New York – Intersections of Erotic Performance Art and Pornography

Press Release from Femina Potens, USA

Panel: Intersections of Erotic Performance Art and Pornography
May 4, 2012 @ 9pm
950 Hart Gallery
950 Hart St.
Brooklyn, NY, USA

BROOKYLN, NEW YORK – MAY 4, 2012 – Femina Potens Art Gallery is on the road! Join our panel of feminists, queer artists, activists, counter-culture renegades and performance artists for a night of interactive performance art, film screenings, and artist panel discussion on the Intersections of Erotic Performance Art & Pornography.

Where does conceptual performance work end and where does our libido begin? Is queer feminist pornography inherently progressive? How do queer performance artists who are also in radical pornography decipher the difference between what is art and what is porn? These are just some of the questions we will examine through film, art, and performance.

Performers include Narcissister, Ellen Stagg, Barbarra Carrellas, Beatrice Schleyer, Jincey Lumpkin, Madison Young and Najva Sol, with films by Madison Young, ‘Too Much Pussy‘ by Emilie Jouvet and ‘Tooth and Nail‘ by Rozen Debowe and Dylan Ryan as well as a photo documentary of Maxine Holloway.

VIP Ticket Holders are invited to an Artist Meet & Greet at 8pm. [Tickets available at Brownpapertickets.com]

Performers Bio
Najva Sol is a Iranian-American writer, photographer, multimedia artist, and performer.
(…) Her semi-nude photo/illustration portraits of the gender-nonconforming (a collaboration with Molly Crabapple) will be on view at the Lomography Gallery on 8th st. starting May 25th.(…) Her web presence hub is Najvasol.Wordpress.com

Madison Young is an international award-winning feminist porn star, director, gallerist, artist, and new mom. She has been directing and performing in erotic films for nearly a decade and has won great acclaim for her video line, Madison Young Productions, and her network of erotic web sites, the Feminist Porn Network. (…) Her professional trajectory spans past performing in over a hundred adult films and directing 26 films for her own production company to include her contributions to the art world. Under the name Madison Young, she has handled the artistic curation of over a hundred art exhibitions over the past decade, not only for Femina Potens Art Gallery but also for The National Queer Arts Festival, SOMARTS, The SF LGBT Center, and the Traveling Erotic Art Show.

Narcissister is a Brooklyn-based artist and performer. Her formative dance training took place at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center. (…) Narcissister works in many other creative media including contemporary quilting, collage, sculpture, printmaking and photography. She has participated in studio residencies including The Whitney Museum Independent Study Program and the Art in General Eastern European Residency Program. In addition, her work has been included in group shows and media publications. Narcissister has also worked extensively as a commercial artist, designing window displays and working as a stylist and art director. The Narcissister performance project integrates her prior experience as a professional dancer with her current visual and commercial art practices. (…)

Ellen Stagg has been a photographer since she was 16 years old. She moved to New York City in 1996 from Connecticut to attend the School of Visual Arts where she received a BFA in Photography. She signed with her first photography agent at the end of her junior year of college. In her ten year career as a professional photographer she has worked in advertising, fashion, and portraiture, shooting for various magazine, look books, stock photography, and celebrities.

Barbara Carrellas is an author, sex/life coach, sex educator, university lecturer, workshop facilitator, motivational speaker and theater artist. In addition to her new book for Hay House, Ecstasy is Necessary, she has also written Urban Tantra: Sacred Sex for the Twenty-First Century and Luxurious Loving. She is the founder of Urban Tantra®, an approach to sacred sexuality that adapts and blends a wide variety of conscious sexuality practices, and the co-founder of Erotic Awakening, a groundbreaking series of workshops focusing on the physical, spiritual and healing powers of sex. Barbara’s pioneering Urban Tantra® workshops were named best in New York City by TimeOut/New York magazine.

Beatrice Schleyer is a photographer, dancer and performance artist currently based in Brooklyn. She first learned basic camera operation and darkroom procedure at age 12 at an arts camp. She received a BFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts in 2006 an enhanced her technical knowledge over the next 3 years working as an assitant in the fashion industry. Beatrice continues to use film as the primary vehicle for her work.

Jincey Lumpkin, Esq. is the founder and Chief Sexy Officer of Juicy Pink Box. Before producing luxury lesbian pornography, Jincey practiced law in Florida and New York. She is a lesbian, a married lady and a lover of breasts. With videos produced by Juicy Pink Box, Jincey achieves her dream of bringing the glamour of classic cinema to lesbian pornography. The media has dubbed her the “Lesbian Hugh Hefner”. (…)

Emilie Jouvet is a photographer and filmmaker whose personal, artistic, and political work shows her friends and lovers in their intimacy, far away from the clichés of the standard gay representations. Her models – strong femmes, sweet butches, wild dykes, feminists and queers from the underground Parisian and European art scene – travel between genders in Jouvet’s work (…). Her provocative art-videos are shown in international exhibitions, queer festivals, and on television. Jouvet was a member of the art organization “QueerFactory” before founding her own queer and feminist art organizations: “Les Très Très Méchantes Filles” with D.Juncutt, and “Fem Menace” with Wendy Delorme, Louise De Ville and Judy Minx. Her new film, “TOO Much Pussy! FEMINIST SLUTS, A Queer X Show” is a sex-positive road movie and documentary (…).

Dylan Ryan, a self-proclaimed Porn Superhero and gender-bending superstar, is “making the world a better place, one porn at a time”. Ryan has worked with a multitude of pornographers, from mainstream mega-company Hustler to BDSM aficionados Kink.com to San Francisco queer porn favorites Crash Pad Series, NoFauxxx, and Queer Porn TV.

A fierce femme who knows what she wants, Rozen DeBowe is a force blazing on the porn radar. Her versatile screen presence allows her to deliver dynamic performances with all of her co-stars. She began her career with Pink and White Productions and has since worked with Kink.com, Nofauxxx, Girlfriends Films, and Juicy Pink Box. When not creating art with her body, Rozen is a music writer and a video editor/director.

Maxine Holloway is a porn performer, artist, sex-educator, webmistress and filmmaker. She creates and collaborates with the Bay Area’s hottest and the queerest. Her co-directorial debut film with Lexxx Sloan, ‘The Outlaw’, was featured and awarded in the 2010 Good Vibrations Erotic Film Festival. Certified in Sex-ED and HIV/STI Prevention, her educational workshops focus on sexual-health and sexual exploration. She recently started a live sex show performance troop with colleague Ava Solanas called ‘Cum & Glitter’. (…)

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950 Hart Gallery began in October 2010 as an experiment in developing a community art experience. The community from which it operates is the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bushwick. Since its conception it has featured over 40 artists located in and around the Bushwick area.

Femina Potens is a nationally recognized art gallery and performance space dedicated to the advancement of women and transgendered artists since 2000. It is a leading queer organization in San Francisco, USA