Holly Bass

Holly Bass (born June 23, 1971, in Travis, California) is an American multidisciplinary performance artist, choreographer, writer, and cultural worker based in Washington, D.C. Working across performance, dance, theater, poetry, photography, installation, video, and participatory practice, Bass examines American history, generational labor, liberation, race, gender, power, and the ways bodies are watched, valued, disciplined, and commodified. Her background in journalism informs a research-driven practice that frequently brings historical material into dialogue with contemporary social and political life.  Bass is particularly known for performances that use the Black female body as a site through which to examine labor, spectacle, national identity, and cultural memory. In Moneymaker, an endurance performance first presented in conjunction with 30 Americans, she uses dance and repetition to interrogate histories of the exploitation and objectification of Black women. American Woman, a durational performance and video installation, considers Black women’s contributions to American political and cultural life, while The Trans-Atlantic Time Traveling Company uses speculative theater to follow three Black women moving between the present and the Reconstruction era in search of the meanings of freedom.  Bass earned a BA from Sarah Lawrence College, where she concentrated in creative writing, social sciences, and contemporary dance, and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. She also studied modern dance with Viola Farber and was a Cave Canem fellow. Her work has been presented by the National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Pérez Art Museum Miami, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Seattle Art Museum, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, New York Live Arts, Wexner Center for the Arts, and the Venice Biennale. In 2026, the University of Michigan Museum of Art will present We Hold These Truths…, Bass’s largest exhibition to date, opening October 3. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Art and Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery.