Shawna Dempsey

Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan have collaborated on performance pieces, films, videos, publications and public art projects since 1989. Their provocative live work has toured extensively throughout North America, Europe, Australia and Japan, and their films and videos have been screened in venues ranging from women's centres in Sri Lanka to the Museum of Modern Art, NYC.

We create interdisciplinary work from a performance art background, and have made live works, films, videotapes, public art projects and pulications. we begin with a resonant image, construct that image, and then attempt to unravel its meanings. The resulting work is usually overtly feminist and often funny.

Dempsey and Millan's controversial music video, We're Talking Vulva,represented Canada at the 3rd Istanbul Biennial, and has screened to an estimated audience of a million people, world-wide. Their video, A Day
in The Life of A Bull-Dyke, and the companion mock-Life magazine, In The Life, have received numerous awards, including the Manitoba Arts Council Prize for Innovation and Excellence, and second place at the 1996 United States Super 8 Film and Video Festival. Dempsey and Millan's body of film and video work has been the subject of many retrospectives, and includes titles such as Good-Citizen: Betty Baker (Manitoba Motion Pictures Industry Association Award "Best Short Drama", 1999), What Does A Lesbian Look Like? (aired in rotation on Canada's music video station Much Music, 1994-5),Homogeneity (created in residence at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Centre and funded by the Andy Warhol Foundation), Object/Subject of Desire(created at
the Western Front and purchased by the Canada Council Art Bank) and the recent half-hour mock-u-mentary Lesbian National Parks and Services: A Force of Nature.

Dempsey and Millan have created performances that twist traditional mythology and iconography, explore notions of the lesbian body, and look at the devolution of modern-day language and democracy. These works include The Dress Series, costume-based work in which the traditional female costume is reconstructed out of unexpected materials. Site specific performances include Co-op Collective's Grocery Store, an installation and functioning food store, and numerous tours-of-duty as Lesbian Rangers as part of the ongoing Lesbian National Parks and Services.

Other artistic activity has included residencies and special projects, such as a bi-lingual performance (English/Japanese) which toured Japan, and residences at Headlands(California), Hallwalls (Buffalo, New York),
Banff Centre (Alberta, Canada), Brisbane Powerhouse (Australia), and Western Front (Vancouver). Dempsey and Millan have created several public art installations and have self-published Handbook of The Junior Lesbian Ranger. In 2002 Pedlar Press published a long-awaited manual to
bushcraft, the 270-page Lesbian National Parks and Services Field Guide to North America: Flora, Fauna and Survival Skills.

Performance artifacts, films and videos by Dempsey and Millan are held In collections including the Winnipeg Art Gallery, National Gallery of Canada,Regina Public Libraries, Planned Parenthood USA, American Indian
Reservation Centre, and many colleges and universities.