BIOGRAPHIES - Franklin Furnace

ELEANOR ANTIN is a pioneering performance artist, filmmaker, and installation artist. Antin’s groundbreaking work such as 100 Boots (1971–1973), CARVING: A Traditional Sculpture (1972), The King of Solana Beach (1972–1975), The Adventures of a Nurse (1976), The Angel of Mercy (1977), and Recollections of My Life with Diaghilev (1979) are frequently referred to as classics of feminist, conceptual, and postmodern art. Her one-woman exhibitions have been presented at the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, and Long Beach Museum of Art. A thirty-year retrospective of Antin’s artwork was presented at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and was later exhibited at venues across the United Kingdom. Her artwork is included in collections at the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Jewish Museum, and Tate Modern. Monographs on Antin’s work include Eleanor Antin: Historical Takes (2008) and Multiple Occupancy: Eleanor Antin’s “Selves” (2014). Antin is the recipient of the AICA International Association of Art Critics award, Guggenheim Fellowship award, and National Foundation for Jewish Culture Media Achievement Award. She received an honorary doctorate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Antin is Professor Emeritus of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego.

RON ATHEY is a performance artist based in Los Angeles. In his bloody portrayals of life, death, and fortitude in the time of AIDS, Athey calls into question the limits of artistic practice. These limits enable him to explore themes of gender, religion, and sexuality, among other topics in his performances. Athey first performed with Rozz Williams at underground galleries during the early 1980s in a collaboration known as Premature Ejaculation. Later, he began his solo performance career with The Torture Trilogy: Martyrs & Saints, Four Scenes in a Harsh Life, and Deliverance (1992–1995), and went on to develop Incorruptible Flesh (1997–2008) and Solar Anus (1998). His recent performances include Judas Cradle (2004–2005), Self-Obliteration (2008–2011), and Gifts of the Spirit: Automatic Writing (2010). Athey has collaborated with Lawrence Steger on Incorruptible Flesh (In Progress) (1996), Juliana Snapper on The Judas Cradle (2004), and Julie Tolentino on THE SKY REMAINS THE SAME (2007–). A monograph of Athey’s performance artwork, Pleading in the Blood: The Art and Performances of Ron Athey (2013), was edited by Dominic Johnson and published by Intellect Ltd.

HORACE BROCKINGTON is a curator, gallery director, and consultant. He has organized exhibitions at Just Above Midtown, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Whitney Museum of American Art, Sculpture Center, and Franklin Furnace, among other venues. Brockington co-founded with Gylbert Coker and David Hammons Art Across the Park—a public art project that was instrumental in creating new site-specific artworks in parks throughout New York City. He is Founding Director of ICContemporary: Institute for Collaborations in Visual Culture, NYC, which commissions and produces projects by contemporary artists working across various forms of media. Brockington’s writings on modern and contemporary art have appeared in magazines, journals, and anthologies. He currently serves as the editor of Triannum: Journal of Visual Culture and is a member of the planning committee for The Friends of Education at the Museum of Modern Art. Brockington has taught at Brown University, Kean University, and City University of New York, where he is conducting research on sculpture for a book-length project. Brockington holds degrees in Art History from Columbia University and Brown University.

CASSILS uses the body as a sculptural mass to deconstruct societal norms. By using a queer lens to examine physical training, kinesiology, and sports science, Cassils manipulates their body into a shape that defies the gender binary. They perform trans identity not as transitioning from one sex to another, but as a continual process of becoming. It is with sweat, blood, and sinew that Cassils constructs a visual critique around gender ideologies. Drawing on body art, feminism, gay male aesthetics, conceptualism, and Hollywood cinema, they create a visual language that is emotionally striking and conceptually incisive. www.cassils.net

PATTY CHANG explores gender, language, and empathy through a performative art practice. Predominantly working in video, Chang uses the medium to document her performances, often utilizing the camera’s potential to misrepresent. Her works challenge the viewer’s perception of what they may see, frequently creating visual sleights of hand that highlight fantastical representations of “Asia.” Chang’s artwork has been exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum, New Museum, Hammer Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Hamburg Kunstverein, and Moderna Museet, among other venues. She was nominated for the Hugo Boss Prize (2008), named the Guna S. Mundheim Fellow of Visual Arts at the American Academy in Berlin (2009), and received the Guggenheim Fellowship (2014). www.pattychang.com

