Karen Finley in *COVID Vortex Anxiety Opera Kitty Kaleidoscope Disco* - photo by Max Ruby

Born in Chicago, Karen Finley received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Working in a variety of mediums such as installation, video, performance, public art, visual art, entertainment, television and film, memorials, music, and literature, she has presented her work worldwide in various venues such as The Bobino in Paris, The ICA in London and Lincoln Center in NYC.

Finley lectures and gives workshops at universities and museums internationally. Her work is in collections such as the Museum of Contemporary art and the Pompidou, and she is the recipient of many awards and grants including a Guggenheim Fellowship, NYSCA and NEA fellowships. In 2015 she was awarded the Richard J Massey Foundation Arts and Humanities award. She is an Arts Professor in Art and Public Policy at New York University.

Finley’s was one of the “NEA 4,” a group of artists who in 1990 sued the National Endowment for the Arts after the withdrawal of their fellowships, whose outcome and legacy were detailed in a recent New York Times article.

Her booth at Art Basel Miami Beach 2023, “Karen Finley: Redacted,” presented a selection of works that she produced in the 1980s and 90s, including a documentation of “We Keep Our Victims Ready” (1990), a provocative performance piece that outraged the Republican Senator Jesse Helms, who enacted the campaign to have her NEA grant withdrawn.

Interview by Logan Royce Beitmen

Hi Karen, it’s really great to be speaking together. 2023 was a pretty big year for you. In the spring, you debuted your one-woman off-Broadway show, COVID Vortex Anxiety Opera Kitty Kaleidoscope Disco to rave reviews, including in The New York Times, and just recently in December you had a stand-out booth at Art Basel Miami Beach, “Karen Finley: Redacted,” which earned you yet another NY Times feature.

Why do you think your work is resonating so much with people these days? Is the world finally ready for Karen Finley?

...but is Karen Finley ready for the world?! Hahaha...Lovely to speak to you today. Thank you for the opportunity.

I am so grateful that my work “is resonating so much” as you say - I am not quite sure myself what brought the recent attention. Hopefully, it is the subject matter my work addresses or the emotions my work evokes, whether humor, voicing the fucked up world we live in, vulnerability or resilience? Or hopefully the art strives to transform and reimagine with possibility?

Personally, I have changed my attitude and perspective, and I hope that translates and resonates in the work’s appeal with the audience. Recently, I feel as if I have been through an art miracle. A rejuvenation. A resurgence. What does resonate for me is being present, the joy, the connection, the transformational journey with creativity. Does that then translate to the audience? I seek to provide an art catharsis that struggles for revelation. The pandemic brought about reflection, observation, embodiment, and perspective. Additionally, with my work there is absurdity, yet grief and loss. I do have the imp in me, or being a rascal and that always helps. Maybe that resonates - this irreverent change in my attitude.

I have been working at the Beechman Theater, where my performance COVID Vortex Anxiety Opera Kitty Kaleidoscope Disco was staged, since 2010, and I’ve been working with the producers, Spincycle, for over 30 years! For the exhibit at Miami Basel, I have known and worked with Nick Lawrence, owner and director of Freight+Volume, for 25 years. I could not have “resonated” alone. It is all the collaborative years of experience that create an overnight resonation.

*COVID Vortex Anxiety Opera Kitty Kaleidoscope Disco* - photos by Max Ruby

Full disclosure, I assisted Freight+Volume with the booth proposal for Art Basel Miami. You had initially suggested a group presentation that would have included work by other artists who, like you, had been censored—which would have been amazing, but which couldn’t be done for technical reasons.

So, I suggested a solo booth centered around a restaging of your interactive installation and figure drawing performance, Go Figure, which the Whitney Museum notoriously canceled twenty-five years ago. Can you give a little background on that piece, Go Figure, what it symbolized for you, and why you were particularly excited about restaging it in Florida this year?

I appreciate the conversation, your research, and the eventual exhibit. There were different possibilities discussed during the research phase in the planning for the proposal and eventual exhibit. When I was approached on considering a show on censorship, I thought of my colleagues, the NEA 4 - and/or to include work that had been or recently censored by others, and to think about a way to connect recent censorship issues, artists, writers, transphobia, drag queen criminalization, abortion access - and in particular the Miami Art Fair being in Florida.

How could these issues be responded to? Including the oppressive legislation central to DeSantis as Governor of Florida. The Survey entry we applied for had certain restrictions and logistics for a fair. It is an important conversation to consider: how do the Arts respond to the oppressive legislation and censorship that is in Florida and elsewhere? So although the exhibit doesn’t speak to these issues in a linear documentary way, the exhibit refers through my work from the eighties and nineties done during the culture wars as a way to remind us of the current era.

