Artwork
Untitled
Untitled is an ink print by Sharon Hayes. It dates from 2019 and is held in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art.
About this work
The image presents a lithograph featuring a quote in white text against a blue background, with a white border surrounding it.
The image presents a lithograph featuring a quote in white text against a blue background, with a white border surrounding it. The quote reads, "Alright? Okay, just, just leave... leave the tongue hang and only just close your mouth over it... and go." The text is centered and takes up most of the space within the blue rectangle.
The lithograph is part of a series of five, created by Sharon Hayes in 2019. It is currently held at The Museum of Modern Art.
To explore more works created using the same technique, look up lithography.
Overview
Sharon Hayes produced five lithographs in 2019 under the title Untitled, each presenting a fragment of spoken language isolated on a monochrome field. The series belongs to her broader practice of recontextualizing voice and text to interrogate intimacy, power, and political expression. These works are held in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art, reflecting their significance within contemporary printmaking and conceptual art.
Subject & Meaning
The text in each lithograph derives from recorded conversations, often drawn from queer and activist contexts. One panel features a hesitant, intimate directive: 'Alright? Okay, just, just leave... leave the tongue hang and only just close your mouth over it... and go.'
This phrasing evokes unspoken emotional labor, the fragility of communication, and the tension between desire and restraint, inviting reflection on how private speech carries political weight.
Technique & Style
Hayes employed lithography to render text with crisp, flat clarity against uniform backgrounds. Each print uses a limited palette, white text on blue, with a narrow white border framing the composition. The medium’s precision contrasts with the ambiguity of the spoken words, emphasizing their detachment from context. The uniformity across the series reinforces their function as fragments of a larger, unresolved dialogue.
History & Provenance
Created in 2019, the series entered The Museum of Modern Art’s collection shortly after its completion. Hayes’s prior work in performance and video, rooted in the East Village art scene of the 1990s, informed this print series’ focus on voice and embodiment. The museum’s acquisition situates these works within a lineage of conceptual art that privileges language as a material for critical inquiry.
Context
Hayes’s practice responds to the persistence of marginalized voices in public discourse. These lithographs emerge from a period of heightened political activism and debates over bodily autonomy and queer expression. By isolating conversational fragments, she draws attention to how language is shaped by power, silence, and the unspoken rules governing intimacy and resistance.
Legacy
The series contributes to an expanding field of art that treats text as both aesthetic object and political artifact. Hayes’s use of lithography, traditionally associated with reproduction and dissemination, reclaims the medium to amplify voices often excluded from dominant narratives. The works continue to inform discussions on how art can preserve the subtleties of lived experience beyond spectacle.
Artist & collection
Artist
Sharon Hayes is an American multimedia artist. She came to prominence as an artist and an activist during the East Village scene in the early '90s. She primarily works with video, installation, and performance as her…
