Spring 2021 Run of the Mills residency project by Julie Ann Otis at Boston Center for the Arts

Portraits on display April 14-29, 2021

Mills Gallery window interactive performance art April 14, 16, 21, 23

Public Performance (online): Saturday evening, May 1st, 7pm

Boston Center for the Arts is pleased to present our Spring 2021 Run of the Mills residency project, Live Nude Girls, by intuitive healer, somatic educator, and artist Julie Ann Otis. The project will include a video installation and intermittent live interactive sessions on view in BCA’s Mills Gallery windows between April 14-29, and an online public performance on Saturday evening, May 1st.

Live Nude Girls is pleasure activism in action, an interactive installation that explores our experiences reclaiming our agency, power, and pleasure in communion and conversation with the body. 

​In the wake of the current pandemic, the ways in which we connect with each other has drastically changed. We are experiencing both the new, exciting possibilities of virtual spaces, and the heightened pressure and preciousness associated with physical connection. In Live Nude Girls, Otis uses individual somatic exploration and poetry to explore how we relate to the body in person, in portraiture, and on screen. As we adapt to different cultural norms of connection, she asks how we can witness without objectifying and how we can center feeling seen as much seeing.

 

During her Run of the Mills residency at BCA, Otis will offer audiences multiple opportunities for participation:

• One-on-one interactive somatic exploration of your relationship with your body, with the option of bodypainting and photographic portraiture. Messages that are written on the body are written backwards; a message from and to the body when viewed in the mirror;​
• Viewing live interactive sessions and body painting through the Mills Gallery public facing front windows;
• Viewing multi-media installation and video display of past portraiture from Live Nude Girls through the Mills Gallery’s public-facing front windows; and
• The culminating online public event, Saturday May 1st. Details coming soon! 

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About the Artist

Julie Ann Otis is an intuitive healer, somatic educator, and artist committed to an experience of ease. for. every. body. Her somatic healing sessions, embedded in interactive public art installations, catalyze individual and collective healing.

Otis’ installation American Therapy/Terapía Americana translated everyday stories of people living in the U.S. during the first wave of 2017 anti-immigration policies into a 200 square-foot mural of poetry and portraiture. Other works include typewriter-based public poetry, burlesque spoken word poetry performed in aerial rope and harness, photopoetry exhibits, and multimedia poetry installations with improvisational music and liquid projection art. She has performed at the ICA Boston, Industry City in Brooklyn, Boston City Hall, Harvard University, and festivals in Mexico and Honduras. Otis has created large-scale public art installations for the Cities of Boston, Medford, and Somerville. Awards include Live Arts Boston, the Hemera Foundation, Artistic Fellow of Interdisciplinary Arts (Somerville, MA), and Opus Affair Artist of the Year.

Otis’ background includes studies with Seven Stones Leadership, Authentic Movement, the Focusing Institute, Spirit Rock Meditation Center, Insight Meditation Society, Jin Shin Jyutsu, and Dell’Arte International in Bali. She received her Masters in Arts Administration from Boston University and her Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and Theatre from Tufts University. Otis’ second poetry collection, Sermons of the Real/Sermones de lo real, was published by Artepoetica press in 2019. She has also recorded two albums, Bodyful Journey and Sermons of the Real. She has also been in residence at Art Farm (Marquette, NE), Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, Noepe Center, and Martha’s Vineyard Institute for Creative Writing.