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| Myra DeFazio | |
|---|---|
| Name | Myra DeFazio |
| Birth date | 1958 |
| Birth place | Boston, Massachusetts, United States |
| Occupation | Visual artist, performer, educator |
| Years active | 1980s–present |
| Known for | Site-specific installations, performance art, interdisciplinary collaboration |
Myra DeFazio is an American visual and performance artist known for interdisciplinary installations that combine sculpture, sound, and choreography. Her practice spans site-specific work, gallery exhibitions, and public commissions, often engaging with urban space, archival materials, and community participation. DeFazio's projects have been shown in museums, alternative art spaces, and public sites across the United States and internationally, and she has taught at several colleges and arts organizations.
DeFazio was born in Boston and raised in a family connected to the cultural scenes of New England, including ties to institutions such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and nearby academic communities like Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She studied studio art and performance studies at regional colleges before pursuing graduate work at an arts conservatory affiliated with institutions such as the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts and the Rhode Island School of Design. During her formative years she participated in artist residencies and workshops at venues including the MacDowell Colony, the Yaddo artists' community, and programs associated with the National Endowment for the Arts, which influenced her early conceptual development.
DeFazio's professional career began in the 1980s amid the experimental performance and installation movements fostered by spaces like P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center and The Kitchen. She collaborated with choreographers, composers, and architects affiliated with collectives such as Merce Cunningham Dance Company alumni projects and experimental music groups arising from New York University and the Juilliard School. Her practice includes public art commissions comparable in scope to works installed by artists who have worked with the Percent for Art programs in cities such as New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago. DeFazio has lectured and taught courses at institutions including New York University, School of Visual Arts, California Institute of the Arts, and liberal arts colleges near Ithaca, New York and Providence, Rhode Island, mentoring cohorts of artists involved with programs like the Fulbright Program and the Guggenheim Foundation fellows.
DeFazio has been awarded grants and fellowships from organizations such as the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and regional arts councils linked to the Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation. She has served on advisory panels for museum acquisition committees at institutions with collections from the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and municipal cultural agencies in cities including San Francisco and Seattle.
Her exhibitions have taken place in diverse venues, from non-profit spaces like MASS MoCA and Brooklyn Academy of Music to municipal galleries in cities such as Philadelphia and Minneapolis. DeFazio presented a multi-channel installation in a biennial context alongside artists represented by the Tate Modern, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Walker Art Center, and her performance projects have been programmed at festivals connected to the Venice Biennale, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and regional contemporary art gatherings curated by professionals from the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. Her site-based commissions have been installed in collaboration with urban planners and landscape architects linked to projects in Boston Common, Battery Park, and revitalization initiatives in ports like Baltimore Inner Harbor.
Major solo exhibitions of her work were held at institutions with histories of exhibiting interdisciplinary practices, such as the New Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and university museums at Princeton University and Yale University. Group exhibitions included surveys organized by curators associated with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Denver Art Museum, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
DeFazio's aesthetic synthesizes strategies from conceptual art, minimal sculpture, and experimental choreography, drawing lineage from practitioners connected to Marina Abramović, Robert Rauschenberg, and Trisha Brown as well as composers in the minimal tradition like Steve Reich and Philip Glass. Her use of found materials, archival fragments, and soundscapes reflects precedents set by artists exhibited at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Carnegie Museum of Art, while her performative protocols reference scores and instructions circulated in communities around Fluxus and post-Fluxus networks. Critics have compared aspects of her spatial interventions to public projects by artists who have worked with municipal commissions and foundations such as the Lannan Foundation.
DeFazio often incorporates local histories, municipal archives, and oral histories in ways resonant with socially engaged practices associated with curators and collectives who have collaborated with institutions like the Andy Warhol Museum and community arts non-profits supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
DeFazio has balanced studio practice with teaching and curatorial projects, maintaining residences in both urban and coastal contexts comparable to artist-educators who split time between Brooklyn, Providence, and regional studios in New England. Her students and collaborators have gone on to work in museums, academia, and independent arts organizations such as the Creative Time and Documenta networks. Her legacy is visible in municipal collections, university galleries, and in the practices of artists who cite her interdisciplinary approach alongside influences from institutions like the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Category:American artists Category:Women performance artists