MEET JULIE TOLENTINO
“Mentee-Mentor exchanges allow for witnessed shifts and here, the nuances of queer companionship.”
Location: Los Angeles, California
Disciplines: Performance installation, experimental film/video art
Julie Tolentino is a Filipino-Salvadoran queer interdisciplinary performance installation maker whose work draws from visual, archival, collaborative, and movement strategies. Her work has been presented in solo and group shows including (selected) The Kitchen, Danspace Project, Participant, Inc., Performance Space New York, Performa 2005 and 2013, the New Museum, LACE, The Lab, PSi at Stanford University, the Nevada Art Museum, Aspen Art Museum, and as a collaborator in the 2022 Whitney Biennial. She/They have exhibited internationally in the UK, France, Germany, Philippines, Singapore, Abu Dhabi, and in Northern Macedonia at the Museum of Contemporary Art and in the Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art. They have served as a visiting/guest artist at UCLA WAC, UCLA New Genres, UCR-New Genres, Cal Arts-Performance, Rutgers-Art, Pratt-Art, BARD Curatorial Studies amongst others. She was a 2021-22 scholar-in-residence at NYU Steinhardt, a 2021 MacDowell and UCROSS fellow, a 2022-23 Queer Art Mentor with Anh Vo, and has been a TDR Provocations editor since 2012. Support includes Mid-Atlantic Foundation - Arts International, Anonymous Was A Woman, the Queer Art Sustained Achievement, Art Matters, and Foundation for Contemporary Art Awards. Tolentino is sponsored by Fractured Atlas, performs with Stosh Fila, and is represented by Commonwealth and Council.
You can learn more at her website.
Work
mentor profile
What interests you about mentoring?
“Mentee-Mentor exchanges allow for witnessed shifts and here, the nuances of queer companionship.”
Have you had mentors of your own? Who have they been?
“Ahn Vo, Lu Yim.”
This Mentor is open to working with Fellows either remotely or in-person!
Read Julie's Full Bio
Julie Tolentino is a performance installation maker whose work draws from a variety of visual, archival, and movement strategies. Her work has been presented at many venues, including the New Museum, The Kitchen, Danspace Project in NY; Volume, Los Angeles Contemporary, Broad at UCLA, Honor Fraser, Cypress Gallery, The Sphaerae/AXS Festival, Commonwealth & Council, The Night Gallery, Pieter, High Desert Test Sites, The Reanimation Library, The Palms in Southern California; The Lab, Joe Goode Annex, PSi Stanford in Northern California; The Wexner Center, Performa '05 and '13, and internationally in the UK, France, Germany, Philippines, Singapore, Abu Dhabi and Greece.
Installation and site-based performance works include "bury me fiercely," "THE SKY REMAINS THE SAME," "Honey," "Cry of Love," "Stringhead," "Raised By Wolves," "Sling," "one-to-one projects For You and A True Story About Two People," "Early interdisciplinary works: Marks of My Civilization with Sondra Loring and full-evening: Mestiza-Que Bonitos Ojos Tienes" and "The Bottom Project." Tolentino was a 2017-2018 HMD Community Engagement Artist-In-Residence and a 2013-14 Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Community Artist with Larkin Street Projects in San Francisco. Tolentino is a current 2018 MFA candidate and Dean's Distinguished Fellow of Experimental Dance at the University of California at Riverside.
Other projects include serving as the long-time Provocations co-editor for TDR (The Drama Review). Tolentino was a member of ACTUP, Art Positive, House of Color and the National LGBT Suicide Hotline.
A contributor to the Smithsonian's Art AIDS Oral History Project, she will join a Visual AIDS panel at the Whitney Museum in July 2018 for the opening of the David Wornarovicz show. This Fall-Winter 2018-19, Visual AIDS DUET book project with Kia Labeija and Tolentino. She co-authored the group essay, "The Sum of All Questions" in GLQ Journal (Gay & Lesbian Quarterly) focused on the Clit Club (1990-2002).
Tolentino initiated the Clit Club, Dagger, Tattooed Love Child, Puta Scandalosa and other club, benefit, and performance events in NYC in the 90's including the NY Gay Games at Madison Square Garden, Madonna's Sex Book and Album debut at Industria Super Studios, and many others. In 2016, she restaged Ellen Cantor's 1993 Coming To Power with Pati Hertling. They published a catalog and co-curated a feminist performance program throughout the exhibition: Narcissister, Jen Rosenblit, Luciana Achugar, Fluct, Kia Labeija, Xandra Ibarra, Jim Fletcher and niv acosta.
She has served as Visiting Assistant Professor in UCLA’s first cross-school (World Arts and Culture and Art Department) performance-making class: "Opening to the Radical Body" and is a returning guest artist and lecturer at BARD, NYU Performance Studies, Studio 303/Montreal, UC Riverside, Cal Arts, Wesleyan Curatorial Program, and The New School. In 2008, Tolentino built and developed the off-grid FERAL HOUSE STUDIO in the Mohave Desert where she hosts one-to-one artist and writing residencies. Her practice integrates her specialization in aquatic and Eastern-based bodywork.
Media & Interviews
"REPEATER by Julie Tolentino for Commonwealth and Council
"Hardcore" by Shoghig Halajian for Georgia