Jess Dobkin

Jess Dobkin
Jess Dobkin, Lactation Station promotional photo
Born	1970
Alma mater	Oberlin College, Rutgers University
Known for	performance art
Notable work	Lactation Station Breast Milk Bar (2006)
Movement	Feminism, Queer, LGBT
Website	jessdobkin.com

Jess Dobkin (born 1970) is a performance artist who emerged in Toronto, Canada in 2002. She is best known for her 2006 work The Lactation Station.

She has a B.A. in Women’s Studies from Oberlin College, and an M.F.A. in Performance Art from Rutgers University. She is a Fellow at the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto.

Dobkin's work draws on her experience as a lesbian and a mother. Her body often figures prominently in her performances, such as Fee for Service a performance installation where audience members were invited to sharpen a pencil in Dobkin's vagina.

Dobkin has collaborated with other performance artists, including Martha Wilson, founder of the Franklin Furnace Archive. Dobkin is also known as a community organizer and often combines this with her creative work. In May 2015, after a successful crowdfunding campaign, she collaborated with many Toronto artists to create an alternative newsstand in a vacant kiosk at the Chester Subway Station for one year. The newsstand provides artists space to exhibit their work, providing a "creative exchange" for the commuters at the same time it sells newspapers, magazines, and snacks for a "monetary exchange."

In 2006, Dobkin exhibited The Lactation Station in Toronto at the Ontario College of Art and Design's Professional Gallery, curated by Paul Couillard of FADO. In this exhibition, Dobkin invited audience members to sample human breast milk. The exhibition, which was partly funded by the Canada Council for the Arts, gained widespread attention and prompted Health Canada to issue a national warning against the online sale of human breast milk. It was remounted in 2012 as part of the OFFTA Festival in Montreal.

In 2015, Dobkin created ‘How Many Performance Artists Does it Take to Change a Lightbulb (For Martha Wilson)' and performed it at Enoch Turner Schoolhouse in Toronto as part of Images Festival. The work is a response and ode to one of America’s foremost groundbreaking performance artists, Martha Wilson, and offers reflections and humorous observations on the way we see. Inspired by Martha Wilson’s 2005 video titled A History of Performance Art According to Me, Dobkin takes on the history of performance art by defining its terms and conditions and acknowledging the slippery temperament of her task. The performance was co-presented by TD; The Graduate Program in Theatre and Performance Studies at York University and the Performance Studies (Canada) Speaker Series; Onsite [at] OCAD University; U of T Centre for Drama, Music and Performance Studies; The Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto; FADO Performance Art Centre; Digital Dramaturgy Lab at U of T.