Heather Cassils is a whole different level of performance artist. In addition to being an artist she is a bodybuilder and trainer, and her body is inseparable from her art. She has done multiple projects that include body manipulation (generally through regimented exercise) that question notions of gender and practice. Honestly, she does so much it's really hard to try and explain in her a paragraph, so I'm going to paste a bio I found on Huffington Post to help me:
"Heather Cassils is a Canadian artist, body builder and personal trainer who uses an exaggerated physique to intervene and interrogate systems of power and control. Often employing many of the same strategies used by FLUXUS and guerrilla theater, Cassils’s method is multidisciplinary and cross a spectrum of performance, video, and photography. From dabbling in stunts to a stint as a semi pro boxer, Cassils’s path has led from the blaze of a full body burn to brushing lips with pop stars. Cassils’s solo physical performances are informed by a decade of working in the collective Toxic Titties, but are grounded in the exploration of the specific possibilities of the body, as both instrument and image."
One of my favorite performances of hers is called TERSIAS, based on the mythological character of the same name who was blind and famous for being transformed into a woman for 7 years. She "wore cataract lenses to cloud [her] vision and held [her] body against a neo classical greek make torso, carved out of ice, to fit [her] body exactly. Throughout the event [she] melted the torso with [her] own body heat enacting his gender transformation."
Her other projects involve her adopting different work regiments to sculpt her body in different ways, or using her body to sculpt other substances like clay.
Since most of her stuff is based on performance or large-scale multi-media installations, y'all should check our her website.
http://www.heathercassils.com
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