Lisa Bufano performing on her signature orange Queen Anne table legs at All Worlds Fair 2013.

Lisa Bufano (October 20, 1972 – October 3, 2013)[1][2] was an American interdisciplinary performance artist whose work incorporated elements of doll-making, fabric work, animation, and dance.[3]

Early life

Born to Louis A. Bufano and Elizabeth "Betty" Bufano in 1972 in Bridgeport, Connecticut,[4] Bufano graduated from Tufts University in 2003,[1] and later from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (SMFA) in 2003.[5][6] A competitive gymnast as a child[6][7] (and a go-go dancer in college),[7][8] she became a bilateral below-the-knee and total finger-thumb amputee due to a life-threatening staphylococcus bacterial infection at the age of 21.[6][9]

Career

After losing her lower legs and all of her fingers and thumbs, Bufano began her performance and dancing career when a professor at the University of Linz doing research on the lives of amputees discovered her web page and offered her a stipend to perform in Vienna.[5][10] She toured from 2006 to 2010 with the AXIS Dance Company,[4] performing works variously choreographed by Victoria Marks, Joe Goode, and Kate Weare to audiences in Austria, Croatia, Slovenia, and Canada, and performed to a packed house at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts[11] in a program honoring fellow amputee and dancer Homer Avila[12] (featured in Modern Dance Videos)[13] as well as at the Baryshnikov Arts Center and Judson Memorial Church, among other venues.[14][15]

Her dance work typically incorporated a variety of prosthetics and props[8] (such as using wooden Queen Anne table legs as legs and arms),[16] but also included segments where her unadorned body was the focus of the performance.[17] According to Bufano she manipulated her body as a way to explore alternative locomotion (at age 34 she ran several miles a day on high-tech carbon fiber prosthetic legs),[3][9] corporeal difference, her sexual identity[18] (an aspect of her work which was of particular interest to the artistic LGBT community),[19] and animation/manipulation, interests which led to many fruitful collaborations.[20]

Bufano listed among her influences medical drawings, historical wax models and dolls, and optical toys; flip dolls and paper dolls; the structural aspects of Japanese jointed dolls, Hans Bellmer's doll work, Louise Bourgeois' cell installations, and the animation of Jan Švankmajer and the Quay Brothers. One of her main projects was a white muslin dress which turned into a squid, for which she sewed thousands of detailed suckers. "She loved sewing sculptures made of fabric," her brother remarked in a remembrance. "She had a thing for the creepy-cute, the exotic, the bizarre. Things that were dark but also beautiful."[9]

She explained her aesthetic and political goals when she claimed that:

Despite my own terror and discomfort in being watched (or, maybe, because of it), I am finding that being in front of viewers as a performer with deformity can produce a magnetic tension that could be developed into strength. I attempt to channel this tension by exaggerating the mode of physical difference (for example, presenting myself on stilts).[21]

She likewise explained during her time at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston:

My eye has always been drawn to abnormal forms ... It's just that now my tool is my body. I'm still animating a form, but it's my own form ... I'm not an astounding dancer ... But being a performer with a deformity, I find that there's a gut response in audiences, an attraction/repulsion aspect to it that can be compelling. I just hope that there's a balance between that gut response and the substance of a performance.[5]

She has had an artist residency at the Contemporary Artists Center, North Adams;[6] and also at the 8th Street Air Program (2010), Boise, Idaho.[22] She was a Franklin Furnace Fund recipient in 2006–2007.[14][15]

Originally based in Boston, Massachusetts,[14] and relocated to San Francisco, California in December 2011.[23]

Death and legacy

Lisa Bufano died by suicide on October 3, 2013, in San Francisco, California; no suicide note was found. Two months later, her brother reflected on the inexplicable nature of her death.

I'm surrounded by speculation about why Lisa took her own life. Facebook, friends, family members, and her fans would all like to know. They want it to make sense to them. They want to feel okay. Ultimately they want her back.

But I am having great difficulty with all of this. Lisa didn't like other people projecting their idea of who she was on her. We'll never understand why. It will never make sense.

I believe she lived her entire life and that her life was many lives. I don't believe it was cut-off short. Her mission was completed and she must have understood that fact when she departed from this world. She was alone with her dog in her home in the middle of the night.[9]

More than a year after her death, her work, along with that by Cara Levine, Shari Paladino and Sadie Wilcox, was included in Four Choreographies at the Worth Ryder Art Gallery in Berkeley, California.[24] A further retrospective was held Storefront Lab in San Francisco in 2015.[25]

