Heidi Rider
2020 Fuq u, 2020
[Video]
Courtesy of the artist.

Heidi Rider is a Las Vegas performer, a professional clown with a BA in Art and Theatre from CUNY Hunter College, New York City, and a Professional Actor Training certification from the Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theatre. She describes clowning as an art that gives both performer and audience a chance to probe their deepest and most mortifying emotions. “I use this rebellious, sensitive artform in all of my visual and performative work,” she writes. “I use the clown to … explore shame without taking on the suffering that inevitably comes with it. Clowns transform despair into delight. When we watch a clown experience pain, yet retain its optimism and resilience, we empathetically follow them into the black hole, through hell and back out again into cathartic laughter.“ In 2020 Fuq u, she uses the figure of a clown to respond to an unusually painful year.
(DKS)