Denys Blacker
Cloud by Denys Blacker, 2018, photo by Marta Vergonyós
U.K./ Spain
Denys Blacker (London, 1961) is a transdisciplinary artist whose practice spans performance art, drawing, sculpture and video. BA in Fine Art Sculpture (WSCAD, Farnham, UK - 1984), MA Fine Art Sculpture (Chelsea School of Art, London, UK- 1985). PhD: Interconnection, Synchronicity and Consciousness in Improvised Performance Art Practices - 2019 (Northumbria University, Newcastle, UK -2019). She has lived and worked in Spain since 1987 and has shown her work internationally for over 30 years. She is co-founder of the all-women performance group Ocells al Cap (Birds in the Head) and a member of the International performance group the Wolf in the Winter.
Blacker’s interest lies in the way we intercommunicate and how we develop our individual and communal capacity for adaptability and contingency. Contingency can be understood literally as the absence of certainty in events, but it can also mean, forming part of a larger group. It is in this connection to the larger group, where Blacker explores the artistic, social and political implications of engaging with embodied, intuitive and visceral ways of knowing. Her investigation has led her to explore the boundaries between subject and object and between self and other, to reveal how we might communicate in ways that go beyond the cognitive senses, including the possibilities of telepathy and precognition.
Since 2002, when she co-founded the not-for-profit cultural association, Gresol, she has organised and produced numerous international events, meetings and festivals related to performance art, including FEM, an international meeting for women performance artists now in its 19th edition.
A founding member of the EU funded project ELAA (European Live Art Archive) based in the University of Girona, she regularly collaborates with other organisations to programme live art events including; Cara a Cara at la Bonne, Women's Cultural Centre (Barcelona, Spain), Cicle d'Art d'Acció at Bòlit Contemporary Art Centre (Girona, Spain) and FLARE (Forum for Live Art Research and Education) at the University of Northumbria (Newcastle, UK). She is founder and coordinator of Corpologia, a performance practice meeting and a magazine of the same name. She is currently directing Intangible Environments a research-based project that investigates non-material aspects of performance art practice and SYNC, an editorial project to showcase the work of performance artists.
