Cellphone Rollercoaster
06.26.2026 - 09.12.2026
Opening reception:
Friday, June 26, 2026
6:00 - 8:00 pm
The Emily & Todd Voth Artspace at the Kansas City Art Institute is pleased to present Cellphone Rollercoaster, a performative sculptural installation by Noelle Choy and William Lanzillo that invites visitors to participate by sending their cellphones on a wild ride to experience this miniature amusement park within the gallery.
Opening with a public reception on Friday, June 26, 2026, from 6:00–8:00 pm, with a live DJ set by Blush Beat, Cellphone Rollercoaster operates as a playful counter-spectacle to large-scale events and explores the roles of spectatorship, participation, and performance.
Noelle Choy and William Lanzillo invite participants to place their phones on a custom-made rollercoaster that is part sculpture, model, and amusement park. With the video camera recording, the phone documents its own journey as the rollercoaster moves through a theme-park setting, populated with a comical mash up of sculptural props and familiar Kansas City landmarks. This experience creates fractured viewership—between the phone’s perspective, the live installation, and the video playback. This layering highlights how cellphones mediate daily experience, using absurdity to reimagine their autonomy, and shifting the first-person narrative by casting the device’s owner into the role of spectator.
Originally conceived and presented at the INVERSE Performance Art Festival, hosted by The Momentary in Bentonville, AR, in 2025, the Kansas City iteration of Cellphone Rollercoaster is organized by the Emily & Todd Voth Artspace with special support from April Pugh, Cooper Wray Siegel, Muriel Hansen, and Jackson Daughety.
About the Artists
Noelle Choy
Noelle Choy (b. 1992, Silver Spring, Maryland) is interested in performativity as a form of reenactment, and its potential to glitch into new narratives through cultural mythmaking. Her work lives mostly as sculpture, objects, and video to seek counter-narratives and the phenomenon of getting big inside our bodies. Elements ask for immediacy as theatrically sentimental props combining craft with improvised methods of making. Her work has a foundational interest in performativity as a form of reenactment, giving grief a place to grow with love.
Choy received a BFA in Sculpture and Extended Media from Virginia Commonwealth University and an MFA in Sculpture from Cranbrook Academy of Art. She came to the Kansas City Art Institute through an AICAD Teaching Fellowship, in 2022, and was appointed Assistant Professor in Painting in 2024. She has exhibited and performed both nationally and internationally, including at the Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, KS, Satellite Art Fair, Brooklyn, NY, Socrates Sculpture Park, Astoria NY, The Momentary, Bentonville AK, and Proyecto Píkaro, Mexico City, Mexico. She has been awarded numerous fellowships and residencies including from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Vermont Studio Center, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, and ACRE. She is a recipient of the 2023 AAF Seebacher Prize for Fine Arts, and the 2025 Charlotte Street Visual Artist Award and Byron Cohen Award.
William Lanzillo
William Lanzillo (b. 1997, Chicago, Illinois) is a sculptor whose work spans objects, performance, and interactive experiences. His artistic practice questions the logic of materials and the world around us. His interactive objects and performances become moments to connect with audiences while shifting perspectives and perceptions of social and physical spaces.
Lanzillo holds a BA in Studio Art and Psychology from Carleton College, and an MFA in Sculpture from Cranbrook Academy of Art. He is currently the Sculpture Studio Coordinator at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass Village, CO. He was a recipient of the 2025 Aspen Art Museum Fellowship, and his work has been exhibited across the United States, including Franconia Sculpture Park, Shafer, MN, The Reno Tahoe International Art Show, Reno, NV, The Momentary, Bentonville, AR, The Mount, Lenox, MA, Lemon Fair Sculpture Park, Shoreham, VT, and Carbondale Arts Gallery, Carbondale, CO.