REACH ME: CASSILS@HOTMAIL.COM

I am an artist, stunt person and a body builder who uses an exaggerated physique to intervene in various contexts in order to interrogate systems of power, control and gender. Often employing many of the same strategies used by FLUXUS and guerrilla theater, my method is multidisciplinary and crosses a spectrum of performance, film, drawing, video, photography and event planning. I  am a founding member of the Los Angeles based performance group the Toxic Titties.

My work responds to the industrial production of images. To inhabit Los Angeles is to live on a film set – indeed, to inhabit any city whose culture is defined by mass culture of consumption is to find oneself defined by the images one consumes.

I have exhibited at the White Chapel and Thomas Danes gallery in London, Manifesta, Schnitt Ausstellungsraum, Edith Ruß Site for Media Art in Germany, LGBT film festival in Paris, France, at the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwigin Vienna, Austria, at MUCA Roma and International Festival,Ex-Teresa Arte Actual in Mexico City, at Art in General in NYC, most recently at the Yurba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco and at LACE and at the USC Center for Feminist Research in Los Angeles as well as at Art Basel Miami Beach in Florida.

Review from Hard Times in NYC

Further notes on Heather Cassils in the THEATER OF OPERATION program at CPR on 6/4…

The other artists in the evening’s program all grappled with control over digital systems—be it Madonna on youtube or wearable video monitors. Cassils’ performance was the last of five in the evening, and a piece of rickety scaffolding was wheeled out as the only preparation (a marked change from the technical equipment employed by the other artists). For about ten minutes, Cassils flexed? (I’m not completely sure of the right verb), slowly changing positions. Cassils is a body-builder, so watching her in a bikini felt, for me, uncomfortably voyeuristic in a refreshing way.

Although the territory of how bodies interact with technology is certainly rich and worthy of exploration, there is something incredibly refreshing about “just” a body. By employing her body as an artistic instrument, Cassils is not just gesturing at systems of control, but constructing them. (Or maybe referencing them, since bodybuilding has a distinct history, culture, and set of practices.)

In the HARDCORPS mission statement, the curators say that performance can “extricate the power of rigorous disciplines and vigorous ideas.” I agree that this is performance’s most profound potential—and yet I find that this field is constantly defending its rigor as much as celebrating it. Thank you, Cassils, for reminding me that the best performance doesn’t show, it does.

–Lydia, Spring Festival 2010 Blogger

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