SCREENING x Q&A: This is My Body [August 19, 2022]

This is My Body 
Collective Misnomer x RiNo Art Park
Curated by Quinn Dukes
Friday, August 19, 2022
8:30pm CST
Location: Art Park (Outdoors) 1900 35th Street
Denver, Colorado 80216

This is My Body features performance-based videos from international artists that boldly demand body autonomy through performative action. The selected artists shake the fraught roots of patriarchy by re-telling and in some instances, re-inventing, their personal and historical autobiographies. What does it mean to present - My Body, My Female Body, My Gender Non-Conforming Body - amidst our present post-Trump, heteronormative revivalism? The selected works offer an urgent reminder that gender and racial equity are far from actualized.  
 
Featured Artists: Chun Hua Catherine Dong (Montreal, Canada), GOODW.Y.N. (New York, NY), Katya Grokhovsky (New York, NY/Ukraine), Tone Haldrup Lorenzen (Berlin, Germany/Denmark), Alison Pirie (New York, NY), Natacha Voliakovsky (Buenos Aires)

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Artist Profiles

Chun Hua Catherine Dong | “The Sign,” 2017. Performance. 60 minutes at MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels), Montréal, Canada. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Chun Hua Catherine Dong (Montreal, Canada), 
The Sign (6 min 5 sec)
“The Sign” is a 60 minute performance that explores the visual culture of shame in relation to the body, subjects, and power in contemporary performance art. In this work, eight female performers are tied together with a rope. They wear masks and repeat some symbolic gestures. 
Chun Hua Catherine Dong is a Chinese-born, Montreal-based artist working with performance, photography, video, and AR and VR. Dong received an MFA from Concordia University and BFA from Emily Carr University Art & Design. Dong’s work has been exhibited in many national and international venues, such as Quebec City Biennial, MOMENTA | Biennale de l’image, MAC VAL in France, Museo de la Cancillería in Mexico City, Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris and so on. Dong was the recipient of the Franklin Furnace Award for performance art in New York in 2014 and listed the “10 Artists Who Are Reinventing History” by Canadian Art in 2017. Dong was a finalist for Prix en art actuel du MNBAQ 2020, and awarded with Cultural Diversity in Visual Arts by the Conseil des arts de Montréal in 2021.
chunhuacatherinedong.com

Katya Grokhovsky, "Bad Woman", Melbourne, Australia, 2017. Image courtesy of the Artist. Duration: 13 minutes.

Katya Grokhovsky (New York/Ukraine), 
Bad Woman (13 min)
Bad Woman is a concept of a persona, based on politics of defiance and protest to the prescribed societal idea of femininity, domesticity and the male gaze, through investigation of the vulnerable, the unstable, the emotional, hysterical and the failing body by employing combinations of sculpture, costume, found objects,  video and performance, attempting to discredit the oppressive patriarchal construct of contemporary womanhood.
Born in Ukraine, Katya Grokhovsky is a New York-based artist. She received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a BFA from Victorian College of the Arts, Australia and a BA in Fashion from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. Grokhovsky’s work has been supported through numerous residencies including The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Studio Program, Sculpture Space, and more. She has been awarded the New American Fellowship, Brooklyn Arts Council Grants, ArtSlant Prize, Australian Council for the Arts Grant, among others. Past exhibitions and performances include Smack Mellon, BRIC Biennial, EFA Project Space, Queens Museum, MAD Museum and more.
​www.katyagrokhovsky.net | @katyagrokhovsky

GOODW.Y.N., Ain't I a Woman, Brooklyn, New York 2019. Image courtesy of the Artist. Photos by Brittany Stigler

GOODW.Y.N. (New York, NY), Ain’t I A Woman? 
(4 min 50 sec)
Ain’t I a Woman (?/!), honoring the stories of invisibilized women on whose backs the women’s suffrage movement was built, and who dedicated their lives to the struggle for the freedom and inclusion denied them. ​

