Julie Tolentino is a visual and performance artist, dancer, and choreographer. Her work is influenced from an array of visual, archival, and movement strategies.
Life
Tolentino was born in San Francisco to a Filipino/Salvadoran family. She began formal dance training in ballet, modern, jazz and contemporary dance, as well as Afro-Haitian and Flamenco. In 80s, Tolentino moved to New York and after twenty-five + years, she created an off-grid house/studio in the Mohave Desert.
Work
Tolentino has collaborated with Stosh Fila, Ron Athey, Catherine Opie, and many others. She appeared in the 1989 "Kissing Doesn’t Kill: Greed and Indifference Do" campaign by the AIDS awareness artist-activist collective Gran Fury. Tolentino posed with Madonna in a series of homo-erotic photos in the book, SEX, and was a featured artist for an artist book by Rodarte photographed by Catherine Opie. From 1990-1999, Tolentino regularly danced in David Roussève's Dance Theatre Company, 'Reality. Tolentino founded the Clit Club, a queer and pro-sex lesbian nightclub which was operational from 1990-2012, which was referenced by Primus on their song “De Anza Jig.” She is an AIDS activist, caregiver, events coordinator, and prominent supporter of lesbian visibility. In her own words, "My work has an inherent base in the experience of being a survivor, activist, and friend/helper/caregiver... as I focus on the accumulation of 'small' moments and the simplicity, tenderness, reverence of these experiences as well as how they grow into sometimes overwhelming and chaotic times." Tolentino co-wrote the Lesbian AIDS Project's Women's Safer Sex Handbook, and was a founding member of ACT UPNew York's House of Color Video Collective. Currently, she is the Provocations co-editor for The Drama Review with MIT Press. Since 1998, Tolentino has presented solo and group installations and performance work at the New Museum, PARTICIPANT INC, The Kitchen, and Performa, New York; the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; La Batofar, Paris, France; Momenta and Monkey Town Gallery; Madre Museo, Naples, Italy; Walker Arts Center; the Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions; In 2013, Tolentino staged the solo exhibitionRaised by Wolves at Commonwealth and Council in Los Angeles, which included over 50 intimate, interactive performances alongside a series of site-specific sculptures. In 2019, the artist mounted her second exhibition at the Koreatown gallery, REPEATER, an "immersive installation incorporating sculpture, video, and 108 hours of performance."