PETER CRAMER is an artist and activist based in New York City. Cramer’s performances, films, and installations have been featured in alternative spaces, museums, and cultural institutions around the world. His films are available through the Film-Makers’ Cooperative, Fales Library & Special Collections, and Allied Productions, Inc. Cramer is an artist+ member of Visual AIDS, which is an organization that utilizes art to fight AIDS by provoking dialogue, supporting HIV+ artists, and preserving the legacy of the AIDS epidemic. He is the recipient of a NEA InterArts Fellowship and a grant from the US Virgin Islands Council on the Arts. Cramer recently received the Kathy Acker Award—a tribute given to members of the avant-garde art community who have made outstanding contributions in their discipline. www.alliedproductions.org

BILLY X. CURMANO’S art practice examines issues of consequence with absurdist flair. Formally trained as a painter and a sculptor, Curmano fuses the performative with traditional objects. He became the first person to swim the Mississippi River spanning from the source at Lake Itasca, through the continental United States, to the Gulf of Mexico. This performance resulted in the Hampton Award-Winning Documentary Swimming the River (1987–1997), which brought the artist critical acclaim. Curmano extended the swim by performing excerpts of the piece in the traveling exhibition Objects Collected and Created in the Course of a Swim (1995–1997). His artwork has been exhibited and collected extensively from Austria’s III Vienna Graphik Biennale to New York’s Museum of Modern Art Library. Mark Pezinger Verlag published Billy X. Curmano Futurism’s Bastard Son (2012), an artist book that features a compilation of Curmano’s performance artworks. Amused journalists have dubbed Curmano as “The Court Jester of Southeastern Minnesota” with comparisons to P.T. Barnum, Andy Warhol, Marcel Duchamp, and even… a happy otter. www.billyx.net

DANCENOISE is a dance-based performance art group created by Anne Iobst and Lucy Sexton. Since 1983, they have performed throughout New York City nightclubs and theaters including the W.O.W. Café Theatre, Pyramid Club, 8BC, PS122, Franklin Furnace, The Kitchen, and Lincoln Center. The group hosted a weekly cabaret during the 1980s at King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut in the East Village. DANCENOISE has performed, taught, and toured at the Phenomenon Festival (Jerusalem), Queer Up North (Manchester), Vienna Fest Wochen (Vienna), Mayfest (Glasgow), New York Live (Osaka), and numerous squatted houses across Europe. The group received a Bessie Award in 1989 for their performance All the Rage at PS122. In 2015, DANCENOISE exhibited a week-long retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in Chelsea and inaugurated the museum’s new theater space with a performance. The New Yorker’s theatre critic, Hilton Als, hails DANCENOISE as “One of the best performances I’ve attended in ages…DANCENOISE reminded us of what joy felt like as they took apart serious issues.”

DISBAND was active in the New York downtown art scene from 1978–1982. The all-girl band of artists screamed, sang, and stomped through the heyday of the new-wave and no-wave scenes, blurring the lines between performance art and live music. Mirroring the chaos and temporality of that era, the band performed songs such as “The End,” “Five More Years,” “Every Day Same Old Way,” “Get Rebel,” “Sad,” “Iran-y,” and “DOW.” They also addressed their status as women through songs such as “Girls’ Bill of Rights,” “Hey Baby,” “Fashions,” and “Look at My Dick.” In 1980, DISBAND toured Italy with Laurie Anderson, Chris Burden, and other artists. The group has performed at MoMA PS1, The Kitchen, Mudd Club, TR3 Gallery, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, and Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. DISBAND reunited in 2008 to perform at MoMA PS1 as part of the touring exhibition WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution. Members of the band included Barbara Ess, Ilona Granet, Donna Henes, Daile Kaplan, Barbara Kruger, Ingrid Sischy, Diane Torr, and Martha Wilson. www.disbandny.wordpress.com

