Amanda Ross-Ho Debuts Durational Performance at Frieze Los Angeles 2026

Untitled Orbit (MANUAL MODE) (2026) marks the artist’s longest performance to date

UC Irvine Claire Trevor School of the Arts Department of Art Professor Amanda Ross-Ho will present a new durational performance, Untitled Orbit (MANUAL MODE) (2026), at Frieze Los Angeles, taking place Feb. 26 through March 1, 2026, at the Santa Monica Airport.

Commissioned as part of Frieze Los Angeles’ ongoing collaboration with Art Production Fund, the performance is included in Body and Soul, a program of site-specific sculptural commissions, performances and educational activations that foreground public art and live practice within the fair.

For the four-day duration of Frieze Los Angeles, Ross-Ho will continuously roll a 16-foot inflatable Earth counterclockwise around the perimeter of the Airport Park soccer field during fair hours. Echoing the Earth’s rotation on its axis and its orbit around the sun, the work functions as a living clock — measuring time through endurance, repetition and physical labor. Untitled Orbit (MANUAL MODE) is Ross-Ho’s longest performance to date, offering viewers a meditation on time, scale, visibility and the often unseen labor embedded in artistic production and daily existence.

Known primarily for her sculptural practice, Ross-Ho has increasingly engaged performance as a conceptual and embodied extension of her work. In Untitled Orbit (MANUAL MODE), gesture and duration replace the static object, transforming the expansive soccer fields into a stage for sustained action. 

Frieze Los Angeles returns for its seventh edition in 2026, continuing its role as a central anchor of Los Angeles’ art week. Since its debut in 2019, the fair has helped affirm the city’s position as a major hub for global contemporary art, bringing together leading international galleries, curators and artists alongside exhibitions and programming across the city’s cultural institutions.

Ross-Ho’s presentation at Frieze Los Angeles follows a significant year of recognition and exhibition. In 2025, she received the 2025 Trellis Art Fund Milestone Grant and was named a 2025 Marciano Art Foundation Artadia Awardee. Her work is also featured in Made in L.A. 2025, the Hammer Museum’s biennial exhibition, on view at the Hammer Museum through March 1, 2026.

Untitled Orbit (MANUAL MODE) (2026) will take place daily during Frieze Los Angeles at the Santa Monica Airport. More information and tickets are available at frieze.com/frieze-projects-2026.

To learn more about the Department of Art, visit art.arts.uci.edu. To learn more about Amanda Ross-Ho’s work, visit her Department of Art bio page here.