Artist Jordan Eagles Works with Blood to Explore Identity-Based Policy Setting in New Exhibition
The exhibition, opening in November, spans more than a decade of Eagles’s career, following his evolving use of blood as an artistic medium
PRINCETON, NJ – Jordan Eagles: Centrifuge traces Eagles’s 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, 2025, 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 The works incorporate human blood paired with American pop-culture ephemera and historical documents to create multiple points of entry into these conversations, and to challenge discrimination against and the stigmatization of LGBTQI+ individuals and people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’s 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’s work asks viewers to consider how policies of bias can still divide humans from each other today.”
The exhibition begins with photographs of men in states of tender embrace; the artist projects blood patterns onto their naked skin. These photographs both evoke deep intimacy and summon the historical legacy of HIV/AIDS by recalling the stigmatized imagery of rashes, lesions, and same-sex touch prevalent in the 1980s and 1990s. The exhibition continues with Eagles reimagining traditional symbols of masculinity and heroism—from World War II blood drives to legendary superheroes—in images that confront historical scientific bias and cultural narratives about who is worthy of care. Moving into his more recent practice, a series of AI-generated videos, sculpture, and photography explore how artificial intelligence can reflect, reinforce, or challenge societal bias as it relates to the FDA’s blood-donation policies and wider questions of identity. The exhibition culminates with a series derived from Salvator Mundi—a painting of Jesus Christ as “savior of the world” attributed to Leonardo da Vinci that fetched $450.3 million, the highest price ever paid at auction for a painting. These works mark an interrogation of how value can be assigned to something such as blood, an element we all share.
“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 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.
Jordan Eagles: Centrifuge is made possible by the Kathleen C. Sherrerd Program Fund for American Art; the Melanie and John Clarke Exhibition Fund; and the Virginia and Bagley Wright, Class of 1946, Program Fund for Modern and Contemporary Art; and by the generous support from contributors to the Director’s Exhibition Fund.
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About the Princeton University Art Museum
With a collecting history that extends back to 1755, the Princeton University Art Museum is one of the leading university art museums in the country, featuring collections that have grown to include more than 117,000 works of art ranging from ancient to contemporary art and spanning the globe. Committed to advancing Princeton’s teaching and research missions, the Art Museum also serves as a gateway to the University for visitors from around the world.
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