ZACKARY DRUCKER is a visual artist and cultural producer based in Los Angeles. Drucker’s work examines perceptions of gender and sexuality through a transgender lens. Her artwork has been performed and exhibited at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Hammer Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Venice Biennale–Swiss Off-Site Pavilion, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, among other venues. Drucker is an Emmy-nominated producer for the docuseries This Is Me (2015), as well as a co-producer on the Golden Globe and Emmy-winning television series Transparent (2014–). She is a cast member on the E! docuseries I Am Cait (2015). Drucker is represented by Luis De Jesus Los Angeles. www.zackarydrucker.com

BOB FLANAGAN & SHEREE ROSE began their artistic collaboration during the late 1980s in the Los Angeles club and art scenes. Their performance, photography, and video integrated elements of BDSM, which culminated in the exhibition Visiting Hours at the Santa Monica Museum of Art in 1993 and the New Museum in 1994. After Flanagan died from cystic fibrosis in 1996, Rose continued to make artwork honoring his legacy and their collaboration. Rose made contributions to the documentary Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist (1997), which premiered at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival and was awarded a Special Jury Prize. She was commissioned by Japan to produce Boballoon—a 20-foot inflatable statue of Flanagan that was exhibited at Big Space in Tokyo. Rose continues to show her photography at international galleries, including the Coagula in Los Angeles, Tate in Liverpool, and Jeu de Paume in Paris. She has presented multiple performances at Highways Performance Space and Gallery in Santa Monica. Long after his demise, Flanagan’s artwork with Rose continues to be a model for artists dealing with illness and death.

SHERMAN FLEMING identifies cultural and social mechanisms through his art practice and community-based projects as a public arts manager. Fleming’s performance work has been featured at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Intermedia Arts, and Franklin Furnace. His solo exhibitions include Big Rebus Paintings (1990) at Nexus Gallery, Watercolors (2001) at International Visions Gallery, and Codewords (2006) at VIAP Galerie. Fleming has participated in group exhibitions such as Other Bloods (1995) at Arti et Amicitiae, Endurance (1995) at Exit Art, Whisper! Stomp! Shout! A Salute to African American Performance Art (1996) at Colorado Springs Fine Art Center, and The Postmillennial Black Madonna (2007) at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts. He has lectured at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Design and has stewarded public art projects for the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program. Fleming holds a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and a MFA from Hartford Art School.

LAWRENCE GRAHAM-BROWN is an interdisciplinary artist working in performance, sculpture, painting, and media. As an openly gay Jamaican-American man, Graham-Brown’s art practice works to combat homophobia and racism across geographical contexts. He uses his body as a canvas to dispel the stigma that queer, intersex, transgender, indigenous, and people of color face on a daily basis. His artwork has been presented at the Queens Museum, El Museo del Barrio, Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, Aljira A Center for Contemporary Arts, Institute of Jamaica, National Gallery of Jamaica, Galeria Homero Massena, Royal West of England Academy, Arnolfini Centre for Contemporary Arts, Galerie Lutz Rohs, and Shanghai Biennial. Graham-Brown’s work has been written about in The New York Times, Huffington Post, Jamaica Gleaner, Art Recognition Culture, Caribbean Art World, and THE ARCHIVE journal of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art.

The GUERRILLA GIRLS are an anonymous women’s collective that takes on the names of dead women artists as pseudonyms for interventions. Concealed behind gorilla masks in action, the Guerrilla Girls use various tactics to intervene in art, culture, and politics. Through the production of printed materials, publications, and performance actions, the Guerrilla Girls expose political matters, convey information, and provoke discussions in public contexts. Notorious for exposing the exclusion of women artists, the Guerrilla Girls have staged interventions at the Museum of Modern Art, Venice Biennale, and Centre Georges Pompidou, among other venues. The Guerrilla Girls’ artwork is presented from feminist and humorist perspectives. www.guerrillagirls.com

