Goldsmiths studio art graduates active in London in the 1990s. Wearing explores the nature of identity from a simultaneously documentarian and performative point of view, often using masks, costumes, and the collaborative contributions of strangers in her photo- and video-based works. Her use of artifice and anonymity paradoxically reveals deep truths about who we are, and who we pretend to be.

Images:

Installation view, Elevator Music 53: Gillian Wearing—Dancing in Peckham, The Tang Museum, Skidmore College, 2025. Photo by Mindy McDaniel.