Let me now explain the history. And I am sorry this is not brief. Go Figure was an exhibit that was part of a larger multi-artist exhibit, Uncommon Sense at LA MOCA in 1997. All of the artists worked in social practice, (the term wasn't even used then), or intentionally strategized to change society with art as intervention. Some of the artists included were Rick Lowe, Mel Chin, and Mierle Laderman Ukeles. The exhibit was curated by Julie Lazar and Tom Finkelpearl.

In 1997 I was in the middle of the Supreme Court case with John Fleck, Holly Hughes, and Tim Miller (NEA 4) about public funding and the arts. And so, I was inspired by issues such as freedom of expression surrounding the case for which I included in my part of the exhibit. The centerpiece of my show was Go Figure - an open life drawing studio onsite at the museum with live nude models. The public could attend the open studio and draw the models. They could put their art up on the walls of the studio. Art supplies and easels were available. In that way the public could “exhibit” and be included in the show. That was my strategy to institutionally critique the process of whose art is included and who has access. But Go Figure was also about the skills, research, and training it takes in observation and representation to make art. Life drawing is something I have done since I was 12 years old. And there is nothing indecent about it. Go Figure was included in the Miami Basel exhibit but at a much smaller scale.

The second part was an installation of my Winnie the Pooh drawings. These are drawings that are parodies of the classic illustrations and texts. I parody this beloved story’s narrative and the images. In my Winnie the Pooh version, I offer a new interpretation with different lifestyles, wellness, sexual fluidity, while offering subtext onto the known and cherished childhood tale. Drawings were part of the Miami Basel exhibit.

The third installation was called “Secret Museum.” A darkened room had two classic human statuary reproductions. One was female and the other male. Videos of metaphoric vulvic and phallic symbols were projected on the groin areas on the statues. The viewers are seeing the "projections" but also seeing the interpretations. The work was inspired by an exhibit of censored nude statues. Censorship has been occurring more recently in art, books, and the body. In the “Secret Museum” was a companion participatory installation using technology and projection, “What Offends You?” A computer terminal was set up next to an indoor fountain with benches. Projected from above onto the fountain’s pool of water was a live feed projection from the terminal that read: What do you find offensive? People could type in their answer and see it appear on the fountain. This was very early in the development of the World Wide Web and artists’ use of it to create projects. The artwork was a website so people could access and see the piece on the web. This technical development was created by Emily Hartzell and Nina Sobell with Parkbench. The answers were archived and could be retrieved. This was not reenacted for the Miami Basel exhibit. This section was an early internet participatory work.

After the exhibit in LA in 1997 - there was interest from the Whitney to do a version of the show, which was to be the drawing studio, a salon-style of figures/nudes made up of my work, from their collection art from the open drawing studio. There was to be a performance, “Nude Descending the Staircase.” The show was canceled two weeks after we lost the Supreme Court Case, NEA vs. Finley, in August - the show was to open in December of 1998.

“Redacted” is a slimmed down version in terms of scale and scope. As part of the Survey section of the fair, it had certain restrictions. A selection of my books and records, a salon-style of my drawings and paintings that include the figure, the life drawing studio, the Winnie the Pooh drawings, paintings on slate and a compilation of videos. To go through and revisit the artwork and the coordinated times during the lawsuit was an opportunity to reflect and reexamine that I am still processing.

Art Basel Miami Beach, “Karen Finley: Redacted” - photos courtesy Freight+Volume

Karen instructing models as part of *Go Figure* at Art Basel Miami Beach, “Karen Finley: Redacted” - photo courtesy Freight+Volume

Did you enjoy Miami?

I enjoyed the process and opportunity. The emotions and feelings were full. I didn't go to the beach or parties. I was focusing on the show. So I didn't get to see much of the city.

How do you think today’s culture wars differ from those in the 80s and 90s?

In many ways there are many similarities, and I don't see much difference. And in some situations, it is worse - abortion is now criminalized and illegal in many states. The ACLU is still very busy.

Much of your visual art has a text component, and many of your performance pieces include a spoken word component. I’m hoping we can talk a little about your approach to language. It seems you often include some wordplay or a bit of disarming humor, but you are able to deftly transition into states of raw emotion. How do you manage those tonal shifts and transitions?

Language has power. Who gets to speak and who is listened to. Utilizing language as an artist I can rearrange, offer perspective, and give new meaning. I employ poetics, parody, and humor. Every day is both a struggle and a celebration with speaking out, connecting, and communicating - of being understood, of being believed, of being heard.

Part of it is instinctual - but another part is very intentional. Writing is a different act than including speaking or reading in an artwork. It is a balance between being in the moment, navigating, connecting, a simultaneous internal/external mash up.

