Mary Ellen Carroll: How To Talk Dirty and Influence People

A Landmark Survey of Conceptual Practice

Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH) has announced the first major museum exhibition devoted to the work of conceptual artist Mary Ellen Carroll. Spanning more than four decades of production, How To Talk Dirty and Influence People opens on 22 May 2026 and remains on view through 1 November 2026.

The show, curated by Senior Curator Rebecca Matalon with Rice University Curatorial Fellow Yiran Chi, examines an artist whose practice resists easy categorisation. Carroll moves fluidly between performance, photography, architecture, writing, video, public art, and policy — drawing equally from law, anthropology, and the natural and social sciences. At the core of this expansive body of work lies a persistent question: what qualifies as a work of art?

Process as Medium

Carroll's projects are frequently collaborative and research-intensive, unfolding across years of planning and negotiation. Process is not merely a means to an end but constitutive of the work itself, from initial written conceptualisation through to the labour of realisation. This method reflects a deep investment in the material and institutional conditions that shape how art comes into being.

The exhibition's title borrows from Lenny Bruce's 1965 autobiography, signalling the artist's alignment with a tradition of caustic social critique. Like Bruce, Carroll addresses urgent contemporary concerns — environmental crisis, immigration, urban legislation, technological infrastructure, sexuality, and identity — with a combination of intellectual sharpness, candour, and trickster humour.

Institutional Critique with a Wink

Carroll's practice tests the elasticity of art and its governing institutions, but its scrutiny extends well beyond the museum. The artist has engaged governmental agencies, zoning ordinances, intellectual property law, and climate conferences as both subject and medium. Notable projects include rotating a post-war house by 180 degrees, proposing to fit a Confederate monument with rabbit ears to convert it into a functioning wireless transmitter, and trademarking the word "NOTHING." In another work, Carroll stole, buried, exhumed, and reburied a 1987 Buick Regal in the woods of upstate New York — gestures that fuse criticality with absurdist comedy.

These interventions reveal the underpinnings of physical, social, economic, and ideological structures, asking viewers to reconsider where art ends and the systems that surround it begin.

Publication and Support

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue co-published by CAMH and Dancing Foxes Press, designed by Teiger Foundation with sustainability efforts guided by Rute Collaborative as part of its Climate Action for Curators programme. Additional support comes from N2 Stone Foundation, the Stolbun Family, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Frank Liu Jr. Foundation, Michael and Katie Russell, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and Martha Claire Tompkins.