Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan have collaborated on performances, films, videos, publications and public art projects since 1989. Their provocative, humourous, feminist performance art pieces have toured extensively throughout North America, Europe, Australia and Japan, and their art video and film works have been screened in venues ranging from women’s centres in Sri Lanka to the Museum of Modern Art, NYC.
“Expose any group of first time viewers to this hilarious five-minute rock 'n rap tour of female genitalia (We're Talking Vulva)...and you'll have a gang of stompers and screamers shouting, ‘One more time!’” - Village Voice
“Smart, funny, and edgy - almost all at the same time.... The more they
work, the more apparent it becomes that Dempsey and Millan really are subversive.
Their occupancy of the forms of popular culture is one of the high-points
of contemporary Canadian artistic production.” -
Border Crossings
“Witty, acid-tongued...armed with gruesomely funny visuals and a sharp
ear for the lethal banalities and truisms of modern pop culture. The logic
is impeccable, provocative.” -
Edmonton Journal
“Sleek, satiric.” - The Globe
and Mail
“Shawna Dempsey is Queen of Great Bliss. Twat throat and cigarette dew,
that floor would ruin a sponge mop!” - John
Giorno
“Austere beauty...composition is flawless...so slick, it's unnerving!”
- Swerve Magazine
"June Cleaver on an acid trip.” - Winnipeg Free Press
“Dempsey and Millan’s point is simple and clear: lesbians will define
themselves as they see fit, media be damned.” -
X-Tra Magazine
“The artists use testimonial, a ‘giving voice’, to ground their
ironic and spectacular performance in lived realities...we're talking carnal,
excessive.” - Parachute
“Flipped-out costumes!”
- Berliner Zeitung (trans.)
“Dempsey and Millan refuse to be invisible or silent.... Theirs is, without
a doubt, a courageous act.” - Canadain
Theatre Review
“Strong aesthetics, where the quality of the text is reinforced by
a pliable treatment of the image.” - Publico,
Lisbon (trans.)
“Performance art
on the edge: in your face humour.” - CBC
Newshour
Finger in The Dyke Productions
