Jess Dobkin

Jess Dobkin (born 1970) is a performance artist based in Toronto, Canada.

Dobkin first emerged as a performance artist in 2002.

Her work draws on her experience as a lesbian and a mother.

Her body often figures prominently in her performances.

Dobkin was a frequent performer at Montreal's Edgy Women feminist performance festival between the years 2004 and 2010.

Dobkin's work was inspired by Martha Wilson’s 2005 video titled A History of Performance Art According to Me.

The piece examined the history of performance art by defining its terms and conditions and acknowledging the history and inherent qualities of performance.

It had multiple co-presenters, including the University of Toronto, York University, OCAD University, FADO Performance Art Centre, and the Toronto-Dominion Bank.

Dobkin is Jewish a lesbian, and a mother.

She is best known for her 2006 work The Lactation Station.

She has a B.A. in Women’s Studies from Oberlin College, and an M.F.A. in Performance Art from Rutgers University.

She is a Fellow at the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto.

For example, Fee for Service (2006), was a performance installation where audience members were invited to sharpen a pencil in Dobkin's vagina.

Dobkin is also known as a community organizer and often combines this with her creative work.

In 2006, Dobkin exhibited The Lactation Station in Toronto at the Ontario College of Art and Design's Professional Gallery, curated by Paul Couillard of FADO.

In this exhibition, Dobkin invited audience members to sample human breast milk.

The exhibition, which was partly funded by the Canada Council for the Arts, gained widespread attention and prompted Health Canada to issue a national warning against the online sale of human breast milk.

In 2009, Dobkin performed "Being Green," a video work in which she sings "Being Green" while dressed as Kermit the Frog and being fisted by another actor dressed as Jim Henson.

It was remounted in 2012 as part of Montreal's OFFTA Festival in co-presentation with Studio 303 at Usine C.

In May 2015, after a successful crowdfunding campaign, she collaborated with many Toronto artists to create an alternative newsstand in a vacant kiosk at the Chester Subway Station in Toronto for one year.

Meant as a "creative exchange" for commuters, the kiosk acted as a space for artists' exhibition and performance, while it still functioned as a newsstand selling newspapers, magazines, and snacks for a "monetary exchange."

Dobkin has collaborated with other performance artists, including Martha Wilson, founder of the Franklin Furnace Archive.

In 2015, Dobkin created How Many Performance Artists Does it Take to Change a Lightbulb (For Martha Wilson) and performed it at Enoch Turner Schoolhouse in Toronto as part of Images Festival.

The work was a response and an ode to one of America’s foremost groundbreaking performance artists, Martha Wilson, offering reflections and humorous observations on the way we see.