Karen Finley

About Karen Finley

Karen Finley is an American performance artist, musician, poet, and educator. Her performance art gained her notoriety due to its frequently use of nudity and profanity. Finley incorporates depictions of sexuality, abuse, and disenfranchisement in her work. Her performances generally involved herself appearing nude, often covered in chocolate.

She was one of the NEA Four, four performance artists whose grants from the National Endowment for the Arts were vetoed in 1990 by John Frohnmayer after the process was condemned by Senator Jesse Helms under "decency" issues. She was at the center of several free speech controversies during the 1990s, as debate raged around if it was appropriate for the National Endowment for the Arts to give grants to artists that some considered controversial or obscene. In 1999, she received a Woman of the Year award from Ms. magazine for her work for women's rights, while almost simultaneously posing nude for Playboy.

In addition to her art, Finley has also worked as an actress, most notably as Tom Hanks' doctor in the AIDS drama Philadelphia. She also recorded several albums of provocative dance music and worked with Sinead O'Connor on a recording of O'Connor's "Jump in the River."