Performance - Shawna Dempsey & Lorri Millan

Shawna Dempsey & Lorri Millan Biography

Photo: Ruth Bonneville

Collaborators since 1989, Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan are among Canada’s best-known performance artists. They were catapulted into the international spotlight in their 20s with the performance and film We’re Talking Vulva. Since then, their live work and videos have been exhibited in diverse venues as far-ranging as women's centres in Sri Lanka, the Istanbul Biennial, Sydney Gay/Lesbian Mardi Gras and the Museum of Modern Art, New York City. This duo has also created installations (such as Archaeology and You for the Royal Ontario Museum), books (such as Bedtime Stories for the Edge of the World, Arbeiter Ring Press) and socially engaged public art projects (such as Winnipeg Tarot Co. for the Winnipeg Art’s Council.) Dempsey and Millan have contributed to publications as writers and editors, and have curated festivals, programs, and exhibitions for Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Centre, Buffalo, Gallery YYZ, Toronto, and the Winnipeg Art Gallery. However, performance remains their focus. Performance documentation and artifacts are held in collections including the National Gallery of Canada, the Canadian History Museum, the DIA Centre and universities throughout North America. Their live work has been acclaimed as “one of the high-points of contemporary Canadian artistic production” (Border Crossings Magazine). But to most they are known simply as the Lesbian Rangers, serving the lesbian ecosystem from dawn to dusk and well beyond.