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Untitled (shaving performance 2010)

A.K. Burns

2014 00:16:21 United StatesEnglishColorStereo4:3DV video

Description

Untitled (shaving performance 2010) is a document of a privately held performance, in which Hubbard used a straight razor to remove the hair from the lower half of Burns’ body. The work looks at how desire, intimacy and fetish operate for queer woman through a re-staging of images found at the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco of a shaving fetish shot in a dungeon in the 1970’s. Can a gesture historically reserved for men—since it’s (full body hair removal) socially normalized for woman—be reactivated as a query of beauty standards and their relationship to libidinal engagements?

About A.K. Burns

A.K. Burns is an interdisciplinary artist and educator based in New York. Using video, installation, sculpture, drawing, and collaboration, Burns explores systems of value and the body as a contentious domain wherein socio-political issues are negotiated. A.K. Burns has exhibited internationally including recently at Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France; MMK Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt, Germany; FRONT International: The Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art in Cleveland, OH; The Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge, MA; and Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, in Portland OR. Burns is a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow, was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters 2021 Art Purchase Program, was a 2018 NYSCA/NYFA Fellow in Interdisciplinary Art, a 2016 Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University, and a 2015 Creative Capital Foundation Visual Arts Award recipient. A frequent collaborator, Burns was a co-founder of Working Artists in the Greater Economy, an advocacy organization focused on sustainable economic practices between artist and arts institutions.

A.K. Burns is currently a Distinguished Lecturer at Hunter College, Department of Art & Art History and serves as faculty in the Bard MFA Program. Burns is represented by Michel Rein Gallery, Paris/Brussels.