Episode 01.06 SLC Performance Lab With Donna Dennis

Donna Dennis Interviewed by Joanna Eisenberg (SLC20) and Sarah Sterling (SLC21)

Dennis is one of a small group of groundbreaking women—including Alice Aycock, Jackie Ferrara and Mary Miss—who pushed sculpture toward the domain of architecture in the early 1970s. Deborah Everett writes in Sculpture Magazine “When Donna Dennis created her earnest, plain-spoken Tourist Cabins at the outset of her career, they had the impact of cultural icons.” Drawing from overlooked fragments of rural and urban vernacular American architecture, her sculptures—tourist cabins, hotels, subway stations, roller coasters—have represented stopping places on the journey through life.

Dennis has received solo exhibitions at The Brooklyn Museum, the Neuberger Museum, the Sculpture Center, and Holly Solomon Gallery, among others. Her work has also appeared in group exhibitions including the Venice Biennale, the Whitney Biennal, the National Academy Museum, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Walker Art Center, MOMA P.S. 1, Tate Gallery, ICA London, and Ludwig Forum fur Internationale Kunst, among others. A frequent collaborator, Dennis has worked with poets Anne Waldman, Kenward Elmslie, Daniel Wolff and Ted Berrigan and with performance artist/puppeteer Dan Hurlin.

Edited and Produced by Kyrie Ellison (SLC21)