DYNASTY HANDBAG (JIBZ CAMERON) is a performance artist, video maker, and actor based in Los Angeles. Handbag has been heralded by The New York Times as “the funniest and most pitch perfect performance seen in years” and by The New Yorker as “outrageously smart, grotesque, and innovative.” Her artwork has been presented at the New Museum, Performa, The Kitchen, MoMA PS1, Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Broad Museum, REDCAT, and Hammer Museum, among other venues. Handbag has acted in works by The Wooster Group, The Residents, and Kalup Linzy. She has produced numerous video projects and two albums of original music. Handbag’s artwork has been supported by residencies at Yaddo, The MacDowell Colony, and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. She works as a professor of performance and comedy related subjects at various universities. www.dynastyhandbag.com

MARTHA HELLION is a visual artist, radical publisher, and freelance curator. With Madeleine Gallard, David Mayor, and Chris Welch, she co-founded the Beau Geste Press—a Fluxus associated enterprise that was part of the transnational avant-garde during the 1970s. The collective published eight issues of Schmuck magazine from 1972–1978. They also published artists’ books by Ulises Carrión, Felipe Ehrenberg, Allen Fisher, Michael Legett, David Mayor, Michael Nyman, Carolee Schneemann, and Cecilia Vicuña. The goal of the press was to publish materials that fostered international relationships between visual artists. Hellion has also served as the editor of Ulises Carrión: Libros de artista (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2003). She is the founder of the Center of Research and Documentation on Artists’ Publications—an institution that presents, distributes, and disseminates publications in Mexico City.

ESSEX HEMPHILL (1957–1995) addressed issues central to the African American gay community through his poetry. His first collections of poems were the self-published chapbooks Earth Life (1985) and Conditions (1986). Hemphill’s Ceremonies: Prose and Poetry (1992) won the National Library Association’s Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual New Author Award. His writing is included in the anthologies Gay and Lesbian Poetry in Our Time (1986) and Life Sentences: Writers, Artists, and AIDS (1993). Hemphill edited the anthology Brother to Brother: New Writing by Black Gay Men (1991), which won the Lambda Literary Award. He participated in the performance poetry group Cinque with Larry Duckette and Wayson Jones. The group’s work was later featured in the documentaries Tongues Untied (1989) and Black Is… Black Ain’t (1994). Hemphill’s poetry was also included in the film Looking for Langston (1989). He received fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Pew Charitable Trust Fellowship in the Arts, and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Hemphill was a visiting scholar at the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities. He died of complications from AIDS in 1995.

HOLLY HUGHES is a writer and a performer who began her thespian adventures at W.O.W. Café Theatre in New York City. Her performance work explores questions of identity and sexual desire, drawing international recognition from the artist community. She is the recipient of the Obie Award and the Guggenheim Fellowship. Hughes has received funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, Creative Capital, and New York State Council for the Arts. Her books include Clit Notes: A Sapphic Sampler (1996), O Solo Homo: The New Queer Performance (1998), Animal Acts: Performing Species Today (2014), and Memories of the Revolution: Ten Years of the WOW Cafe (2015). Hughes is a professor at the University of Michigan where she founded the BFA in Interarts Performance.

WAYSON JONES is an interdisciplinary artist working in music, dance, spoken word, and painting. He performed with the renowned poet Essex Hemphill at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater, La MaMa E.T.C., Painted Bride Art Center, and Blues Alley, among other venues. Jones has exhibited his art at the BlackRock Center for the Arts, Hillyer Art Space, District of Columbia Arts Center, Gallery O on H, Arts Harmony Hall, The David Driskell Center, Smith Center for Healing and the Arts, The Soundry, Candy Factory Center for the Arts, University of Mary Washington, Gallery 25, and Jeffrey Leder Gallery. His work has been purchased by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and can be found in private and corporate collections around the United States. Jones holds a degree in Music from the University of Maryland. www.waysonjones.com

LAMAR is a composer working in music, performance, video, sculpture, and installation. Drawing from the Negro Spiritual, Lamar uses his operatic voice and piano playing to comment on the politics of blackness. He combines western classical music and dissonant black metal to create narratives of radical becomings. Lamar has presented work at the New Museum, MoMA PS1, Participant Inc., The Kitchen, and PS122, among other venues. He has received grants from Franklin Furnace (2013–14), Harpo Foundation (2014–2015), Rema Hort Mann Foundation (2015), and Material Vodka (2016). Lamar was the recipient of the New York Foundation of the Arts Fellowship in Music and Sound (2016). He holds a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and attended the Yale School of Art sculpture program before dropping out to pursue music. www.mlamar.com

