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“[Being an artist is] being a rock-star, it’s being a doctor, it’s all of that. I like to do a little bit of everything, so if we wanted to sit down and do a piece that was us being electricians for a year, then we would do that. If I wanted to become a lawyer and represent a friend in a divorce trial, then I could do that.”

- Muistardeaux Collective

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Artists

Jennifer Locke

December 31 2010

Jennifer Locke is a San Francisco-based artist, obsessed with power structures in relation to the body, voyeurism, and technological mediation. Her extreme interest in dynamics of dominance led her to a career as a professional dominatrix* and champion Gracie Jiu-Jitsu submission wrestler.** Working in performance, video, and digital photography, Locke often turns the camera on herself in the act of filming and photographing subjects such as men from her fight team.

Locke has exhibited in venues such as the 48th Venice Biennale; Air de Paris, Paris; the 9th Havana Biennial; the Basel Art Fair, Kunsthalle, Basel; La Panaderia, Mexico City; Palais de Beaux-Arts, Brussels; Hallwalls, New York; and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco. She has curated for Artists Television Access and Queen's Nails Annex, co-produced a cable access show, sung in punk bands, and given a variety of workshops. She received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and was awarded the 2006 Chauncey McKeever Award. Locke is currently an adjunct professor at St. Mary's College of California and also teaches at the San Francisco Art Institute. Read her conversation here.

 

 

 

*A professional dominatrix or a professional dominant is a person who performs the dominant role in BDSM (short for "Bondage and Discipline, Sadism and Masochism") activities in exchange for money. Most professional dominants do not have sex in exchange for money.

 

**Submission wrestling is a type of combat sport that utilizes ground-fighting tactics with the aim of obtaining a submission (as opposed to a pin) using submission holds, such as chokes and arm locks.