| Jess Dobkin | |
| Birth Date: | 1970 |
| Field: | performance artist |
| Alma Mater: | Oberlin College, Rutgers University |
| Movement: | Feminism, Queer, LGBTQ |
| Works: | Lactation Station Breast Milk Bar (2006) |
Jess Dobkin (born 1970) is a performance artist based in Toronto, Canada.[1] She is best known for her 2006 work The Lactation Station.
She has a Bachelor of Arts in women's studies from Oberlin College, and a Master of Fine Arts in performance art from Rutgers University. She is a fellow at the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto.
Dobkin first emerged as a performance artist in 2002. Her work draws on her experience as a lesbian and a mother.[2] Her body often figures prominently in her performances. For example, Fee for Service (2006), was a performance installation where audience members were invited to sharpen a pencil in Dobkin's vagina.[3] [4]
Dobkin is also known as a community organizer and often combines this with her creative work. In May 2015, after a successful crowdfunding campaign, she collaborated with many Toronto artists to create an alternative newsstand in a vacant kiosk at Chester station in Toronto for one year. Meant as a "creative exchange" for commuters, the kiosk acted as a space for artists' exhibitions and performances, while still functioning as a newsstand selling newspapers, magazines, and snacks for a "monetary exchange."[5]
Dobkin sometimes collaborates with other performance artists, including Martha Wilson, founder of the Franklin Furnace Archive.[6]
Dobkin was a frequent performer at Montreal's Edgy Women feminist performance festival between the years 2004 and 2010.[7]
In 2006, Dobkin exhibited The Lactation Station in Toronto at OCAD University's Professional Gallery, curated by Paul Couillard of FADO.[8] In this exhibition, Dobkin invited audience members to sample human breast milk. The exhibition, which was partly funded by the Canada Council for the Arts, gained widespread attention and prompted Health Canada to issue a national warning against the online sale of human breast milk.[9] It was remounted in 2012 as part of Montreal's OFFTA Festival in co-presentation with Studio 303 at Usine C.[10]
In 2009, Dobkin performed "Being Green," a video work in which she sings "Bein' Green" while dressed as Kermit the Frog and being fisted by another actor dressed as Jim Henson.[11]
In 2015, Dobkin created How Many Performance Artists Does it Take to Change a Lightbulb (For Martha Wilson) and performed it at the Enoch Turner School in Toronto as part of the Images Festival. The work was an ode to one of America’s foremost performance artists, Martha Wilson. Dobkin's work was inspired by Martha Wilson’s 2005 video titled A History of Performance Art According to Me, which examined the history of performance art. It had multiple co-presenters, including the University of Toronto, York University, OCAD University, FADO Performance Art Centre, and the Toronto-Dominion Bank.[12]
In 2021, the Art Gallery of York University presented Dobkin's first solo retrospective exhibition, Wetrospective, curated by Emelie Chhangur.[13] [14] A book retrospective on Dobkin's work edited by Laura Levin, Jess Dobkin’s Wetrospective: Constellating performance archives, was published in 2024.[15]
Dobkin is Jewish, a lesbian, and a mother.[16] [17]