Julie Tolentino (she/they interchangeably) is of Filipinx-Salvadoran heritage. As an interdisciplinary artist, they create works in performance, installation, sound, text, video, one-to-one and group collaboration, sculpture, and object-making.
Major works include projects for Performance Space New York, (2019), Commonwealth & Council (2013, 2019), San Francisco Bridge Project (2018), Thessolaniki Biennial (2017), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (2015), Theater Works Singapore and NYU Abu Dhabi (2013), New Museum (2013), Performa (2005, 2013), Haus der Kultren der Welt (2010, 2009), NGBK in Berlin (2006), Participant, Inc. (2005, 2018), Tramway Glasgow, and The Green Room in the UK (1998).
Tolentino contributed to the essay "The Sum of All Questions: Clit Club" in GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies (Winter 2018) and is featured in the 2019 Visual AIDS Duets Series with Kia Labeija. With Pati Hertling, she re-staged Ellen Cantor's 1993 exhibition “Coming To Power: Twenty Five Years of Sexually X-plicit Art By Women,” (2016) and edited the catalogue ELLEN CANTOR: I'm Still Coming (Capricious, 2017). Creative partnerships include projects with Stosh Fila, Ivy Kwan Arce, Robert Crouch, Aldo Hernandez, Lovett/Codagnone, Diamanda Galas, David Rousseve, Ron Athey, Abigail Severance, and Mark So. She is the senior provocations editor for TDR (The Drama Review) and host art/writing residencies at Feral House*Studio in the Mohave Desert. Throughout the 1990s, Tolentino ran queer POC-centered club spaces in New York such as Clit Club, Dagger, and Tattooed Love Child; was a member of ACTUP NY, Art Positive, and House of Color Video Collectives; and co-created the Safer Sex Handbook for Women for Lesbian Aids Project/GMHC with Cynthia Madansky.
Support includes Herb Alpert/Ucross Residency (2021); Herb Alpert/MacDowell Fellowship (2020); Queer Art Sustained Achievement (2020); Foundation for Contemporary Art - Performance (2019); Pieter Dancemakers Grant (2018); BOFFO Fire Island Artist Residency, Fire Island, NY (2018); Hope Mohr Dance's Community Engagement Project, San Francisco (2017-18); Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (2014-15), New Museum, New York (2013), PACT Zollverein Residency, Essen, Germany (2012); Choreographers in Mentorship and Exchange (2012 with Jmy Kidd and 2010 with Doran George); Art Matters (2010, 2015); Artsadmin, Toynbee Studios, London, UK (2002) and the Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art (1999).
Tolentino has been a guest artist, lecturer, and assistant professor at Bard, Pratt, NYU, UCLA, New School, Columbia, and Cal Arts amongst others. She received an M.F.A. as the Dean's Distinguished Fellow in Performance/Dance at University of California at Riverside 2018-2020. They will be an Alma Hawkins Chair in the World Arts & Cultures Department at UCLA, Winter 2022 and is currently a scholar-in-residence at NYU Steinhardt (2022-2023) and a Queer Art Mentor in Performance (2022-2023). Two commissioned projects centering art and activism will debut in 2022 in Los Angeles and New York, respectively
At MacDowell, Tolentino continued developing two new 2022 commissions. Daily practice included writing, editing, research, Klein Technique, Feldenkrais, and they created prototypes using leather, glass, and mirrors. She completed an audio work as part of the collective, What Would An HIV Doula Do? (WWHIVDD) for debut at the Walker Art Center (Fall 2021)
