creative practice

Girls and Guns Performance and installation (2020): This performance uses the “girls and guns” stereotype and imagery from my family history to underscore a discussion about physical safety as a political concept, namely conflicting partisan ideologies and the paradoxical ways in which they intertwine. Location: “2/20/20” immersive group show at Notsuoh (Houston)  Video

Tea Toss for Political Favors Participatory performance and installation (2019): This participatory work explores the destruction of dialogue in public discourse. From the Boston Tea Party to the rise of the Tea Party, tea is a symbol for class, economy, and rebellion in both liberal and conservative-leaning politics. Using tea as its jumping off point, This work juxtaposes the ritual of afternoon tea with a decaying public sphere, subverting a civil act into a carnival game. Political constituents double as carnival game participants who use their skills to land a spectrum of political favors. Locations: stArt Up Festival at Icon Hotel (Houston) & “Election edition” at Houston Performance Art Night (Houston)

Women of a Certain Age Collaborative performance (2019): The work explores female sexuality and the ways in which sexual identity evolve as women age.  Drawing from personal conversations and experiences with both men and women, Julia Claire Wallace and Harris utilize bodywork, movement, and participation to articulate positions of marginalization, power, and creativity. They provocatively question notions of freedom and fidelity and how women are navigating a world that exploits and extinguishes moments of sexual expression and how that impacts their social standing and political possibilities. Locations: Itinerant Festival (New York City), PG PAF (Pittsburgh), Vanishing Festival (New Orleans)

It is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver Participatory performance (2018): Based on a famous, but unverifiable, quote from Machiavelli, “it is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver,” is a multi-disciplinary project that discusses, analyzes, and performs “fake news.” It is comprised of participatory actions, including “All the News You Need to Know in 30 Seconds” and “I Support Fake News,” a public reading of redacted news articles and a public intervention on Main Street in Downtown Houston where participants read redacted newspapers and word support buttons . Video Location: Performance Art Houston (Houston), Main Street Downtown (Houston)

Sometimes … Nuns of Iona Performance, sculpture, and installation (2017): This work conflates the stories of medieval and contemporary women and is framed in two ways, The work is framed in two ways. First, as an imaginary woman who is leaving her home and headed to the nunnery at the Island of Iona (Scotland) by boat in mid-winter. Second, as a woman who who has experienced so much of life because she has chosen not to marry or have children. Location: Primo Piano LivinGallery’s “Frammenti Senza Tempo” (Brindisi, IT)

Girls and guns Online show (2017): “Girls and Guns” is an Instagram-based work that was included in “The Political Seducer’s Diary” project. The collection of videos, images, and actions  investigate the cultural, political, and social implications of gun culture. The project tells the narrative of a woman who, threatened by an intruder, decides to apply for a gun license. The project also includes out takes of gun culture imagery. Location: Instagram

Vanishing Discotecas Photography, video, and installation (2016 – 2017): “Vanishing Discotecas,” is a video-photography-community project exploring gentrification. By its completion, the concept had been explored through various access points from conducting research and interviews, photography and video, organizing and facilitating community groups, and presenting information in formal and informal venues. Location: Solo show, Lawndale (Houston), Miami Photo Salon (Miami), and University of Cambridge (Cambridge, UK)

International Performance Week Performance (2016): Harris was selected to participate in a 10-day, performance art workshop residency in conjunction with International Performance Association and Venice International Performance Art Week. This included intensive work with VestandPage, a duo working in performance art, performance-based film, writing, publishing, and with collective performance operas and temporary artistic community projects. Location: Forte Maghera (Venice, IT)

Tap Dining Participatory performance (2016): When we are tapping our feet, strumming our fingers, or twirling our pens, we are wishing to be somewhere else. These movements – both reflexive and intentional – are ways in which our bodies manage the present tense by chipping away at a block of time that, though inevitable in its passing, seems to last forever. This work was performed through a score directing patterns of tapping, strumming, and twirling. Locations: Bow Arts (London), Vanishing Festival (Netherlands)

Aspiring Vacationista Performance (2014): This spoken word, image-driven, self-reflective, and self-deprecating performance piece was developed after being relentlessly lost in Amsterdam while on holiday. As a phenomenology of wandering, the work discusses urban planning, history, art, philosophy, and the ways to travel “stylelessly” all while experiencing a simultaneous feeling of anxiety of not knowing where the hell you are. Video Location: Elephant Gallery (Los Angeles)

Byron’s Strategy Installation and fabric (2010): This fabric sculpture is based upon rhyming text submitted by over 30 people which was then written and embroidered on a petticoat. The idea being whether your poetry is good or bad, if you rhyme well or rhyme enough, a woman will lift her skirt. It’s persistence. It’s the comfort of knowing that something continues to repeat itself. So although modern poetry sometimes spurns iambic pentameter and the couplet, there is something to be said of the quiet maneuvering of similar words that hypnotize and mesmerize. Location: Lawndale Art Center (Houston) & Union Gallery (Chicago)

Landscape Architect Video (2008): This video short is a meditation on pubic hair maintenance through the lens of landscape architecture. It points to the blurring between the body as private and public, as something to be both cultivated and controlled. It reminds us that, if performed well, body scaping requires the virtuosity of a landscape architect. Video Locations: Aurora Picture Show (Houston), Cal Arts MFA Graduate Exhibition (Los Angeles), Oxen Rose Gallery (San Francisco), Portland Community Media Non-Profit Cable Access Channel (Portland)