Karen Finley

Common card · No. 287674

Karen Finley (born 1956) is an American performance artist, visual artist, musician, poet, and educator. Her performance and visual art, recordings, and books are used as forms of activism. She has employed nudity and profanity in her work. Finley incorporates depictions of sexuality, abuse, and disenfranchisement in her work. She is a professor at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. Karen Finley has written various books that focus on controversial topics. Her most recent books include Grabbing Pussy (OR Books, 2018), based on her widely praised performance piece Unicorn Gratitude Mystery, and COVID Vortex Anxiety Opera Kitty Kaleidoscope Disco (City Lights, 2025), a meditation on the extraordinary time of loss, isolation, and bizarre rituals of the Covid era and its aftermath. She wrote Shock Treatment, Enough Is Enough: Weekly Meditations for Living Dysfunctionally, the Martha Stewart satire Living It Up: Humorous Adventures in Hyperdomesticity, Pooh Unplugged (detailing...

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