UMBC’s Department of Visual Arts presents Venus in Retrograde by celebrated performance artist Karen Finley. The performance examines loss of love, dignity, and humanity, and issues a call to beat back with an exquisite heart. Against a backdrop of film projections, Finley narrates a poetic call to action in resistance to today’s times. The performance is in two parts. In Part One, Grabbing Pussy, Finley considers embodiment and the invasion of the self, featuring selections from her provocative recent book of the same name. In Part Two, Parts Known — the political is personal, the personal is political — she examines the price and pain of personal tragedy amidst a political landscape of psychic dimensions.

Karen Finley is a performer, artist, writer, musician, poet, teacher and lecturer, and recipient of two Obies, two Bessies, a Guggenheim, and multiple grants from the NEA and NYSCA. In 1990, Finley became an unwilling symbol for the NEA when she, along with Tim Miller, Holly Hughes, and John Fleck, sued the NEA for withdrawing grants on the grounds of indecency. The controversial case went all the way to the Supreme Court. She has toured and exhibited internationally, published eight books, and her art is in the collection of the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, among other places. Finley is a professor in the department of Art and Public Policy at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University.

The performance will be immediately followed by a Q&A discussion with the artist; then a book signing and reception.

TICKETS: General Admission / Seniors: $10; free ticket reservation online with UMBC ID (current students, faculty, staff.)

Additional events during Karen Finley’s week in residence at UMBC, free and open to the public:

EXHIBITION

Baltimore Psychic Portraits - Finley’s portraits of of historically influential Baltimoreans Wednesday, September 4 through Friday, September 6 Hallway Gallery, 1st Floor of Fine Arts Building

Enter Enchantment: Collaboration, Participation, Activation - UMBC students present results from workshop experiments with Finley Friday, September 6, 2019, 12:30 p.m. Joseph Beuys Sculpture Park