Allyson Mitchell

Allyson Mitchell is a maximalist artist working in sculpture, performance, installation, and film. Her practice melds feminism and pop culture to trouble representations of women and contemporary ideas about sexuality and the body largely through the use of abandoned craft. These articulations have resulted in a coven of lesbian feminist Sasquatch monsters, a room-sized Vagina Dentata, an army of super genius Holly Hobbies and a woodland utopic feminist library complete with a wishing well of forbidden political knowledge.

Mitchell’s ongoing aesthetic/political project, “Deep Lez” advocates a strategic queer return to the histories of radical and lesbian feminisms, and has been taken up by queer and trans activists and artists alike in venues as diverse as potlucks, curatorial projects and the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. Mitchell’s work is recognized internationally and has shown at Tate Modern, the Textile Museum of Canada, The Winnipeg Art Gallery, the Warhol Museum, the Walker Art Center and the British Film Institute.

Until their retirement in 2004, Mitchell performed actively with the fat performance troupe “Pretty Porky and Pissed Off,”, which she co-founded in 1997. Her writing has appeared in publications such as Fat:The Anthropology of an Obsession(2004); Turbo Chicks: Talking Young Feminisms (2001); GLQ (2012); and The Journal of Modern Craft (forthcoming) .

She is based in Toronto, where she is an Assistant Professor in the School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at York University. She is represented by Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects and she runs FAG Feminist Art Gallery with Deirdre Logue.

Find out more at Allyson’s website