“All Tomorrow’s Babies Are Crying Now” is an outdoor sound event, as a commentary on the controversial 2026 US Mid-Term Election.
Election Watch Party Reception
Tuesday, November 3 | 6–9 PM
Live music at 7 PM
Outdoor Sound Installation
24-hour presentation | November 3–4
Synesthesia
43 Porter Avenue
Bushwick, Brooklyn 11237
“All Tomorrow’s Babies Are Crying Now” was made possible in part, by Franklin Furnace Fund 2012, supported by the Jerome Foundation, Lambert Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation, the Members and Friends of the Franklin Furnace Archive, the Puffin Foundation, John Krupta and Extinction Rebellion NY Arts.
Susan Ensley
Susan Ensley emerged as a key figure within Matta-Clark's inner circle, providing crucial emotional support and critical interlocutor in the development of his work during pivotal stages of his life. This fostered spaces for reflection, discussion, and creative decision-making between us. While Susan Ensley and Gordon Matta-Clark conceived and carried out artistic projects together, sharing processes, ideas, and forms of experimentation, the artistic work of each of the people associated with Matta-Clark has been studied individually, as a way of portraying the New York art scene of the 1970s and demonstrating how the artistic creation of their environment influenced and fed back into their work. For these reasons, I turned directly to Susan Ensley as the primary source for this research. Her firsthand experience has been indispensable for understanding both the human and artistic dimensions of that historical period, as well as for recognizing the independent relevance of her own work.
Susan Ensley is an artist whose practice represents a sustained, rigorous, and historically significant contribution to contemporary art. Over more than five decades of work, her oeuvre has encompassed performance, installation, photography, film, and drawing, developing a coherent and deeply reflective body of work that engages both with the experimental context in which it originated and with concerns that remain highly relevant today.
A central and constant aspect of Susan Ensley's work is her personal understanding of creativity as a source of well-being and human connection. Through her work with the body, sound, spatial perception, and collective experience—especially in her performance art—Susan Ensley has explored how artistic practice can generate mindfulness, presence, and connection. Her work invites a deeper awareness of oneself, others, and the environment, underscoring art's capacity to create connection and care rather than isolation. Their practices, especially those based on direct experience, foster forms of empathy and human connection, generating spaces for listening, dialogue, and shared experience. In this sense, their work is not limited to representation, but rather activates relationships between people, space, and time, strengthening the collective dimension of art and expanding its boundaries beyond the object, emphasizing lived experience toward temporal, situated, and relational forms, acquiring particular relevance within the framework of fundamental contemporary issues such as environmental and climate awareness, human connection, and practices of transformation and consciousness-raising.
Throughout her career, her work has sensitively and non-literally addressed the relationship between the human body, the natural environment, and the systems that connect them, proposing a thoughtful examination of fragility, interdependence, and shared responsibility for the world we inhabit. This allows us to understand her work as a transformative practice, aimed at deepening awareness and provoking sustained reflection in those who participate in or encounter it. Rather than offering definitive answers, her projects invite a shift in perspective, fostering a renewed awareness of the environment, others, and oneself.
This capacity to generate awareness, connection, and reflection places her work in a position of special relevance to the cultural, social, and environmental challenges of the present, leading me to consider her work historically relevant, artistically sound, and profoundly significant.
Susan Ensley is an artist of established merit but also contributes to the continuity, activation, and preservation of an artistic practice that has had a significant impact on the history of contemporary art. From a historical perspective, her work not only reflects the experimental spirit of her time but also anticipates contemporary discussions surrounding art, well-being, and the social dimension of creation.
Susan Ensley Studio