ANA MENDIETA (1948–1985) created groundbreaking work in photography, performance, film, drawing, sculpture, mixed media, and site-specific installations. Mendieta is a pioneer among artists dealing with identity politics and feminism. Her unique hybrid of form and documentation, works that Mendieta titled “siluetas,” are fugitive and potent traces of her body in the landscape, transformed by fire, water, and natural materials. Mendieta’s artwork has been the subject of six major museum retrospectives.

Ana Mendieta: Traces (2013) was organized by the Hayward Gallery in London, and traveled to the Museum der Moderne in Salzburg and the Galerie Rudolfinum in Prague. Ana Mendieta: Earth Body, Sculpture and Performance 1972–1985 (2005) was organized by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and traveled to the Whitney Museum of American Art, Des Moines Art Center, and Miami Art Museum. Covered in Time and History: The Films of Ana Mendieta (2015) was the largest exhibition to date in the United States of the artist’s films. Presented by the Katherine E. Nash Gallery at the University of Minnesota, the exhibition traveled to the NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale, University of California Berkeley Art Museum, and Pacific Film Archive.

Mendieta’s artworks are found in public collections worldwide, including the Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Musee d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Tate Gallery, Verbund Collection, and Centre Georges Pompidou. Mendieta was born in Havana, Cuba in 1948 and died in New York City in 1985. Her artist estate is managed by Galerie Lelong, New York.

TIM MILLER is an internationally acclaimed performance artist. Miller’s work explores the artistic, spiritual, and political topography of his identity as a gay man. His performances have been presented across the world in venues such as the Yale Repertory Theatre, London Institute of Contemporary Art, Walker Art Center, Actors Theatre of Louisville, and Brooklyn Academy of Music. Miller is the author of Shirts & Skin (1997), Body Blows (2002), and 1001 Beds (2006). His solo performances have been published in Sharing the Delirium (1994) and O Solo Homo (1998). Miller has taught performance art at the University of California, Los Angeles, New York University, School of Theology at Claremont University, and other universities across the United States. He is a co-founder of PS122 in New York City and a co-founder of Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica. www.timmillerperformer.com
ESTERA MILMAN is a distinguished art historian, curator, and researcher. She has published widely on art spanning the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and has curated major exhibitions in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Milman was the Founding Director of Alternative Traditions in the Contemporary Arts and served as a Charter Member of Conceptual and Intermedia Arts Online. She has received grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, and New York State Council on the Arts. Milman earned a BFA in Painting, Printmaking, and Film from the Rhode Island School of Design and a MFA in Photography and Photomedia from the University of Iowa. www.milman-interarts.com

TRACIE MORRIS is Coordinator of the Performance and Performance Studies MFA program at Pratt Institute. Morris is a poet who also works as a scholar, writer, vocalist, bandleader, and performer. Her sound installations have been presented at the Museum of Modern Art, The Kitchen, Whitney Museum of American Art, Drawing Center, Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, and Dia Art Foundation. Morris has received grants, awards, and fellowships for poetry and performance from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Asian Cultural Council, Franklin Furnace, and Creative Capital. Her publications include Intermission (1998), Rhyme Scheme (2012), handholding: 5 kinds (2016), and Best American Experimental Writing (2017). Morris holds a MFA in Poetry from Hunter College and a PhD in Performance Studies from New York University. www.traciemorris.com