References

  1. 1 2 "Ms. Lisa Bufano - Obituary & Service Information". The Sympathy Store by HelloFlowers.com. 2013. Archived from the original on 9 April 2023. Retrieved 12 November 2013.
  2. ↑ "Performance Artist Lisa Bufano: In Remembrance". SF Weekly. 28 October 2013. Archived from the original on 5 April 2023. Retrieved 25 February 2021. Lisa "Louise" Bufano. October 20, 1972 – October 3, 2013.
  3. 1 2 Shea, Andrea (19 March 2007). "Artist Takes Inspiration from Amputation". All Things Considered. NPR. Archived from the original on 5 April 2023. Retrieved 29 March 2015.
  4. 1 2 "Lisa Bufano". Bergen Assembly 2019. 2019. Archived from the original on 16 January 2022. Retrieved 25 February 2021.
  5. 1 2 3 "[Lisa Bufano (Bachelor of Fine Arts '03)]". School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Archived from the original on 5 October 2013.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Murray, Ginger (28 October 2014). "Lisa Bufano: In Remembrance". Freelance Writer Archives. Archived from the original on 9 December 2014. Retrieved 9 April 2023 – via Medium.
  7. 1 2 Hustic, Deborah (24 May 2008). "Lisa Bufano – the Spiderwoman". Body Pixel. Archived from the original on 8 August 2022. Retrieved 12 November 2013.
  8. 1 2 Lev, Nadya (15 September 2011). "Lisa Bufano: Dancer/Shapeshifter". Coilhouse. Archived from the original on 3 July 2022. Retrieved 12 November 2013.
  9. 1 2 3 4 Shea, Andrea; Bufano, Peter (24 December 2013). "Remembering Lisa Bufano, A Dancer Who Found Beauty In Amputation". WBUR. Archived from the original on 26 October 2022. Retrieved 25 February 2021.
  10. ↑ Sadr, Esha (17 May 2010). "Lisa Bufano from the series: On the Charm of the stigma". Wien Museum. Archived from the original on 3 June 2016. Retrieved 29 March 2015 – via Flickr.
  11. ↑ "'Phoenix Dance' (film) / Lisa Bufano (dance)". The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. 4 June 2007. Archived from the original on 20 June 2010. Retrieved 29 March 2015.
  12. ↑ "Lisa Bufano - Watch Past Performances - 6/4/07: 'Phoenix Dance' (film) / Lisa Bufano (dance)". The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Archived from the original on 1 November 2013. Retrieved 12 November 2013.
  13. ↑ Burbank, Linda (27 August 2013). "Lisa Bufano". Modern Dance Videos. Archived from the original on 11 February 2019. Retrieved 12 November 2013.
  14. 1 2 3 Goodwin, Joy (15 January 2007). "A Dancer's Hard-Won Debut". The New York Sun. Archived from the original on 9 April 2023. Retrieved 25 February 2021.
  15. 1 2 "Extravagant Bodies Festival › Extravagant Bodies › Performances › Five Open Mouths". Kontejner. 2006. Archived from the original on 9 April 2023. Retrieved 9 April 2023.
  16. ↑ Robinson, Beth (5 June 2007). "Lisa Bufano". Beth Robinson's Strange Dolls. Archived from the original on 20 January 2016. Retrieved 29 March 2015.
  17. ↑ "(Two) Bodies of Work - Dancing". Disability Culture Watch. 24 January 2007. Archived from the original on 26 March 2016. Retrieved 12 November 2013.
  18. ↑ Rebecca, Jeannie (18 September 2010). "Profile Article: Lisa Bufano". Writing Folio. Archived from the original on 7 June 2015. Retrieved 29 March 2015.
  19. ↑ "Trans-Q TV Explores Gender, Sexuality, and Ecstatic Acts of Being". School of Art. Carnegie Mellon University. 18 May 2012. Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 29 March 2015.
  20. ↑ March, Mary Corey (25 October 2013). "The lllusion of 'when I have time' (in honor of Lisa Bufano)". From the Studio. Archived from the original on 6 April 2023. Retrieved 12 November 2013 – via WordPress.
  21. ↑ "Persistence of Vision". Archived from the original on 2007-06-30. Retrieved 2007-05-31.
  22. ↑ Bufano, Lisa (2010). "Artist Residency, Boise Idaho". Lisa Bufano. Archived from the original on 1 November 2010.
  23. ↑ Bufano, Lisa (6 February 2012). "From Boise Back in the Bay – by former AXIS Company Member Lisa Bufano". Axis Dance Company. Archived from the original on 4 November 2013. Retrieved 12 November 2013.
  24. ↑ "Four Choreographies: Lisa Bufano, Cara Levine, Shari Paladino, Sadie Wilcox". Art Practice. University of California - Berkeley. 3 November 2014. Archived from the original on 10 May 2015. Retrieved 29 March 2015.
  25. ↑ "David Bufano + Sonsheree Giles // Talk". Store Front Lab. 29 September 2015. Archived from the original on 6 April 2023. Retrieved 9 April 2023.
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