MC Coble

MC Coble (born Mary Coble) is a queer American artist who works in Washington, DC and uses they/them pronouns.[1] Coble was born in 1978 and is from Julian, North Carolina.[2] Coble received their Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2001.[3] They then went on to receive their Master of Fine Arts from The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. in 2004.[3] They originally began their art career as a photographer but later turned their attention to performance art.[4][5] Their most notable works are Note to Self (2005) and Blood Script (2008).[6]

MC Coble
Born1978 (age 44–45)
North Carolina, United States
NationalityAmerican
EducationThe University of North Carolina at Greensboro (University of North Carolina at Greensboro)
Known forPerformance art, Queer art
Notable work
Note to Self (2005)
Blood Script (2008)
Deferral (2013)
Websitehttps://mccoble.com/

Installations and performances

Note to Self was a performance piece by MC Coble which was performed September 2, 2005 at the Connor Contemporary Art Gallery in Washington D.C.[7] The performance consisted of MC Coble sitting on a chair with their back turned to the audience while being tattooed with the names of victims of LGBTQ related hate crimes. For the solo performance, Coble collected 436 names of gay, lesbian, bi, and transgender individuals that died due to hate crimes. These tattoos were done without ink so each name was visible in blood. After each tattoo, the blood was imprinted on a sheet of paper.[4] The entire performance lasted 12 hours.[1]

Deferral, performed and installed at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington DC in 2013, addressed FDA regulations banning men who have had sex with other men from donating blood since 1977. Coble collected slogans for blood donation campaigns and printed them on separation screens. Coble had blood drawn on site and then used it to paint the word deferral in Morse code on the screens. When asked in an interview with The Huffington Post about why they chose to do a performance on this topic, Coble responded that it is "...an interest in queer issues of social injustice threads throughout my work. The White House is across from The Corcoran as is the Red Cross-- and so everything just came together."[8][9] Coble says of their performances,"It is not about hurting myself. It's the only way I can think to express these ideas that my audience will have a strong enough connection to."[10]

Blood Script was a performance piece by MC Coble which was performed in 2008 at the PULSE art fair in New York City.[4] MC Coble had 75 hateful words tattooed onto their body without ink. These 75 words were taken from over 200 words used previously in other performances. These performances were titled MARKER and were performed in New York in 2006, in Washington D.C. in 2007, and Madrid in 2008.[1] The words were tattooed in a decorative font and appeared on their body in blood.[4] After being tattooed, each insult was captured by placing a sheet of paper over the blood, creating an imprint which was then displayed on the gallery wall.[11]

References
  1. Hengel, Louis van den. “Archives of Affect: Performance, Reenactment, and the Becoming of Memory.” In László Munteán, Liedeke Plate, and Anneke Smelik (Eds) Materializing Memory in Art and Popular Culture (pp. 125-142). New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017.
  2. Reilly, Maura, and Linda Nochlin. Global Feminisms: New Directions in Contemporary Art. London: Merrell, 2007. ISBN 9781858943909.
  3. "'Deferral': Performance piece at Corcoran takes on blood donation, gay rights".
  4. Talwar, Savneet K. (2010). "Mary Coble: Performance Art and Politics of an Archive". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  5. Samson, Judith (December 2010). "Provocative and powerful: The performances of MC Coble". Raffia (4).
  6. Furtado, Teresa Veiga. “The Incorporation Of Violence By Women Video Artists.” IJASOS- International E-journal of Advances in Social Sciences 2, no. 5 (August 2016): 388. https://doi.org/10.18769/ijasos.89155.
  7. O'Sullivan, Michael. "'Note to Self': Painful Reminders Of Crimes". The Washington Post.
  8. Frank, Priscilla (August 7, 2013). "Performance Artist Questions Controversial FDA Policy That Prevents Gay Men From Donating Blood". Huffington Post. Retrieved 26 April 2014.
  9. “Blood Donations from Men Who Have Sex with Other Men Questions and Answers”, US Food and Drug Administration, 2013 August 19 (retrieved 2014 May 20)
  10. Beckman, Rachel. "'Aversion': A Jolt of an Experience". Washington Post. Retrieved 22 April 2014.
  11. Steorn, Patrik. “Curating Queer Heritage: Queer Knowledge and Museum Practice.” Wiley Online Library. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, July 16, 2012. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.2151-6952.2012.00159.x.

    Further reading
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