Julie Ann Otis

Photography

Live Nude Girls is an interactive exhibit about the politics of the body and physical closeness in a post-pandemic world. In the wake of the pandemic, how we connect has drastically changed. We have both new, exciting possibilities of virtual spaces and heightened pressure and preciousness of 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 view without objectifying and how we can center feeling seen as much as we are outwardly seeing.

Live Nude Girls is a continuation of my past social practice art installations that foster collective compassion by translating individual stories into large-scale interactive media. My work affirms the personal as political and each person's personal narrative as political narrative. The ways we speak about and treat one another and ourselves ultimately feed or starve larger, institutionalized structures. My core artistic question has evolved from “How do we make peace more captivating than conflict?” into “How do we make social justice a movement of magnetic, undeniable pleasure?” My background in psychology, Authentic Movement, and pleasure activism orient me to somatic experience as the primary source for storytelling, creativity, and non-linear solutions. In this vein of pleasureful social justice, I am investigating and imagining how we will dismantle unjust systems using the benevolent viruses of play, humor, surprise.

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 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.

More on Julie Ann Otis’ work can be found on our Links page.