My Performance Anxiety, which marks Carrie Yury’s first project exhibition with Sam Lee Gallery, consists of 35 mixed media drawings that depict famous performances by feminist artists wearing animal masks that Yury added on their faces.

This series of works on paper is inspired by Yury’s 2006 performance in which the artist and three other women did the Chicken Dance and peed on stage, each wearing nothing but a dirndl and an animal mask; Yury, who was traumatized by the experience, was the only one who was able to urinate while the other women just squatted in vain.

This work stems from Yury’s own conflicted relationship to performance art. In the drawings, Yury projects her shame and anxiety about performance art onto the images of famous feminist performances by placing animal masks over their faces. The simple, gestural drawings are a way of expressing the artist’s personal inadequacies for not being brave enough to perform without wearing a mask.
 
Yury, born 1970, currently works and lives in Los Angeles. In 2006 and 1998, she received her master’s degree in fine art from UC Irvine, California and master’s degree in English from the University of Chicago, Illinois, respectively; in 1993, Yury earned her bachelor’s degree with a double major in fine art and literature from UC Santa Cruz. Recent solo exhibitions have been exhibited at The Office in Huntington Beach, California, and Swallow Gallery in Chicago, Illinois. Yury’s work has been displayed in numerous group exhibitions in Georgia, New York, Illinois and California. Room, another series by Yury, will be exhibited in a solo exhibition at Sam Lee Gallery in January 2009.