The Performance Art Museum inaugurates a year-long project marking the 50th anniversary of Suzanne Lacy’s landmark 1976 performance, Cinderella in a Dragster. Titled Cinderella Redux, this work revisits Lacy’s original exploration of speed, time, and identity through a contemporary lens, culminating in a live, public performance.

This commission is the first phase of Cinderella Redux as part of High Performance: A 2-Year Conference (2025–2027), connecting the legacy of High Performance magazine and California performance art with present-day questions of time, endurance, and artistic longevity. Lacy will acquire, build, and learn to drive a custom drag racer, documenting the process while performing as “Cindy,” who aims to become “The World’s Fastest Rookie Performance Artist.”

Originally staged in 1976 at CSU Dominguez Hills, Cinderella in a Dragster featured Lacy delivering an autobiographical monologue on speed, ambition, and transformation. The work has since become emblematic of 1970s feminist performance, reflecting a shift toward broader inclusion across gender, class, and race in contemporary art.

Cinderella Redux extends these themes, examining the intersections of performance, motorsports, and personal narrative. While drag racing has historically been a male-dominated, working-class sport, Lacy highlights the often-overlooked contributions of women, past and present, while situating her own story within this lineage. The work has come to represent an archetype of 1970s women’s liberation in which domestic objectives were replaced by bigger and faster ambitions, in an era when artmaking diversified to include women, working class, and people of color.

Through studio activations, public programs, and an evolving social media narrative, audiences are invited to follow Lacy’s preparation in real time. The project merges performance, documentation, and community engagement, hallmarks of the Los Angeles performance art scene that shaped her early work.

ABOUT SUZANNE LACY
Los Angeles–based artist Suzanne Lacy is internationally recognized as a pioneer of socially engaged and public art. Working across performance, video, and installation, her practice addresses issues including sexual violence, poverty, incarceration, gender identity, labor, and aging. Rooted in both fine art and community organizing, Lacy has realized large-scale, participatory projects throughout the United States and internationally, including in Colombia, Ecuador, Spain, South Korea, and the United Kingdom.

Lacy’s work has been exhibited at major institutions including Tate Modern, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, the Reina Sofía, The Sharjah Biennial, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among many others. Her honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Rockefeller Bellagio residency program, among others.

In addition to her artistic practice, Lacy is an influential writer and educator. She holds an MFA from California Institute of the Arts and a PhD from Robert Gordon University in Scotland, and currently serves as a professor at the Roski School of Art and Design at the University of Southern California. She is also a resident artist at 18th Street Arts Center.

ABOUT HIGH PERFORMANCE: A 2-YEAR CONFERENCE
A consortium of leading Los Angeles art institutions announces High Performance: A 2-Year Conference (2025–2027), a multi-year initiative dedicated to High Performance magazine (1978–1997), the first international publication focused exclusively on performance art. In collaboration with the 18th Street Arts Center, the Getty Research Institute (GRI), Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), Highways Performance Space and Gallery, and the Performance Art Museum (PAM), the initiative explores the magazine’s lasting impact through programs that examine its history while engaging a new generation of artists, scholars, and educators.