Steve MᶜQueen: 66–76–26

EXHIBITIONS

Steve MᶜQueen: 66–76–26 10.09.2026 - 02.21.2027 Steve MᶜQueen has spent more than 30 years making work that holds what cannot be looked away from—history, violence, joy, grief, witness. 66–76–26 marks a significant turn: there is no image here. Only two voices, separated by a decade, meeting in a darkened room. Both are recordings of Wild is the Wind, a song written for the 1957 film of the same name and taken to another register entirely by Nina Simone in 1966 and David Bowie in 1976. MᶜQueen has returned to these performances, drawn to what he calls the pure yearning in them—the want, the need, the must. Stripped of their instrumentation and placed at opposite ends of the gallery, the two voices form a duet neither artist ever performed. Simone recorded in the middle of the Civil Rights movement in the United States amidst complicated health related issues; Bowie at the edge of personal collapse, so deep in addiction he could barely remember the session. Both were throwing everything into the music—all or nothing. The song travels from those moments to this one, and what you hear is inseparable from the times when those recordings were made. The installation invites a particular kind of attention. The gallery is darkened, stripped of object and image. There is no photograph to take. What remains is sound, breath, and the life each visitor carries into the space—because, as MᶜQueen has said, the viewer is the other voice in the work. Curator: Lekha Hileman Sponsored by: Occident