jeanette joy harris

Jeanette “Joy” Harris is a Houston-based artist and artistic researcher focused on the multi-dimensionality of performance and its intersection with philosophy. She is particularly interested in the constellations that emerge from the interdisciplinary discourse between performance art, visual art, sculpture, dance, and other modes of embodied expression.

 

Joy is thematically interested in genealogy, mythology, ritual, and temporality, and her philosophical background emphasizes phenomenology as a mode for experiencing and describing performance structures. 

 

Over the past 25 years, Joy has created projects that involve performance art, dance, video, photography, installation, and public engagement. She has shown creative work regionally, nationally, and internationally including projects in Austin, Chicago, Dallas, Helsinki, Houston, London, Los Angeles, Lecce (IT), Miami, the Netherlands, New Orleans, New York City, Pittsburgh, Portland, San Francisco, and Venice (IT).

 

Joy has also been involved as both a leader and creative partner in a variety of performance and philosophy curatorial projects and has an extensive body of written work focused on creative practice.  Joy’s projects and research have been highlighted at various organizations and institutions including the American Society for Aesthetics; University of Cambridge, Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics; Carleton University Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies; Centre for Phenomenology at University of South Africa; Literary Landscapes: Forms of Knowledge in the Humanities at La Sorbonne Université; and the Society for Italian Philosophy.  

 

Joy is currently on faculty at the University of Houston McGovern College of the Arts and co-authored Collaboration Among the Arts: An Interdisciplinary Approach (Kendall Hunt). She has an MscR in art history from University of Edinburgh and a BA in government from Texas Woman’s University.