Amanda Coogan is an Irish

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

 performance artist, living and working in Dublin (where she was born) and Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

. She studied Painting at Limerick School of Art and Design

Limerick School of Art and Design

Limerick School of Art and Design or LSAD is an art college in Limerick City in Ireland. The school is one of the five constituent schools of Limerick Institute of Technology and operates on two of LIT's campuses in Limerick City, located on Clare Street and George's Quay; both are about 2KM from...

, Ireland, Athens School of Fine Arts

Athens School of Fine Arts

The Athens School of Fine Arts , is Greece's premier art school whose main objective is to develop the artistic talents of its students.-History:Athens School of Fine Arts was established on 12 January 1837, known as the School for the Arts...

, Greece, and Sculpture at the National College of Art and Design

National College of Art and Design

The National College of Art and Design is a national art and design school in Dublin, Ireland.-History:Situated on Thomas Street, the NCAD started as a private drawing school and has become a national institution educating over 1,500 day and evening students as artists, designers and art educators...

, Dublin and under the performance artist Marina Abramovic

Marina Abramovic

Marina Abramović is a Belgrade-born New York-based Serbian performance artist who began her career in the early 1970s. Active for over three decades, she has recently begun to describe herself as the “grandmother of performance art.” Abramović's work explores the relationship between performer and...

 at the HBK Hochschule fur Bildende Kunste, Braunschweig, Germany.

In her performance art, she produces video and photographs from live performances.

She explains how she came to choose performance art over painting:

"I was making these expressionist paintings, but it occurred to me that I was more interested in jumping around the canvas than what was on the canvas."

Her work often begins with her own body and often challenges the expectations born of context. Not deaf herself, she is a first language signer and in one striking work she dances to Gil Scott-Heron

Gil Scott-Heron

Gilbert "Gil" Scott-Heron was an American soul and jazz poet, musician, and author known primarily for his work as a spoken word performer in the 1970s and '80s...

's "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

"The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" is a poem and song by Gil Scott-Heron. Scott-Heron first recorded it for his 1970 album Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, on which he recited the lyrics, accompanied by congas and bongo drums...

," while signing the lyrics. In a more recent work, produced for the Liverpool Biennial

Liverpool Biennial

Liverpool Biennial is a British international festival of contemporary art held in Liverpool. The festival comprises the International Exhibition, the John Moores Painting Prize, the Bloomberg New Contemporaries Exhibition and the Independents Biennial....

, she filmed local people headbanging to Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...

's "Ode to Joy

Ode to Joy

"Ode to Joy" is an ode written in 1785 by the German poet, playwright and historian Friedrich Schiller, enthusiastically celebrating the brotherhood and unity of all mankind...

."

Coogan has exhibited in Marking the Territories at the Irish Museum of Modern Art

Irish Museum of Modern Art

The Irish Museum of Modern Art also known as IMMA, is Ireland's leading national institution exhibiting and collecting modern and contemporary art. The museum opened in May 1991 and is located in Royal Hospital Kilmainham, a 17th-century building near Heuston Station to the west of Dublin's city...

, was an award winner at EV+A 2002 in Limerick

Limerick

Limerick is the third largest city in the Republic of Ireland, and the principal city of County Limerick and Ireland's Mid-West Region. It is the fifth most populous city in all of Ireland. When taking the extra-municipal suburbs into account, Limerick is the third largest conurbation in the...

, was selected by the Royal Hibernian Academy

Royal Hibernian Academy

The Royal Hibernian Academy is an artist-based and artist-oriented institution in Ireland, founded in Dublin in 1823.-History:The RHA was founded as the result of 30 Irish artists petitioning the government for a charter of incorporation...

for the Eurojets Futures exhibition in 2003, and was an invited participant in the 2004 Liverpool Biennial. The Limerick City Gallery of Art hosted an exhibition of her installation work in 2005.

External links

• Amanda Coogan artist's website.