U-Haul Art Fair: Sandy Williams IV
Palo Gallery (NEW YORK CITY, NY) — For more than a decade, artist Sandy Williams IV has explored exhaustion by making videos of people close to them performing a single action until they reach their physical limit. On September 25 on the streets of Chelsea, Williams will put themself through the test. In a new live performance titled Exhaustion IX, Williams will play guitar while singing a single lyric from Nirvana’s “Come As You Are”: “No, I don’t have a gun.” They will play that line repeatedly until they are too exhausted to continue. The performance is part of Williams’ solo presentation with Palo Gallery at the U-Haul Art Fair, an alternative art fair that will be staged in New York in Chelsea during The Armory Fair (September 25-27).
The lyric is familiar, but its meaning changes when removed from the song and repeated by Williams, a Black artist raised in the American South.
Black people in America have long lived with the experience of their mere existence being a threat. Within that history, “No, I don’t have a gun” is more than a lyric. It echoes the many declarations Black Americans have been forced to make in different forms for generations: I am not armed. I matter. I belong here. By repeating that declaration until exhaustion, Williams connects the physical endurance at the center of The Exhaustion Series to another kind of exhaustion: what it takes to continuously prove yourself in the USA. "On the surface, this performance is of course a social comment, but hopefully my exhaustion, and the dynamics of the chords as they change will make space for people to feel the lyrics on a deeper level” notes Williams. “Repetition can hold your attention around something that might seem really simple at first, but then, through time and looking at it, is actually really deep and complicated. It’s like repeating a word until it sounds strange and then accepting that it’s a word again. The endurance of the audience will also be a big part of the performance."
This is the tenth performance in The Exhaustion Series, which Williams began in 2015 after experiences with cancer and chemotherapy changed their relationship to time. In each work, someone close to Williams performs a repetitive action until they decide they can no longer continue. The videos are uncut, allowing the viewer to experience the duration of the action alongside the performer, witnessing the slow erosion of momentum as the body gives way in real time. Exhaustion IX will be filmed live, and the first nine videos of The Exhaustion Series (2015-2026) will be playing on a continuous two-channel loop in Palo Gallery’s presentation of Williams’s work at U-Haul Art Fair. The Exhaustion Series is also on view as part of Williams’ solo exhibition Bunker at Arcadia University outside Philadelphia, on view through December 6. To commemorate this event and the ten-year anniversary of the series, Williams IV will release a limited-edition set of Exhaustion Books.
Titled Exhaustion I–X, the ten-book set includes ninety stills from each video, as well as letters from both the director and the performers reflecting on their experiences making the films. Produced by the artist and printed by Worth Higgins & Associates, these unique counterweights to Williams’ video works offer viewers an intimate and emotional lens into the Exhaustion Series. The series is an ongoing exploration of persistence and the limits of the mind and body. Exhaustion IX is the first work in the series to incorporate music or a live performance. While it is set to start at approximately 6pm, the duration will be determined by the endurance of Williams’ voice, breath, will and their ability to continue strumming the guitar. The sacrifices of their body within the performance provoke many of the questions that appear throughout Williams’ other works. Williams’ larger practice considers how the past remains present, and history continues to shape lived experience, through the lens of a Black radical imagination.
Alongside the performance, Williams will present work from The Time Rulers, an ongoing sculptural series that gives physical form to units of time. Each ruler measures 17.6 inches, the distance traveled in one second when walking at one mile per hour. Five wax Time Rulers part of the installation will represent the approximately five seconds it takes to sing “No, I don’t have a gun.” The sculptures make the duration of the sentence physical. Exhaustion IX stretches those same seconds through repetition, continuing until Williams’ body determines the ending. The setting also changes how the work is experienced. U-Haul Gallery takes art out of the controlled environment of a traditional gallery and puts it onto the streets of New York, using rented moving trucks as temporary exhibition spaces.
For Exhaustion IX, that shift feels particularly relevant. Williams will repeat “No, I don’t have a gun” not within the protected, curated space of a gallery, but in a space embedded in everyday public life, where questions about who is perceived as dangerous and who is asked to prove otherwise have real consequences. Williams’ exhibition, No, I Don’t Have a Gun, will bring together ideas from The Exhaustion Series and The Time Rulers. This collection brings more than a decade of Williams’s work about time and endurance into conversation with a question that remains deeply present in American life: What does it mean to belong here, and who gets to feel safe?
EVENT INFORMATION
Sandy Williams IV: No, I Don’t Have a Gun
Presented by Palo Gallery at U-Haul Art Fair
September 25, 2026
22nd between 10th and 11th Ave
Performance starts at 6PM
Free and open to the public