Nicole Goodwin aka GOODW.Y.N. is the author of Warcries, and the poetic sequel Warcrimes as well as the photographic essay book Ain't I a Woman (?/!): I Give of Myself  based on the five year iterations of Ain't I a Woman (?/!).  They are a finalist for the CUE Foundation’s 2022 Public Programs Fellowship, as well as the 2020 Pushcart Nominee, 2018-2019 Franklin Furnace Fund Recipient, the 2018 Ragdale Alice Judson Hayes Fellowship Recipient, 2017 EMERGENYC Hemispheric Institute Fellow and the 2013- 2014 Queer Art Mentorship Queer Art Literary Fellow. They published the articles “Talking with My Daughter…” and “Why is this Happening in Your Life…” in the New York Times’ parent blog Motherlode. Additionally, their work “Ain’t I a Woman (?/!): Poems,” was long listed for The Black Spring Press Group’s The Christopher Smart-Joan Alice Prize for 2020, and their work "Desert Flowers" was shortlisted and selected for performance in Cape Town, South Africa. 
facebook.com/ngoodwin07 | @goodw.y.n9

Tone Haldrup Lorenzen, C.U.N.T.R.I.E:S DK, 2018 Image courtesy of the Artist. Duration 12 minutes

Tone Haldrup Lorenzen (Berlin,Germany/Denmark), 
C.U.N.T.R.I.E.S (12 min)
Three women from three c.u.n.t.r.i.e.s – Iran, Denmark and USA have dressed as their national stereotype, and with mouth full they chew on the experience of their first seksual encounter. Each video has been filmed in the represented country. ​

Tone Haldrup Lorenzen is a clown, visual artist, director and performer, working in the expanded field of theatre and performance art.  Her work has been presented in China, Brazil, USA and throughout Europe. She is the artistic director and co-founder of the performance company CuntsCollective.
She has since 2018 produced, performed and directed most of her work through CunstCollective which includes: My Cuntry, performed at Åbne Scene at Godsbanen, Åbne Scene, The Gender House Festival, The Royal Theatre of Copenhagen, Det Frie Felts Festival, Hangzhou International Theatre Festival, QI Great Wall Village Art Festival. Mother Fathers Catharsis, a collaboration between CuntsCollective and KosmoSuna, premiered at The Danish Culture Institute in Beijing, and toured around Europe.

Alison Pirie, The Pelvic Theatre Presents The History of Hysteria, Video Still. Image courtesy of the Artist. Duration: 6'10"

Alison Pirie (Brooklyn, NY), 
The Pelvic Theatre Presents the History of Hysteria (6 min 10 sec)
The Pelvic Theatre Presents the History of Hysteria tells the 4,000-year history of Hysteria as a female malady, traveling through the annals of medical lore. 

Alison Pirie is a Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist working in video, performance, sculpture, and installation. Pirie earned her BFA in Studio Art from Chapman University (2018). She was an artist-in-residence at Vermont Studio Center in January 2019. 
alisonpirie.com | @alisonpirie

I need a place to escape, Natacha Voliakovsky. Videoperformance. During isolation due to COVID19. Argentina, 2020. 2’. Image courtesy of the Artist.

Natacha Voliakovsky (Buenos Aires), 
I need a place to escape (2 min); State Control (3 min 10 sec)
​​State Control is a performance created to expose the biopolitical regimes of regulation of our bodies in which we find ourselves immersed, making visible how our survival is in the hands of the decisions of the states.

Natacha Voliakovsky is a Judeo-Sudaca activist, high-testosterone woman and political performance artist whose work focuses on the analysis of social behavior and questions the boundaries of established rules. Her work poses a shift in the limits of artistic practices around social deconstruction and the sovereignty of the body, using performance, video, photography, and installation as means. Voliakovsky’s practice is currently focused on public space as territory to be reclaimed, specifically by women, non-binary identities, and minorities, researching social behavior in public spaces as an extension of gender oppressive dynamics that constrain the way women, LGBTQ communities, and minorities inhabit these places. natachavoliakovsky.com 

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Collective Misnomer is an artist run project focused on exhibiting contemporary time-based art (sound, video, performance) on the occupied Ute, Cheyenne, and Arapahoe land in what is currently called Denver, Colorado. Events may take place at various venues so be sure to verify where they are each time.

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