DOOM
Anne Imhof
Transforming the Park Avenue Armory’s Drill Hall into a prom-decorated gymnasium filled with streamers, balloons, and Cadillac Escalades, artist Anne Imhof stages Romeo and Juliet in reverse for her three-hour immersive work of dance, music, skateboarding, and more, DOOM: House of Hope (2025). This documentary short captures Imhof as she creates her largest work to date, from the play and experimentation of the rehearsal room to the excitement and energy of performance. Always destabilizing genre, medium, and discipline, the artist brings together elements from the classical to the contemporary to explore youth, art criticism, and more. While preparing for DOOM, Imhof mounts her 2024 exhibition Wish You Were Gay, where she displays early video works alongside new sculptures and paintings exploring her own youth and offering deeper insight into what inspired DOOM. “DOOM was telling the story of these wounds,” says the artist. “In my case, the wound was shaped into a diamond. I felt this art was this valuable thing in me that I could use, but the shaping wasn’t always easy.”
This film was directed by Ian Forster, edited by Winnie Cheung and Mary Ann Toman, and filmed by Jarred Alterman, Christoph Lerch, and Hunter Zimny.
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About the artists
Anne Imhof, born in 1978 in Giessen, Germany, and lives and works between Berlin and New York City. She earned her BA from the University of Art and Design, Offenbach in 2003, and her MFA from the State Academy of Fine Arts, Städelschule, Frankfurt a.M. in 2012. Imhof uses performance, sculpture, painting, drawing, installation, and music to examine the codes of cultural identities and social hierarchies. Through her practice, she explores themes of belonging, spectatorship, and alienation while heightening the everyday performance of self, subculture, and identity.