SHIRIN NESHAT is an Iranian-born visual artist based in New York City. Neshat’s photograph series Unveiling (1993) and Women of Allah (1993–1997) examine femininity in relation to Islamic fundamentalism and militancy in Iran. Her video installation trilogy comprising Turbulent (1998), Rapture (1999), and Fervor (2000) portray abstract oppositions based around gender and society. Neshat’s video works Soliloquy (1999), Possessed (2001), Pulse (2001), and Tooba (2002) explore female identity in the context of Islamic culture, law, and religion. Since her first solo exhibition at Franklin Furnace in 1993, Neshat has presented exhibitions at the Serpentine Galleries (2000), Walker Art Center (2002), Hamburger Bahnhof (2005), Stedelijk Museum (2006), Detroit Institute of Arts Museum (2013), and Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (2014). A major solo exhibition of the artist’s work, Shirin Neshat: Facing History (2015), was presented at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. She is the recipient of the First International Prize at the 48th Venice Biennial (1999), Grand Prix of the Gwangju Biennale (2000), Hiroshima Freedom Prize (2005), Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize (2006), and the Silver Lion Award (2009). Neshat is represented by Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels.

RASHAAD NEWSOME is a visual artist working in collage, video, sculpture, music, and performance. His art practice examines how images in the media and popular culture convey distorted notions of power. Newsome has exhibited and performed at the Brooklyn Museum, MoMA PS1, Whitney Museum of American Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, New Orleans Museum of Art, Centre Georges Pompidou, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, and Museum Start Gallery Artothek. He participated in the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum (2010) and Greater New York at MoMA PS1 (2011). Newsome has received awards and grants from Franklin Furnace, Harvestworks, L’ Entreprise Culturelle, BCAT/BRIC Rotunda Gallery, and Location One. His artwork is included in public collections at the Brooklyn Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and New Britain Museum of American Art. He received a BA in Art History from Tulane University and studied Film at Film Video Arts. Newsome is represented by De Buck Gallery, New York City. www.rashaadnewsome.com

LORRAINE O’GRADY is an artist and a critic whose installations, performances, and texts address issues of diaspora, hybridity, and black female subjectivity. The New York Times calls O’Grady “one of the most interesting American conceptual artists around.” Her landmark performance, Mlle Bourgeoise Noire (1980–1983), was installed as an entry point to WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution (2007)—the first institutional exhibition to examine the international foundations and legacies of art influenced by feminism. O’Grady’s work has been featured in significant group shows such as the Whitney Biennial (2010), Paris Triennale (2012), This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s (2012), Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art (2012), and EN MAS’: Carnival and across the world in venues such as the Yale Repertory Theatre, London Institute of Contemporary Art, Walker Art Center, Actors Theatre of Louisville, and Brooklyn Academy of Music. Miller is the author of Shirts & Skin (1997), Body Blows (2002), and 1001 Beds (2006). His solo performances have been published in Sharing the Delirium (1994) and O Solo Homo (1998). Miller has taught performance art at the University of California, Los Angeles, New York University, School of Theology at Claremont University, and other universities across the United States. He is a co-founder of PS122 in New York City and a co-founder of Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica. www.timmillerperformer.com

ESTERA MILMAN is a distinguished art historian, curator, and researcher. She has published widely on art spanning the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and has curated major exhibitions in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Milman was the Founding Director of Alternative Traditions in the Contemporary Arts and served as a Charter Member of Conceptual and Intermedia Arts Online. She has received grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, and New York State Council on the Arts. Milman earned a BFA in Painting, Printmaking, and Film from the Rhode Island School of Design and a MFA in Photography and Photomedia from the University of Iowa. www.milman-interarts.com

FLAWLESS SABRINA (JACK DOROSHOW) (1939–2017) was a legendary drag queen and an icon of queer underground culture. Sabrina directed the drag beauty pageant The Nationals in the United States from 1958–1968. She starred in The Queen (1968)—a documentary about the 1967 Miss All-America Camp Beauty Pageant held at Town Hall in New York City. Sabrina also worked as a consultant on the films Midnight Cowboy (1969), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), and Myra Breckenridge (1970). In later years, she became involved in politics advocating for gay marriage and working with Hillary Clinton on transgender issues. Sabrina was an active member of the queer community and was a resource for transgender people in the arts. She, along with Zackary Drucker and Diana Tourjée, founded the Flawless Sabrina Archive in 2014 to preserve and make accessible the rich legacy of her lifework. www.flawless-sabrina.com

DREAD SCOTT makes revolutionary art to propel history forward. Scott works in a range of media including performance, installation, photography, screen-printing, and video. His artwork illuminates the oppressive structures forged by society and challenges the audience to envision a world where justice prevails. Scott has exhibited at the Cristin Tierney Gallery, MoMA PS1, Whitney Museum of American Art, Winkleman Gallery, Walker Art Center, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, and Pori Art Museum. He has presented Dread Scott: Welcome to America (2008) at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts and Dread Scott: Decision (2012) at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Scott’s artwork is included in collections at the New Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Akron Art Museum. His public sculptures are installed at Logan Square in Philadelphia and Franconia Sculpture Park in Minnesota. Scott has received grants from Creative Capital, Franklin Furnace, and Pollock-Krasner Foundation. He has also been awarded fellowships for his work from the New York Foundation for the Arts. Scott has been an artist-in-residence at Omi International Arts Center and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. www.dreadscott.net

PAMELA SNEED is a poet and a performer based in New York City. Her work explores the personal as political while commenting on race, history, and feminism. She is the author of Imagine Being More Afraid of Freedom Than Slavery (1998), KONG (2009), Lincoln (2014), and Sweet Dreams (2018). Sneed has performed original works for sold out houses at Lincoln Center, PS122, Dixon Place, BAMcafé, and Central Park Summer Stage, among other venues. She has been featured in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Time Out, BOMB Magazine, VIBE, and New York Magazine. Sneed has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, Long Island University, and Columbia University.

ANNIE SPRINKLE is a prostitute/porn star turned artist/sexologist. She explores sexuality through her unique brand of feminist sex films, writings, artworks, performances, and teachings. Sprinkle has long championed sex worker rights and health care, and was pivotal in the sex-positive feminist movement of the 1980s. She received her BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City and was the first porn star to earn a PhD from the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco. For many years, Sprinkle has collaborated with her longtime partner Elizabeth Stephens, who is an artist and a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Sprinkle and Stephens are active leaders of the Ecosex Movement. They are committed to making environmental activism more sexy, fun, and diverse through art practices. www.anniesprinkle.org

CARLA STELLWEG is a Latin Americanist who has worked as a museum director, writer, editor, curator, and professor. She is considered a pioneer for her efforts in introducing Latin American and Latino contemporary art to New York City. Stellweg began her career working as an assistant curator to Fernando Gamboa, the renowned museum builder who organized numerous international exhibitions on Mexican art and culture. At the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City, she founded and edited Artes Visuales—the first bilingual contemporary art journal that was renowned for its reportage on Latin American, international, and conceptual art. She also served as Deputy Director of Rufino Tamayo Museum in Mexico City’s Chapultepec Park. Stellweg’s 40-year archive comprised of her curatorial work, writing, and professional activities is housed at Stanford University’s Special Collection Library.

KRISTINE STILES is France Family Professor of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies at Duke University. She specializes in contemporary global art, focusing on performance, artists’ writings, trauma, and destruction in art. Her publications include Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art (1996 and 2012), Correspondence Course: An Epistolary History of Carolee Schneemann and Her Circle (2010), and Concerning Consequences: Studies in Art, Destruction, and Trauma (2016). Stiles was the curator of the exhibition Rauschenberg: Collecting & Connecting (2014–2015) at the Nasher Museum of Art. She is currently working with Kathy O’Dell on completing their manuscript Mapping Experimental Art: Studies in Contemporary International Art Since 1933.

AMBER HAWK SWANSON is a video and performance artist based in New York City. Swanson’s work explores how the psychological debt of love animates us in a social-emotional economy. She has exhibited at the Palais de Tokyo, Denny Gallery, and Locust Projects, among other international art venues. Swanson’s artwork is included in the permanent and MPP collections at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago. Scholarly writing about Swanson’s work has been published in GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian & Gay Studies and TDR: The Drama Review. Her artwork has been profiled and reviewed in the Guardian, Chicago Tribune, and Associated Press. She teaches in the Sculpture Departments at Rhode Island School of Design and Virginia Commonwealth University. Her visiting artist lecture appointments include Yale University, Columbia University, New York University, Maryland Institute College of Art, McGill University, East Carolina University, Hunter College, and Fashion Institute of Technology. Swanson holds a MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. www.amberhawkswanson.com

