Artist, activist, educator and advocate Suzanne Lacy (b. 1945) tackles social issues, particularly those affecting women, through public and large scale art projects. She is notable for her work in raising awareness of women’s issues and blending performance art and community outreach. In 1969 Lacy enrolled as a student in a new feminist art program …
The Transformation of Performance to Sculpture: The Acclaimed Artist Chris Burden
“The image of [Chris] Burden that unfortunately continues to resonate in the public mind is of a young man who had himself shot, electrocuted, impaled, cut, drowned, incarcerated and sequestered,” wrote curator Paul Schimmel in 1988 for a book celebrating the artist in the midst of his career. Schimmel was protesting on behalf of the …
Philosopher and Conceptual Performance Artist Adrian Piper
Philosopher and conceptual artist Adrian Piper (b. 1948) has used her visual and performance art to explore her own multiracial and feminine identity, as well as more universal ideas about gender and race. Piper attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City in the late ‘60s before pursuing an academic career in philosophy. …
The Haunting Mystery Around Ana Mendieta’s Death and the Art She Left Behind
Ana Mendieta, only 36-years-old when she died falling out of a window from her 34th floor apartment in New York, was a unique voice in performance who left behind a short but incendiary career, as well as the haunting mystery of her death. She was one of the first artists of her generation to combine …
The Zen Work of Yoko Ono
Yoko Ono, inextricably linked with late husband John Lennon and The Beatles, has been an important experimental artist in her own right since the 1960s. Born in 1933 to a wealthy Tokyo family with banking and samurai lineage, Yoko Ono grew up studying Buddhism, Japanese aesthetics and classical music. In the 1960s she moved to …
The Academy Awards has closed the doors to the art world
This year was an upset to the art world as the Academy Awards didn’t nominate Ai Weiwei or Marina Abramović’s “The Artist is Present”. Marina Abramović is an internationally recognized performance artist who released a documentary this last year. Her film “The Artist Is Present” was not nominated for the 85th annual Academy Awards. This movie archived …
“Play With Me”, the Performance Artist Mariko Mori
Mariko Mori is a multidisciplinary Japanese artist whose work explores identity, both human and alien, the discrepancies between utopia and reality, and our universal shared consciousness, through performance, video, photography and sculpture. Born into a wealthy family in Tokyo in 1967, her first experience performing was as a young girl in a school play, for …
Performance Artist Hiroko Tsuchida
Recently the LA Art Show was featured on the cover of the LA Times during its reign at the Los Angeles Convention Center. It brought the usual and not-so-usual art goers to downtown LA. Opening night was one of LA Art Show’s finest with James Franco as guest of honor. One particular piece was that …
Lita Albuquerque Spine of the Earth
Lita Albuquerque is an American installation artist who recently recreated her 1980 internationally acclaimed piece entitled, Spine of the Earth. Albuquerque graduated with a BFA from the University of California before emerging onto the California performance art scene in the early seventies. She was apart of Light and Space, a movement influenced by John Dwyer …
If I Can’t Dance Presents Guy de Cointet’s ‘Five Sisters’ at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
Recently, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art hosted If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution’s production of Five Sisters by Guy de Cointet. If I Can’t Dance, an Amsterdam based organization is dedicated to exploring the evolution and typology of performance and performativity in contemporary art. They …