Karen Finley, the New York-based performance artist who will be at the University of Cincinnati Wednesday to present her latest piece, “The Jackie Look,” isn't satisfied with operating in a single field.
Her unique, wordy performances blithely overstep the lines between fine art, theater, literature and social anthropology. She's willing to try an idea or context on for size to see what a new activity might symbolize. Finley is a published author (among other things, A Different Kind of Intimacy), an exhibiting visual artist and in 1999 appeared in Playboy magazine.
Finley has been in Cincinnati this week for UC's Ropes Lecture Series, this year themed around “Early Modern and Post-Modern Performance.” She'll present a lecture entitled “Open Hand, Open Heart: Art and Trauma” at 7 p.m. March 9 in the Lindner Center on campus.
On March 10, she performs “The Jackie Look,” which is also currently being staged in New York. Its premise is that Finley, as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, presents a lecture to the Society of Photographic Education in Dallas, just blocks from the site where her husband was assassinated.
Read Matt Morris' interview with Finley and get event details here.