JULIE TOLENTINO is a performance artist, dancer/choreographer, and visual artist. Her art explores the intersections of queer sexual subcultures, Eastern healing practices, and HIV/AIDS cultural activism. Tolentino’s solo and collaborative works have been presented at The Kitchen, Invisible Exports, New Museum, Participant Inc., Performa, San Francisco Art Institute, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Commonwealth & Council, The Broad Museum, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, and Wexner Center, among other venues. She has worked on projects with Ron Athey, Candidate, Robert Crouch, Stosh Fila, Gran Fury, Diamanda Galás, Gerard & Kelly, Stanley Love, Lovett/Codagnone, Catherine Opie, David Rousseve, Madonna, Mark So, and Meg Stuart. Tolentino was a founding member of ACT UP New York’s House of Color Video Collective and the legendary Clit Club—a nightclub in New York City that promoted safe-sex for multiracial lesbians. She co-wrote the Lesbian AIDS Project’s Women’s Safer Sex Handbook, co-edited the TDR: The Drama Review’s Provocations section, and served as the editor of Guard Your Daughters: Clit Club 1990–2002 (forthcoming). Tolentino works in New York City and Joshua Tree, where she created a solar-powered live/work residency called FERAL House and Studio. www.julietolentino.com

DIANE TORR (1948–2017) was a performance artist who worked in dance, installation, and film/video. Originally from Aberdeen, Scotland, Torr developed her artistic career as an integral part of New York City’s downtown art scene. She created an extensive body of work that was presented at venues across the city including Franklin Furnace, The Kitchen, Danceteria, and The Mudd Club, among other spaces. Torr was a visiting lecturer at the Glasgow School of Art, Stockholm University of Arts, and Freie Universität Berlin. Her renowned Man-for-a-Day workshop was taught across the globe and was featured prominently in the documentary Venus Boyz (2002). She co-authored with Stephen Bottoms Sex, Drag, and Male Roles: Investigating Gender as Performance (2010). Torr lived and worked between Glasgow, Berlin, and New York City. www.dianetorr.com

JACK WATERS is a visual artist, filmmaker, writer, choreographer, and performer. His artwork has been included in the exhibitions The Black Male (1995) at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Triple Threat (2008) at Frise, Not only this, but ‘New language beckons us’ (2013) at New York University, NOT OVER: 25 Years of Visual AIDS (2013) and Ephemera as Evidence (2014) at La MaMa Galleria. Waters appeared as the lead character in the critically acclaimed film Jason and Shirley (2015), which was co-written with Sarah Schulman and Stephen Winter. The film has been screened at multiple venues including the Museum of Modern Art, British Film Institute, and Anthology Film Archives. His films are included as part of the Estate Project for Artists with AIDS and the AIDS Activist Video Collection at the New York Public Library. Waters’ archives are held at Fales Library & Special Collections at New York University. Additional materials from his artistic career are housed at the Film-Makers’ Cooperative and Allied Productions, Inc. As a journalist, he has published articles on politics, cultural affairs, visual arts, film, and media. Waters was a founding contributing writer for Color Life, the news journal for L.G.B.T. and Two-Spirit people of color, and for LGNY, New York City’s L.G.B.T. news bi-weekly. www.alliedproductions.org

JOHANNA WENT is a Los Angeles-based artist whose synthesis of avant-garde punk and performance art has made her an underground success. Known as the “Hyena of Performance Art,” Went is recognized for assembling found objects and homemade props/costumes that her characters animate on stage. She is renowned for her use of improvised vocals and soundscapes that draw from punk, electronic, and industrial music. Selected works by Went include Hyena (1982), Having Fun in the Dark (1983), Knifeboxing (1984), Interview with Monkey Woman (1986), Primate Prisoners (1987), Twin, Travel, Terror (1987), and Ablutions of a Nefarious Nature (2007). Soleilmoon Recordings released Johanna Went: Club Years (2007)—a DVD/CD compilation that includes video of Went’s performances in Los Angeles, live studio recordings with collaborator Mark Wheaton, and the full Hyena LP along with other musical works.