Circle of Stars, 2007 - Jen DeNike

The multimedia and performance artist Jen DeNike creates a strange alchemy in her work by taking often rigorous forms from photography to ballet and bending them to occult purposes. A onetime student of the photographer Stephen Shore, she became known early on for her pictures of vampire-attack victims lying strewn across the floor and the predator nowhere to be seen ("it's the photographer," she revealed). More recent pieces have involved dance, notably her series Scrying—a magic term for using some sort of medium for psychic divination—which consisted of ballet performances at MoMA, where the dancers engaged in a mirror-based production in the museum's towering atrium, and other sites.

A video artist as well, DeNike has had her work featured in numerous museum exhibitions, including a solo show at the KW Institute for Contemporary art in Berlin (2006) and group shows in 2006 at MoMA/PS1 and Bard's Center for Curatorial Studies. Her performance Twirl, which incorporated a marching band in full regalia, took place at the Brooklyn Museum in 2009 as part of the Performa biennial.
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