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Women's Studies
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Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan

Dempsey and Millan


Biography
Experimental, visionary, passionate, and irreverent, Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan are two of Canada’s best known lesbian feminist performance artists. Artistic collaborators since 1989, this Winnipeg-based duo were catapulted into the national spotlight in their early 20s with the controversial, now world-renowned video piece, We’re Talking Vulva (1990). This high-octane rock ‘n rap educational introduction to the female genitalia and women’s sexual health represented Canada at the third annual Istanbul Biennial. Since then, this acclaimed duo has toured extensively throughout North America, Europe, Australia, and Japan, their film and video works being screened in venues as far-ranging as women's centres in Sri Lanka to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Full-time independent artists since 1992, Dempsey and Millan have successfully and brilliantly parodied pop culture forms in film, live performance, public art projects, and print. Their goal? To challenge the assumptions of heterosexist, mainstream, consumer culture. Whether the aim is to dismantle female stereotypes and the cultural construction of femininity, or to tackle lesbian invisibility, accepted notions of Western history, or issues of power, their productions are always educational and entertaining. Their captivating, polished, and technically precise performances are the result of an extensive background in stagecraft, combined with a well-honed sense of form, medium, and audience. Clearly, a great deal of love, labour, and dedication go into being acclaimed as “one of the high-points of contemporary Canadian artistic production.”

Dempsey and Millan's body of film and video work has been the subject of four retrospectives, and includes Good-Citizen: Betty Baker (Manitoba Motion Pictures Industry Award, “Best Short Drama,” 1999), What Does A Lesbian Look Like? (aired in rotation on Canada's music video station Much Music, 1994-5), Homogeneity (created in residence at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Centre, Buffalo, and funded by the Andy Warhol Foundation), and Object/Subject of Desire (created at the Western Front, Vancouver, and purchased by the Canada Council Art Bank).

One of the strategies these collaborators employ is to create work that successfully mimics mainstream forms, so that it can slip into different arenas, subverting and perverting accepted meanings. For example, the month of July 1997, was spent in Banff National Park, patrolling and assessing the environment as Lesbian Rangers with the self-created Lesbian National Parks and Services (an ongoing project).

More theatrical, live works by Dempsey and Millan include The Dress Series, costume-based work in which they reconstruct the traditional female costume out of unexpected materials. These include Arborite Housedress (featuring a dress made of plastic laminate, wood and kitchen hardware) and The Thin Skin of Normal (plastic wrap, 3" roofing nails). Dempsey and Millan have also created costume-inspired performances that subvert traditional mythology and iconography, such as Mary Medusa and Mermaid In Love. Always political, these biting, satirical pieces are performed by Dempsey, and toured by both collaborators to approximately 10 cities a year.

Other artistic activity has included numerous University residencies, including the University of California at Santa Cruz, Queen’s University, and Mount Allison University. Dempsey and Millan have also undertaken various special projects, such as a bilingual performance (English/Japanese) which toured Japan as part of the five-venue Distant Skinship project. As well as the award-winning Life spoof entitled A Day in The Life of a Bull-Dyke, Dempsey and Millan have self-published The Handbook of the Junior Lesbian Ranger, and have been featured in anthologies from Anansi, Women's Press, Faber and Faber, and the Playwright's Union of Canada. In the fall of 2002, Pedlar Press published their much-awaited 270-page book, Lesbian National Parks and Services Field Guide to North America: Flora, Fauna and Survival Skills. They are the recipients of numerous awards, including the Manitoba Arts Council Prize for Innovation and Excellence, and second place at the 1996 U.S. Super 8 Film and Video Festival.