Bruce and Christian Read May and Mary

Bruce and Christian Read May and Mary is a performance art work. Because performance art happens in real time and space, it has a quality of unpredictability for the performers and the audience. In this piece, Bruce and Christian read randomly from two books and take turns doing so. How the two different texts begin to intertwine and relate is a chance operational event.

This performance piece draws on the constructs of gender, and the histories of women who have taken on the guise of men in order to be heard, listened to, and treated equally. Bruce and Christian are two women appearing as men who are reading works by lesbian women poets to the audience. Through the poems of May Swenson and Mary Oliver, the artists Kristina Lenzi and Macie Hamblin wear their suits as a weapon of power, obscuring their identities while giving voice to women whose work and contributions often go unnoticed.

Performance by Kristina Lenzi and Macie Hamblin. Filmed and edited by Laina Thomas. With the support of the Salt Lake City Arts Council’s Finch Lane Flash Projects, June 2020.

Kristina Lenzi is a performance artist, painter and professor living and working in Salt Lake City and Ogden, Utah. She teaches as a paraprofessional at Hillcrest High School, and teaches art at Weber State University. Lenzi is the founder and curator of the Annual Salt Lake City Performance Art Festival held at the Salt Lake City Main Public Library in Utah. She has exhibited work locally, nationally, and in Poland, France, and England. Lenzi holds a BFA in drawing and painting at the University of Utah and a MFA in painting and performance art from Tufts University.

Macie Hamblin, originally from Washington state, currently lives in Bountiful, Utah and holds a BFA in 2-D Art from Weber State University. She has also studied Web and Media Technology at Davis Applied Technology College and has studied performance art extensively for the past several years. She has participated in the annual Salt Lake City Performance Art Festival since it first began in 2013. Hamblin has shown her artwork in the BDAC Annual Statewide Exhibit, the Weber State University BFA Thesis Exhibit, and the Green Loft Gallery. She is currently apprenticing to be a practicing shaman and bodyworker.

The ideas and opinions expressed in the Salt Lake City Arts Council programs are those of the participating individuals and groups and do not necessarily reflect the ideas and opinions of the Salt Lake City Arts Council.