27 april 2026, Flor Linckens
Jeremiah Day: ‘the people’ and the potential of a space for collective thinking
What does it mean to come together as ‘the people’ around shared values and ideas? The American artist Jeremiah Day explores how political ideas take shape when people gather and act collectively. Ellen de Bruijne PROJECTS presents a new edition by the artist (€560, edition of 15). The proceeds will fund a series of performances and gatherings in the United States, beginning with two events on 1 and 2 May at the Emily Harvey Foundation in New York. In this project, Day focuses on the question of what ‘the people’ can mean today, at a time when American institutions, and with them the democratic foundation, are being actively eroded from within. He looks to the revolutionary and imperial political history of his country and considers how places where people come together might once again be activated in response to the current government.
The print presented by Ellen de Bruijne PROJECTS, titled ‘the people’, depicts the interior of Pelham Town Hall in Pelham, Massachusetts, the oldest site in the United States where town hall meetings have been held continuously since 1743. The image is powerful in its simplicity: rows of empty chairs in a historic meeting room, light filtering through the windows and a glimpse of an American flag in the back. The chairs differ from one another, yet form a semi-uniform whole. Everything is in place, but nothing has happened yet, almost as an invitation, a suggestion of what might unfold here. The absence of people foregrounds the potential of the space.
The image originates from Day’s earlier slide-show performance ‘the chair remains empty / but the place is set’ (2016), in which he brought together historical and contemporary forms of assembly and drew parallels between the spontaneous gatherings following the Gezi protests in Istanbul in 2013 and the town hall meetings of New England. The latter were an important source of inspiration for Hannah Arendt. This is the first time the image has been released as a print, accompanied by a handwritten text, in a series of fifteen unique works.
Jeremiah Day was born in 1974 in Plymouth, Massachusetts, where the Pilgrim Fathers arrived on the Mayflower in 1620. In this early colony, they established forms of local self-governance that continue to resonate in the political thinking Day engages with in his work. Today, the artist lives and works in Amsterdam and Berlin. He studied Fine Art at the University of California (UCLA) in Los Angeles and completed residencies at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam, Platform Garanti in Istanbul and Villa Romana in Florence. In 2017, he received his doctorate from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam with a practice-based research project on the role of art in the public sphere. He also held a postdoctoral position at Uniarts Helsinki. His work and performances have been shown at the Badischer Kunstverein in Karlsruhe, BOZAR, Centre Pompidou in Paris, M Museum in Leuven, the Liverpool Biennial, the Thessaloniki Biennial, the Shanghai Biennial, CCA Glasgow, the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, Kunsthalle Wien, MAXXI in Rome, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and the Santa Monica Museum. His work has been included in the collections of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and FRAC Champagne-Ardenne / Le Collège.
On 1 May, Day will present the performance "Proposal To Add Townhall Meetings To The Constitution" at the Emily Harvey Foundation, focusing on the meaning of gathering: what happens when people come together physically to speak, listen and think collectively? On 2 May, he will present ‘Without The Consent Of The People’, a posthumously published book by writer and activist Fred Dewey, with whom Day collaborated for many years. Day contributed to the realisation of the publication, in which Dewey describes the United States as a ‘proto-totalitarian state’ and considers how collective gatherings might offer a counterforce. The event will also be streamed live on YouTube.