You were part of a milieu that included other great punk poets and performers such as Kathy Acker and Lydia Lunch. How did you all influence each other?

Going to school at the San Francisco Art Institute in North Beach as a student and later living in the East Village as an emerging artist put me in contact with a wonderful community of artists and cultural infidels. Kathy Acker was my teacher at the San Francisco Art Institute. So that is a special relationship - I was her student and I looked up to her. She was very encouraging and attended my early performances and read my writing. So I reserve that special, intimate, sacred bond that one has with a teacher who supports you and understands your vision and purpose. The fact that Kathy could guide and communicate her appreciation of my work meant everything. This relationship probably has a lot to do with me being a teacher and my commitment to education.

Lydia Lunch and I were friends and we performed on occasion together. We attended each other's shows. We supported each others work and vision. I have so much fondness for her. She is one of the most inspiring, creative, positive, generous beings with such a big heart - Lydia is such an amazing everything, from poet, musician, artist, filmmaker provocateur to social critic. She is a national treasure. I love her sense of humor, fashion, courage, and innovation. I am very lucky to have spent time with her. She is a brilliant influence with her savvy, finger-on-the-pulse and innovating career.

I keep thinking about trauma, and I’m wondering if some of the differences in how people respond to your work may stem from differences in how people process trauma. Some folks who have been through traumatic experiences find your work incredibly cathartic and healing, while others, whose traumas are more repressed perhaps, may not be ready to have those scabs picked open, so to speak. What role does trauma play in your art, and do you want your art to be therapeutic?

Trauma is a large umbrella of a word. It brings up so much. But that is trauma for you...

But seriously, I appreciate you asking. Hopefully everyone does respond differently by seeing my work because of their own experiences. Like a Rorschach test. I probably think more about the content and the artwork rather than analyzing the sociological and psychological impact my work instills. And that can change with time. Issues of catharsis, healing, recovery, empathy, voicing are all important aspects of my intention. I hope that art can be a place for compassion, rage, gentleness, vision, or portal. I consider myself, as an artist, like a historical recorder who represents beings, nature, traumatic events, or experiences. My creative process as a platform. That has been an obligation of artists since the beginning of time.

I create art intentionally as a response to resistance and trauma. And some of the subject matter is about events - such as 9/11, response to injustice, AIDS, war, misogyny, COVID. Or it can be selective personal experience or feelings to transform into art.

It is therapeutic but it is not based on a therapy model. It is a way of voicing to the public, creating an art archive, and bringing awareness of the content. My work is not just from my life experience as an artist. I am not a memoirist in the traditional sense. I intentionally create artworks, rituals, and ceremonies as ways to process, dignify and publicly recognize intensity, grief, trauma, or injustice. Some of this is personal, some of it is collective. Making art is still a mystery.

The artist doesn't just tell the story but can reimagine, reenact, and include the missing part left unsaid. It can include joy, heart, and celebration to subvert the perspective and illuminate. Presenting the (trauma) art publicly provides a platform or oasis to ground the audience in fellowship. And that in itself can be healing and beneficial.

Following the #MeToo, BLM, and Trans Rights movements, the backlash against all three has been quite severe, as you know. You’ve made art about that backlash. In the face of so many political disappointments and setbacks, what, if anything, gives you hope for the future?

I cannot speak about other's experiences of backlash, but it is enormous. In any of my own experience I try to focus on the work and my close group of friends and just keep making the work somehow. To speak about that more deeply is different for each person. Whether censorship, campaigns, erasure. There can be coordinated campaigns of backlash and discreditation. That is horrific. We see examples every day.

And yes, so many setbacks and political disappointments. With experience, the years of looking back - it is the arts, the presence of art that can manifest change and resistance. And it takes courage. Creativity takes courage to sustain, maintain and thrive. Courage is a resource, a drive and fuel to embolden spirit and purpose. I see that courage evident daily in my students and in emerging artists. It is a critical time to creatively respond to the world around us.

Finally, what advice would you give to a young artist, someone like yourself, just starting out in their career?

First, it is important to have faith in your art, to believe it your creativity, and to understand your calling. Second, you need to have a passion for what you are doing. Passion is something you cannot buy; it is a love for the creative process. It is being part of transforming the everyday into a new dawn or sunset. Third - is about centering and finding the solitude to examine and think. This is different than aloneness, or loneliness. It is to have an interior life to create from and to take care of the soul. It is about observation. So make time to observe. And finally the mystery. Art is a mystery. There are miracles of creativity all around us. Allow the miracle of art to arrive and thrive to survive.

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Logan Royce Beitmen is a writer and curator who lives in Brooklyn, NY.