Nayland Blake | “Haunt”: Being the Folly of One Victorya Spectre

On view since June 27, 2026, Art Omi presents Nayland Blake’s “Haunt”: Being the Folly of One Victorya Spectre (2026), a new commission and the artist’s first outdoor installation. The project opened with performances, activations, and workshops across Art Omi’s park and gallery. “Haunt” draws on the history of the ornamental hermit, an eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novelty in which a wealthy landowner hired a man to live alone in a humble dwelling on their estate for a term of seven years. Ornamental hermits had to remain visible to visitors and follow a strict set of rules for the length of their contract. They were often forbidden to speak or cut their hair, and they were understood to perform a fantasy of a simpler life that predated the Industrial Revolution. The ornamental hermit was the precursor to the garden gnome, a mythological earth dweller known to foment mischief in the mountains, woods, and mines.

Victorya Spectre, the figure named in the work’s title, is Blake’s alter ego. Spectre first appeared in 2013 in their performance The Residue of a Thousand Hugs, presented in Times Square as part of the ICP Triennial. An apparition from the old days of Times Square, Victorya Spectre takes their name from the Victory Theater, a former adult theater on 42nd Street. In this newest iteration, Spectre appears as a cross between a sibyl and a cryptid, a mysterious creature dispensing fragments of insight from their studio/nest. Victorya has answers, but they may not be the right ones.

Shifting the dynamics between audience, artist, and institution, Blake continues to explore how an artwork can serve as a platform for exchange and for interactions rarely found in white-cube settings. Part classroom, part lounge, part farm stand, part abandoned amusement park ride, the project raises questions about fantasy, labor, aging, and the conditions of daily life. Central to the project is the question: how can we produce conditions that allow us to thrive and to sustain ourselves and one another?

“Haunt”: Being the Folly of One Victorya Spectre remains on view in the Newmark Gallery until January 10, 2027, and in the Sculpture & Architecture Park until fall 2030.

Curated by Sara O’Keeffe, Senior Curator, with Guy Weltchek, Curatorial Assistant.

On view since June 27, 2026, Art Omi presents Nayland Blake’s “Haunt”: Being the Folly of One Victorya Spectre (2026), a new commission and the artist’s first outdoor installation. The project opened with performances, activations, and workshops across Art Omi’s park and gallery. “Haunt” draws on the history of the ornamental hermit, an eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novelty in which a wealthy landowner hired a man to live alone in a humble dwelling on their estate for a term of seven years. Ornamental hermits had to remain visible to visitors and follow a strict set of rules for the length of their contract. They were often forbidden to speak or cut their hair, and they were understood to perform a fantasy of a simpler life that predated the Industrial Revolution. The ornamental hermit was the precursor to the garden gnome, a mythological earth dweller known to foment mischief in the mountains, woods, and mines.

Victorya Spectre, the figure named in the work’s title, is Blake’s alter ego. Spectre first appeared in 2013 in their performance The Residue of a Thousand Hugs, presented in Times Square as part of the ICP Triennial. An apparition from the old days of Times Square, Victorya Spectre takes their name from the Victory Theater, a former adult theater on 42nd Street. In this newest iteration, Spectre appears as a cross between a sibyl and a cryptid, a mysterious creature dispensing fragments of insight from their studio/nest. Victorya has answers, but they may not be the right ones.

Shifting the dynamics between audience, artist, and institution, Blake continues to explore how an artwork can serve as a platform for exchange and for interactions rarely found in white-cube settings. Part classroom, part lounge, part farm stand, part abandoned amusement park ride, the project raises questions about fantasy, labor, aging, and the conditions of daily life. Central to the project is the question: how can we produce conditions that allow us to thrive and to sustain ourselves and one another?

“Haunt”: Being the Folly of One Victorya Spectre remains on view in the Newmark Gallery until January 10, 2027, and in the Sculpture & Architecture Park until fall 2030.

Curated by Sara O’Keeffe, Senior Curator, with Guy Weltchek, Curatorial Assistant.

Since the late 1980s, Nayland Blake (b. 1960, New York, NY) has constructed an influential body of work exploring play, eroticism, and the subjective experiences of desire, power, and loss. Inspired by feminist theory and queer subcultures, Blake addresses the contradictions of representation in sculptures, drawings, performances, and videos, particularly as it relates to their own identity as a nonbinary multiracial artist.

Blake’s work was included in the 1991 Whitney Biennial, the 1993 Venice Biennale, and the landmark exhibition “Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art” at the Whitney Museum (1994). Blake co-curated the groundbreaking exhibition “In A Different Light: Visual Culture, Sexual Identity, and Queer Practice” (1995) with Larry Rinder at the University Art Museum, Berkeley. “Nayland Blake: No Wrong Holes,” a retrospective organized by the ICA LA, opened in 2019 before traveling to the MIT List Visual Arts Center in 2020. Blake’s work is included in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and Whitney Museum of American Art, among others.

In 2025, Duke University Press published My Studio Is a Dungeon Is the Studio: Writings and Interviews, 1983–2024, an anthology of Blake’s collected writings edited by Jarrett Earnest. Blake is currently Co-Director of the Studio Art Program at Bard College.

Since the late 1980s, Nayland Blake (b. 1960, New York, NY) has constructed an influential body of work exploring play, eroticism, and the subjective experiences of desire, power, and loss. Inspired by feminist theory and queer subcultures, Blake addresses the contradictions of representation in sculptures, drawings, performances, and videos, particularly as it relates to their own identity as a nonbinary multiracial artist.

Blake’s work was included in the 1991 Whitney Biennial, the 1993 Venice Biennale, and the landmark exhibition “Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art” at the Whitney Museum (1994). Blake co-curated the groundbreaking exhibition “In A Different Light: Visual Culture, Sexual Identity, and Queer Practice” (1995) with Larry Rinder at the University Art Museum, Berkeley. “Nayland Blake: No Wrong Holes,” a retrospective organized by the ICA LA, opened in 2019 before traveling to the MIT List Visual Arts Center in 2020. Blake’s work is included in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and Whitney Museum of American Art, among others.

In 2025, Duke University Press published My Studio Is a Dungeon Is the Studio: Writings and Interviews, 1983–2024, an anthology of Blake’s collected writings edited by Jarrett Earnest. Blake is currently Co-Director of the Studio Art Program at Bard College.

Major support for Art Omi is provided in part by the Francis J. Greenburger Family Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, Time Equities Inc., and the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

In-kind support provided by Pocketbook Hudson, Preferred Hotel Partner of Art Omi.

Nayland Blake | “Haunt”: Being the Folly of One Victorya Spectre

ABOUT NAYLAND BLAKE

SUPPORT