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Heather Cassils

Heather CassilsArtist’s Statement

I am an artist and a body builder.

I use my exaggerated physique to intervene in various contexts in order to interrogate systems of power and control. Often employing many of the same strategies used by FLUXUS and guerrilla theater, my method is multidisciplinary and crosses a spectrum of performance, film, drawing, video, photography and media intervention. My art responds to the industrial production of images with the aim to dislocate a gender oriented axis of perception.

To inhabit Los Angeles is to live on a film set – indeed, to inhabit any city whose culture is defined by a mass culture of consumption is to find oneself defined by the images one consumes.

In my performances all aspects of production are present: lighting, special effects, stunts, choreography, sound, and a highly trained and manicured body. I am also a founding member of the Los Angeles-based performance group the Toxic Titties.

“The spectacle is not a collection of images but a social relation among people, mediated by images.” – Guy Debord

Website: heathercassils.com

Biography

Select Solo Exhibitions from 2008-2012

2011
Kapelica Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Select Group Exhibitions from 2008-2012

2012
Have We Met Before? Ronald Feldman Fine Art, New York

2011
Los Angeles Goes Live: Exploring a Social History of Performance Art in Southern California (LAGA), Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Los Angeles

2010
THEATER OF OPERATIONS, Center for Performance Research, New York

2009
You Belong to Me, University of Riverside and the Sweeny Art Gallery,Riverside, Calif.

2008
The Way That We Rhyme: Women, Art & Politics, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA), San Francisco

Select Community Based Art Works

2011
CUTS: A Traditional Sculpture, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Los Angeles

2010
Hard Times, Franklin Furnace and Movement Research Festival, New York

2008
Auto Immune Response (AIR), financial aid from Ron Athey and Julie Tolention’s Praxis Mohave Desert Bootcamp

Fellowships and Awards

2011
Travel Grant, Intra Arts, Canada Council of the Arts

2010
Artist Research Grant, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions

2009
Franklin Furnace Performance Art Fund

2008
Creative Production Grant, Intra Arts, Canada Council for the Arts

EDUCATION

M.F.A., 2002
Fine Art and Integrated Media, California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles

B.F.A., 1997
Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax, Nova Scotia

1996, Ecole Nationale Superieur Des Beaux-Arts