“Jordan Eagles: Centrifuge” traces Eagles’ exploration of the visual power of blood and its use as an artistic medium and metaphor across sculpture, installation, photography, and video. Throughout his career, Eagles has worked with blood as a medium for exploring the human life cycle. Over the past decade, he has created a compelling body of work using human blood — voluntarily donated by individuals from the LGBTQI+ community — to inspire dialogue about the effects of identity-based policies for blood donation and thus about wider questions of identity and personhood. The exhibition will be on view at the Princeton University Art Museum’s Art@Bainbridge gallery from November 22 to March 15, 2026.
The artworks in “Centrifuge” were created both before and after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) revised their guidelines to eliminate questions about a prospective donor’s gender and sexual orientation, a change that took effect in 2023. The works incorporate human blood paired with American pop culture ephemera and historical documents to create multiple points of entry into these conversations, and to challenge discrimination against and the stigmatization of LGBTQI+ individuals and people living with HIV. Galleries highlight distinct projects or chapters from Eagles’ ongoing body of work, inviting reflection on blood as a lifesaving, sustaining, and unifying human element, and on the ways that policies rooted in identity and bias can fracture that bond.
“Across his practice, Jordan Eagles finds powerful ways to invite us to question how discrimination and bias erode the most basic of our shared human experiences,” said Chris Newth, senior associate director for collections and exhibitions at the Princeton University Art Museum. “Though the FDA’s blood-donation guidelines have been revised to be based more on behavior than on identity, Eagles’ work asks viewers to consider how policies of bias can still divide humans from each other today.”
“The works in ‘Centrifuge’ inspire questions about whose blood, bodies, and lives are valued, especially queer bodies,” says artist Jordan Eagles. “As we live through the unraveling of the healthcare system, assaults on higher education, and the stigmatization of science, this exhibition can serve as an examination of policies and conventions that divide us despite our shared humanity.”
The exhibition will feature a number of public events, including a Day With(out) Art program that starts at 5:30 p.m. on World AIDS Day, December 1, at the new Princeton University Art Museum. Using resin panels made from blood donated by individuals living with HIV as well as gay men on PrEP, the artist will invite visitors to sit for a portrait, engage with their own histories, and consider the continuing impact of HIV/AIDS and the movement for LGBTQ equality. The portraits will then be displayed as part of the exhibition at Art@Bainbridge. On December 18 and 19, Eagles returns to Art@Bainbridge for a site-specific installation, projecting glowing blood patterns and shadows onto the exterior of Bainbridge House. Art@Bainbridge will stay open until 7:30 p.m. so that visitors can see the installation and then head inside to experience the exhibition.
“Jordan Eagles: Centrifuge” is organized and presented by the Princeton University Art Museum.
Art@Bainbridge, a gallery project at 158 Nassau Street, is open Friday through Sunday. Admission is free to all. For more information, visit artmuseum.princeton.edu.