Performance Art: the human body, intimacy and taboo is a Zoom-based online, studio course co-presented by Indigenous and queer artist Vanessa Dion Fletcher and queer artist Kate Barry. It explores body art, performance and practice. Through a series of lectures, workshops, performances and group discussions we explore representations of the body, intimacy, taboo and the menstrual cycle. Through a queer lens we breakdown outmoded ideas around sexuality and gender norms. This course combines real-time activities with online space to create links between both worlds investigating time, space, movement and gesture.

Upon registration, students will receive access to online class meetings.

Sliding scale available for BIPOC students (Black, Indigenous, People of Color). Contact Millie Kapp at [email protected] for more information.

Vanessa Dion Fletcher is a Lenape and Potawatomi neurodiverse artist. Her family is from Eelūnaapèewii Lahkèewiitt (displaced from Lenapehoking) and European settlers. She employs porcupine quills, Wampum belts, and menstrual cycles to reveal the complexities of what defines a body physically and culturally. Reflecting on an Indigenous feminist body with a neurodiverse mind Dion Fletcher creates art using composite media, primarily working in
performance, textiles and video. She graduated from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2016 with an MFA in performance, and York University in 2009 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. She has exhibited across Canada and the US, at Art Mur Montreal, Eastern Edge Gallery
Newfoundland, The Queer Arts Festival Vancouver, Satellite Art show Miami. Her work is in the Indigenous Art Centre, Joan Flasch Artist Book collection, Vtape, Seneca College, and the Archives of American Art. Vanessa is a 2020-2021 Jackman Humanities Institute fellow at the University of Toronto.

Kate Barry is an artist, educator and curator with a concentration in performance art. She is currently based on the unceded, traditional territories of the Coast Salish nations in Vancouver, Canada. Barry’s research investigates the performative capacities of the human body through live art, painting and video. She works through themes of subjectivity, queerness, and feminist ancestry focusing on the subject/object binary. Her works have been performed or exhibited in galleries and festivals throughout Canada and internationally, including the National Gallery of Canada, Vancouver Art Gallery, 7a*11d Festival of Performance Art (Toronto, Canada), Galerie SAW Gallery (Ottawa, Canada), LINK & PIN Performance Art Series (Montreal), World Pride (Toronto), Zero Gravity International Festival of Performance Art (Edmonton, Canada), Open Space Gallery (Victoria, Canada), VIVO Media Art Centre (Vancouver, Canada) and the Rider Project (NYC, USA). In addition, she has self-produced work at the Muse d’Orsay (Paris, France) and Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto).