Jess dobkin

Jess dobkin is a performance artist that was born in Canada in 1970 and is still working and living in Toronto. She has created many controversial works such as
Lactation Station Breast Milk Bar,
For this she invited people to taste test Women's breast milk.





For other performances she uses her body such as in her performance,
The Two Boobs,
where she ties stings to her nipples and paints faces on her boobs and has a puppet show.
other works of hers include:
1. sound check
2. clown car
3. restored
4. an ontario bride
5. composite body
6. talk to me

Just to warn you there is humour nudity on her website (below) http://www.jessdobkin.com/


and this is her artist's statement that I thought would be interesting to read:

'I approach performance art as an inherently subversive practice. My performances challenge the status quo, transgress boundaries and envision alternate realities. The intimacy and immediacy of live performance lets me guide the audience on a journey through real space and time to examine things differently than they ever have.

My body is my primary tool in my practice, and my work explores its physical and psychic abilities, limitations, and attributes. Using personal narrative as my starting point, I pull from my own experiences of love, work, parenthood, politics and sex for material.
I focus attention on the life spans of my performances, understanding that they exist before and beyond the physical presentation of the work. Audiences’ anticipation, expectation, and memory become elements that I influence. In my “Lactation Station Breast Milk Bar” project, the performance began when I disseminated the press release a month prior to the live performance. This was when the public discussion began, as the work sparked a thoughtful and intense national dialogue.

I create photographic images to accompany my performances that are designed to intrigue, stir curiosity and initiate discussion. These photographs are disseminated through print and web media before the performances and then inform the live event. Most of these images have also been published and exhibited as stand-alone works.

My art is an instrument of freedom and transformation. I use my creative practice to process my own experience and understand the world around me. I use playful humour as a strategy to establish a sense of comfort and safety for an audience so that we can broach challenging subject matter, such as queer sexuality, sexual violence and mortality. I have always carried a sense of heightened urgency in the creation and production process, and in my most recent projects, this urgency has become a central theme in my work.' -Jess Dobkin