{"id":644128,"date":"2026-05-15T05:54:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T05:54:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/644128\/"},"modified":"2026-05-15T05:54:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T05:54:16","slug":"blood-can-either-be-a-connective-tissue-or-something-used-for-division-jordan-eagles-on-his-show-a-pioneer-works-the-art-newspaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/644128\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Blood can either be a connective tissue or something used for division\u2019: Jordan Eagles on his show a Pioneer Works – The Art Newspaper"},"content":{"rendered":"

Although Jordan Eagles has\u00a0been creating works using donated blood and medical waste since the 1990s, his interests counteract the shock-baiting\u00a0machismo one might expect from that description. Eagles has long centred blood\u2019s life-giving properties,\u00a0spiritual dimension and symbolism of US health policies that discriminate against LGBTQ+ people.<\/p>\n

His practice flows in a new direction in Bases Loaded, a solo exhibition at Brooklyn\u2019s Pioneer Works. There, Eagles examines both\u00a0his personal history and the polarisation of American culture through the prism of his lifelong fandom of the New York Mets baseball\u00a0team.<\/p>\n

Three bodies of work emerged from his exploration: riffs on large-scale reproductions of New York Post covers about the team; cast-resin sculptures in the shape of home plate loaded with blood, family artefacts and clinical scraps; and T-shirts given to blood donors at the Mets ballpark that Eagles cropped, splashed with blood from HIV-positive gay men and arranged by colour into orange and grey factions. The results infuse stadium-sized themes with a new\u00a0intimacy.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

T-shirts given to blood donors were the impetus for Eagles\u2019s latest show Courtesy Jordan Eagles Studio<\/p>\n

The Art Newspaper: What was the starting point for this show?<\/p>\n

Jordan Eagles: I was biking in summer 2023, and I saw someone in the opposite bike lane wearing a shirt that said: \u201cThe Mets are in our blood.\u201d I was like: \u201cOh my God, what is that?\u201d So I turned my bike around, chased this person down and asked where he got the shirt. He was like: \u201cThey were giving them out at Citi Field when I gave blood.\u201d<\/p>\n

I went on eBay that night and bought a shirt, innocently thinking I would cut it up into a studio workshirt. But I ultimately threw it in my closet and forgot about it until opening day of the 2024 season. The Mets got rained out, so their first game ended up being on Good Friday, when Jesus was crucified. Previous projects I\u2019ve done revolved around Salvator Mundi and Jesus as the world\u2019s greatest blood donor. I realised this was meant to be an artwork. I got chills, ran to the studio and marked that first shirt with blood.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

An image of a young Eagles highlights how he and his father bonded over their passion for the Mets Courtesy Jordan Eagles Studio<\/p>\n

What is the significance of the blood on these shirts coming from HIV-positive gay\u00a0men?<\/p>\n

I was so mesmerised by this shirt initially that it didn\u2019t occur to me that I couldn\u2019t have earned it because of biased blood-donation policy. I\u2019m on Prep [pre-exposure prophylaxis], so I can\u2019t donate blood without a three-month deferral. How could I feel so connected to the Mets, but I\u2019m not even allowed to participate in this community? I should never have even considered wearing this shirt.<\/p>\n

The US\u2019s blood-donation policies have been a long-running theme in your work. What is different this time?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m moving from that jumping-off point into larger themes that we\u2019re experiencing as a country, about belonging, identity and the rhetoric related to them. The two versions of this shirt struck me as a metaphor for what it means to be part of a team\u2014especially in America, where politics is treated like sport. And then I thought about rhetoric like \u201cimmigrants are ruining the blood of the nation\u201d. Blood can either be a connective tissue or something used for division.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A cast-resin sculpture of home plate is filled with blood Courtesy Jordan Eagles Studio<\/p>\n

One work in this show involves a reprint of a front-page story about Mike Piazza, the Mets star who held a press conference in 2002 to quash rumours about his sexuality. How does that fit in?<\/p>\n

I found this New York Post cover with him and the headline \u201cI\u2019m not gay\u201d. It doesn\u2019t sound like Piazza was homophobic in any way based on my research. What struck me is how the headline makes it seem that being gay is the worst thing in the world. It\u2019s so sensationalised that someone would have to go through the trouble to reaffirm their heterosexuality. So I marked the \u201cnot\u201d in blood.<\/p>\n

Your sculpture The Goat (2026) submerges several family photos in blood inside a cast of home plate. Can you unpack it a bit?<\/p>\n

A few years ago my mother told me that, throughout my father\u2019s various medical situations, she\u2019d been saving leftover tubes of his blood so that I could make an artwork with them. When I was looking for this old photo of me with a Mets player named Lee Mazzilli, I found all these beautiful childhood photographs of me and my father where I\u2019m wearing little Mets outfits and he\u2019s holding or hugging me. It immediately hit me that this was the artwork to make with his blood.<\/p>\n

I had my blood drawn and merged it with his in this sculpture. I scanned all the photos, printed them on transparency and layered them inside so the view becomes a bit dreamy. All these themes layer on top of each other: \u201cthe Mets are in our blood\u201d, blood-donation eligibility policy, home plate glowing red like a blood bag, my family ties being literally in my blood.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Eagles embedded numerous phials of blood in one work Courtesy Jordan Eagles Studio<\/p>\n

Compared to your earlier work, does it feel more vulnerable to put your own life front and centre like this?<\/p>\n

It definitely hits differently. I\u2019m moving towards what feels like the most genuine expression of what I\u2019m trying to communicate. But the project didn\u2019t start because it was going to be art. It started because I couldn\u2019t even be part of a team that I thought I was a part of.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Jordan Eagles: Bases Loaded<\/a>, Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, until 9 August<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Although Jordan Eagles has\u00a0been creating works using donated blood and medical waste since the 1990s, his interests counteract…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":644129,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[26337,228,226,227,7567,229,88,276026,13300,3026,278050],"class_list":["post-644128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-artist-interview","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-brooklyn","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-frieze-new-york-2026","tag-hiv-aids","tag-lgbtq","tag-pioneer-works"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=644128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644128\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/644129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}