User:Janey-71/Johanna Householder

Johanna Householder is a performance artist and professor based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) from York University in 1977. She is represented by Vtape, a Toronto-based artist-run distributor of video art.

Performance art
Householder has been creating performance art since the late 1970s. She was a member of the satirical feminist performance art group known as The Clichettes, along with Louise Garfield and Janice Hladki. Their debut performance was in 1978 at the Tele-Performance Festival. Jayne Wark, in Radical Gestures: Feminism and Performance Art in North America, describes their performance: "Dressed in kitsch-punk outfits, The Clichettes (with Elizabeth Chitty) lip-synced to Leslie Gore's 'You Don't Own Me' while posturing aggressively and pounding their fists on the floor in a full-frontal feminist assault." In 1985, The Clichettes performed a lip-sync of "Go To Hell," spoofing the Motorhead song while sporting muscle suits and guitars. A year later, dressed in classic "lounge lizard" attire, they lip-synced "Having My Baby," the popular Paul Anka song. Householder is quoted as saying that "Lip-sync ... happens to be, in itself, a good metaphor for the cultural imperialism experienced by women."

Teaching
Householder is a professor at the Ontario College of Art & Design (OCAD) in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where she was chair of the New Media/Integrated Media program from 1990 to 1996. Currently, she is Chair of the Criticism and Curatorial Practice Program. Her areas of expertise include performance art, contemporary issues in performance and media, video, curation, and installation.