Karen Finley

Karen Finley (born 1956) is an American performance artist, musician, poet, and educator.

In 1977, Finley performed in underground art galleries and music clubs such as Mabuhay Gardens and Club Foot, which hosted poetry readings, punk concerts, and alternative performance art acts.

Finley's performance Deathcakes and Autism included a dancer, called "Laurie", from the Condor Club.

The work's narrative juxtaposes the shattering psychological impact of Finley's father's recent suicide with a study of the female nude.

Having received an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, Finley procured her first NEA grant and moved to New York City.

She quickly became part of the city's art scene, collaborating with artists such as The Kipper Kids (Brian Routh — whom she married/divorced — and Martin von Haselberg) and David Wojnarowicz.

Finley's early recordings featured her ranting provocative monologues over disco beats (and she would often perform her songs late night at Danceteria, where she worked).

These recordings include the singles "Tales of Taboo" from 1986 and "Lick It" from 1988 (both produced by Madonna collaborator Mark Kamins) plus the 1988 album The Truth Is Hard to Swallow.

She collaborated with Sinéad O'Connor on a remix of O'Connor's song "Jump in the River", and was prominently sampled by S'Express on the classic dance floor cut-up, "Theme from S-Express" (her vocal - sampled from "Tales of Taboo" - exclaimed, "Drop that ghettoblaster!").

She was notably one of the NEA Four, four performance artists whose grants from the National Endowment for the Arts were vetoed in 1990 by John Frohnmayer after the process was condemned by Senator Jesse Helms under "decency" issues.

In 1991, she created the Memento Mori installation in Newcastle upon Tyne, as part of the Burning the Flag? festival examining American live art and censorship.

Finley also played Tom Hanks' character's doctor in the movie Philadelphia at the invitation of director Jonathan Demme.

In 1994, her album The Truth Is Hard to Swallow was re-released on CD, with a slightly different track listing, as Fear of Living.

In conjunction with the re-release, both "Tales of Taboo" and "Lick It" appeared on 12-inch again with new remixes by Super DJ Dmitry, Junior Vasquez, and other DJs of note.

Samples of vocal from "Tales of Taboo" were used by French DJs in a dance song "Suck My Pussy", which was a minor hit in France.

Finley released a double-disc set on the Rykodisc label, A Certain Level of Denial, a studio version of the performance piece.

Following that piece came The Return of the Chocolate-smeared Woman, her performance rebuttal to Helms and the NEA controversy.

The U.S. Congress imposed restrictions on grants for indecent art.

NEA head John Frohnmayer, took the side of the targeted artists, which included Finley.

The case, National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley (1998), argued in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, was decided against Finley and the other artists.

Her performance art, recordings, and books are used as forms of activism.

Her work frequently uses nudity and profanity.

Finley incorporates depictions of sexuality, abuse, and disenfranchisement in her work.

She is a professor at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.

Karen Finley has written various books that focus on controversial topics.

She wrote Shock Treatment, Enough Is Enough: Weekly Meditations for Living Dysfunctionally, the Martha Stewart satire Living It Up: Humorous Adventures in Hyperdomesticity, Pooh Unplugged (detailing the eating and psychological disorders of Winnie the Pooh and his friends), and A Different Kind of Intimacy - a latter collection of her works.

Her poem "The Black Sheep" is among her best-known works; it was displayed as public art in New York City for one month.

Finley's poetry is included in The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry.

Finley was born in Chicago and raised in Evanston, Illinois.

She is a relative of the American humorist and writer Finley Peter Dunne.

Her father was of Irish and Scottish descent and she claims her mother was "part gypsy" and "also part American Indian and Jewish".

She has said that her mother was "taken as brown" during her life and experienced racism.

While Karen Finley was a student at the San Francisco Art Institute, she became immersed in the Bay Area's punk music scene, witnessing the emergence of the bands The Dils and the Dead Kennedys.

The case, National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley (1998), argued in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, was decided against Finley and the other artists.

Finley has expressed delight at the fact that she appeared in Playboy (in July 1999) and received a Ms. magazine Woman of the Year award within months of each other.

She was also featured in Time during this period, though she felt that the magazine misrepresented her by "eroticizing" works (such as one that addressed rape) based on her nudity alone; in other words, that they could not absorb any information beyond her naked body.

After the attacks of 9/11, Finley found it difficult to appear as herself on stage.

It was almost as if "Karen Finley" got in the way of the material, and Finley had already found herself at the center of a firestorm that made her persona a controversial national reference to nudity in art, in a public conversation that extended from The Oprah Winfrey Show to David Mamet to Seinfeld to Rush Limbaugh to David Letterman to Dennis Miller (she was famously edited out of a Miller show at mid-show) to Sean Hannity to Bill Maher to Rent, the Broadway musical, where the character of Maureen is often described as an homage to Finley.

In her performances, Finley's voice now became the voice of other women that she embodied; Liza Minnelli, Terry Schaivo, Laura Bush, Silda Spitzer, and Jackie Kennedy Onassis.

Finley also wrote a play, George and Martha, depicting an affair between Martha Stewart and George W. Bush; the play has its roots in other versions of George and Martha, notably that of Edward Albee.