Ron Athey

Ron Athey was born in Connecticut in 1961 and has lived in Los Angeles since 1963.

He has been a central figure in the development of performance art since the 1980s. In his stagings of crisis, sexuality and death in the time of AIDS, Athey calls into question the limits of artistic practice. Athey has been a crucial figure in the development of performance art and body art; club performance; intersections between punk, queer and alternative cultures; sexual politics, specifically in relation to queer practices and the politics of HIV/AIDS; and the representation of religion and ritual.

Ron Athey’s work forces the body to transcend it’s confines. His work manifests itself as exorcism not only of, and for, the cauterising of his own pain, but by pushing the boundaries of endurance through artistic expression.