TANYA MARS (CA)
In Dulci Jubilo
2 & 3 May, from 7 pm
Tickets: SEK 40. Address: Bragegatan 15, Malmö, Sweden www.lilithperformancestudio.com, +46 (0)40-789 97
For the first time ever in Sweden: Lilith Performance Studio proudly presents the legendary performance artist Tanya Mars. Tanya Mars recently received the prestigious Canadian General Governor’s Award inVisual & Media Art, the first woman performance artist to do so. Since 1974, Tanya has been one of the most active artists in the Canadian performance scene where she has worked as as an artist, writer, editor and professor of performance influencing an entire generation of students. In her theatrical and visually bombastic performances Tanya uses humor to poke fun at patriarchy and to critique those art forms (performance) and ideologies (feminism) that she cares most about. In her work, Mars has been inspired as much by Dada and Surrealism as by cheerleading and burlesque vaudeville.
Before staging her spectacular performance piece and tableau vivant Tyranny of Bliss in 2004, which received a Chalmer’s Fellowship, Tanya Mars had primarily used cabaret and more traditional performance strategies. Tyranny of Bliss consisted of 14 live-tableaux, of 7 hours duration each, taking place at the same time at different locations around Toronto during one day. At Lilith Performance Studio Tanya Mars has once again been given the opportunity to work on a large scale. In Dulci Jubilo (“O Sweet Joy”. dulci in Latin and Italian also translates as: dessert, cookie) will be a long-durational work developing over the course of two days, and beginning several hours before the doors open to the public. This new work will be a sugar sweet and humorous jubilee revolving around the conflict between generosity and selfishness, where Tanya will transform the space at Lilith Performance Studio to create a surreal image with 150 cakes, a thousand white dessert plates, magic tricks and fire. A new video work shot in an elevator in Malmö and a sound piece based on the hymn played by a medieval clock in the Lund Cathedral – In Dulci Jubilo – and the Swedish alphabet, also play important parts in this new piece.
Throughout her career Tanya Mars has consistently investigated the boundaries and expectations surrounding women’s lives, using the absurd or humorous as her point of departure. In the 1980’s she did a performance trilogy on the theme of women-and-power, titled Pure, where she embodied Queen Elisabeth I (Pure Virtue, 1984), the curvy Hollywood sex symbol Mae West (Pure Sin, 1986) and Alice in Wonderland (Pure Nonsense, 1987). But in Mars’ versions, the Virgin Queen breathes fire, Mae West reveals that she in fact is the real Snow White, but she drifted; and when Alice in Wonderland lifts her crinolines it turns out that she is wearing strap-on-dildo with the text ”Why does a Venus not have a penis?”
Tanya Mars (b. 1948 in the US) lives and works in Canada. She is a Senior Lecturer and Program Supervisor of the Visual and Performing Arts/Studio Department of Humanities at the University of Toronto Scarborough. In 1973 Tanya Mars was one of the founding members of Powerhouse Gallery (La Centrale) in Montreal, which was one of the first feminist art collectives; from 1976 to 1989 she was the editor for the art magazine Parallellogramme; she has been the President of the performance artist-run centre FADO; she is a member of 7a*11d Festival of Performance Art collective in Toronto and has also taught and given workshops at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Together with the performance artist Johanna Householder she edited the book Caught in the Act: an Anthology of Performance Art by Canadian Women, 2005. In May of 2008 the first biography about her work will be published: From Ironic to Iconic ¬– The Performance Works of Tanya Mars, by Paul Couillard (published in the series ”Canadian Performance Art Legends”) and as well Mars has received a Canada Council grant for ‘International Artist in Residency’ in Paris in the fall of 2008.
Lilith Performance Studio is the first combined production space and arena for new performance in Europe. Swedish and international artists are invited to working periods of around one month to realize their dream project and present this new work to an audience. Since the start in January 2007 we have presented 30 artists from Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, The Netherlands, The Philippines and Indonesia, in 11 solo productions and one performance festival. On our websiste you will find documentation films from all our productions, video interviews with all artists and a complete backlist from the Teater Lilith productions 2001-2006: www.lilithperformancestudio.com.
Lilith Performance Studio is supported by: Stiftelsen framtidens kultur, Malmö Kulturnämnd, Statens Kulturråd, Folkuniversitetet, Sparbanksstiftelsen Skåne and Kulturkontakt Nord. The studio collaborates with: Malmö Art Academy, Beckers färgservice, AV-SYD and Svanströms Repro AB.
