Collective Biography, Pittsburgh, 2026 is a new participatory public art commission by Lenka Clayton. Developed through conversations with residents from across the city, the project brings small groups together to identify unexpected points of connection in their lives. Through a guided process, participants create short first-person texts that are equally true for everyone in the group, resulting in a series of collective biographies read aloud in unison on video. The commission will culminate in six new video works, offering a small portrait of shared experience across Pittsburgh’s communities.
As ICA Pittsburgh’s first commission, Collective Biography, Pittsburgh, 2026 marks an important milestone for the institution as it prepares for its new permanent home at Carnegie Mellon University. The project reflects the ideas at the heart of ICA Pittsburgh’s ongoing Remaking the Museum research initiative, which asks how a contemporary art institution can be shaped through dialogue, reciprocity, and community engagement. By foregrounding conversation, shared authorship, and human connection, Clayton’s commission sets the tone for the kind of institution ICA Pittsburgh is working to become.
About the Artist
Lenka Clayton is a British-American interdisciplinary artist based in Pittsburgh whose work considers, exaggerates, and gently alters the accepted rules of everyday life. Her practice often extends the familiar into the poetic, revealing humor, tenderness, and commonality in ordinary experience. Clayton is the founder of An Artist Residency in Motherhood, a self-directed, open-source residency program for artists who are also parents. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and is held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, SFMoMA, Hamburger Kunsthalle, the Carnegie Museum of Art, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, among others.
Supporters
Support for Collective Biography is made possible by Carolyn Fine Friedman and Nina Friedman, Dawn and Chris Fleischner, Ellen and Jack Kessler, Henry J. Simonds, Juliet Lea H. Simonds, and Jack Tomayko.
