On Friday and Saturday, April 11 & 12, native Chicagoan KAREN FINLEY returns to RSG from New York and a highly successful national tour. RSG will present her new performance piece, Yams Up My Granny's Ass'.

Karen Finley (born 1956) is an American performance artist, musician, poet, and educator. [1] The case, National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley (1998), argued in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, was decided against Finley and the other artists. [2] Her performance art, recordings, and books are used as forms of activism.

Oct 20, 1986 · In a 50-minute performance titled “Yams” presented last weekend at LACE, the 30-year-old artist inserted the aforementioned vegetable into an unlikely orifice while delivering an X-rated...

Filed Under: 1985-1989, LACE, Performance Tagged With: 1986, Karen Finley, Karen Finley / Yams Up My Grannie's Ass, performance, Yams Up My Grannie's Ass. LACE recognizes our presence on Tovaangar, the unceded ancestral lands of the Gabrielino-Tongva people who are its rightful caretakers.

Feb 13, 2009 · Karen Finley was a controversial and provocative performance artist from New York City. I read about her in a cover story in the Village Voice while on a trip with Russell Hobbs to New Music ...

May 21, 2015 · I know you want to see it so here it is: Karen Finley shoving canned yams up her ass. Shot a year earlier at another club, the Diamond, when Finley was at the peak of her fame - or infamy, depending on how you saw it.

Apr 22, 2006 · He led the charge against the National Endowment for the Arts and its funding of "indecent" artists, such as Karen "Yams" Finley. She became the poster girl for the First Amendment.

Mar 24, 2016 · Baby Boomers or Gen Xers who were part of the scene in the 1980s may have caught Finley’s performance at Dallas’ legendary Theatre Gallery in 1986, a two-night stand in which Finley performed...

Feb 28, 2022 · Karen Finley reflects on her legendary performance pieces, censorship and decades of groundbreaking work—and the sheer joy in creating art.

Pete Hamill’s ham-handed denunciation in the following issue ridiculed her performances as being all about yams, a misrepresentation that still dogs her. (He’s never seen her perform.) Finley’s approach to “doing the yams” at the Pyramid Club was to enlarge and exorcise.