'The Mobile Homestead in front of the abandoned Detroit Central Train Station,' 2010, by Mike Kelley, will be featured in the Biennial.

A child mannequin heaves its robotic chest while a voice-over intones, "Is this death?" A performer in a horse mask appears in a dance. A projection displays a giant housefly.

The Whitney Biennial, one of the art world's most high-profile showcases, strives to explore the strange and inventive. The contemporary art survey—a mix of performance, film, photography, sculpture, painting and other work—runs through May 27 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

The exhibition features 51 artists, the smallest number in the event's history. It's designed to allow more breathing room between galleries and afford audiences a deeper look at individual artists. Some performances will rotate, and some work will be fleeting, created live before viewers.

Cinema is at the forefront this year, with timed screenings of features and experimental shorts. Nearly an entire floor is a stage for music, dance and theater, with a see-through dressing room that reveals behind-the-scenes action. Here is a look at some exhibition highlights.

MIKE KELLEY

In "Mobile Homestead," Mike Kelley created a facade of his Detroit-area childhood home, put it on a truck and sent it through Detroit with a film crew, creating an urban portrait that includes interviews with strip-club dancers, motorcycle-gang members and car-company executives.

Mr. Kelley, an artist known for a punk aesthetic, died earlier this year at age 57 and never saw this work exhibited in its entirety, though parts of it were screened in Detroit. The Biennial will showcase three videos of Mr. Kelley's project. (There are plans for the home to be installed near the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit.)

WERNER HERZOG

After hearing several young artists cite Mr. Herzog as a major influence, curators approached the filmmaker, known for documentaries such as "Grizzly Man," and asked him to create a Biennial work. Mr. Herzog responded with a multimedia rumination on an artist who inspired him, 17th-century Dutch painter and printmaker Hercules Segers.

Images depicting craggy 1630s landscapes flash on screens to music by Dutch performer-composer Ernst Reijseger. The piece includes film footage of Mr. Reijseger in a trance-like state while playing cello for the score of Mr. Herzog's movie "Cave of Forgotten Dreams." Mr. Herzog's work is set in a gallery that's accessed through black plastic sheets that dangle to the floor. Getting to the work feels a little like walking through a car wash.

DAWN KASPER

The Los Angeles artist has moved nearly everything she owns into the Whitney for the three-month exhibition, turning a gallery into her studio—what the museum calls a "living sculpture." The overstuffed room is strewn with personal effects as well as her art, like a warped tennis racket spinning on a motor and a photograph of her carving a geometric tattoo into her leg in a performance.

The 35-year-old artist, who won't sleep at the gallery, will spend five days a week talking with museum visitors, performing music and creating other works. She came up with the idea a few years ago: After finishing a job as an assistant to Mr. Kelley, she went on unemployment and lost her studio. She felt unmoored, she said, "as if I wasn't taken seriously if I didn't have a studio." She takes some time off from the exhibition at an apartment in Brooklyn. "I've been told by a spiritual healer that I need at least one hour by myself," she said.