Interview with Holly Hughes

Abstract

Holly Hughes is a performance artist. In the early 1980’s, she became a member of the WOW café in New York City, a feminist collective made up of people who had been run out of other feminist collectives. Her work has focused on issues of sexuality, identity, personal narrative, and freedom of expression. Some of her performances include The Well of Horniness, The Lady Dick, Dress Suits to Hire, World Without End, Preaching to the Perverted, Turkey! The New Musical, and After a Fashion. In 1996 Grove Press collected five of her early pieces in Clit Notes: A Sapphic Sampler. She has performed or had her work produced across the United States, Canada, and Great Britain at venues ranging from cultural institutions such as the Hammer Museum, the Walker Art Center, and the Guggenheim Museum to alternative spaces such as Performance Space 122, a home base for urban cultural expression in New York City. Holly Hughes has been awarded funding from sources including the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ford Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. She’s currently teaching at the University of Michigan with a joint appointment in the School of Art and Design and the Department of Theater and Drama.