Linda Mary Montano: Flying the Coop

Linda Mary Montano is best known for her radical, pioneering performance art. Early in her career, she gravitated toward endurance works that demanded extreme devotion, physical dedication, and resolve. In the now-famous collaborative performance Art/Life One Year Performance, Montano was tied to Taiwanese-American artist Tehching Hsieh for an entire year (1983–1984) with an eight-foot rope that was secured around each artist’s waist. The gesture is as heady as it is punk, and it beautifully relays how far she will go for art.

Now, at 84, Montano has slowed her tempo and is living by the self-made adage, “Old people wisely do less.” The art of aging and simplicity are at the forefront of her mind and heart, along with a strong Catholic faith and fond family memories. At this stage in life, Montano embraces and meditates about what is next; for herself and for us all. These ruminations have landed her on an intriguing spirit animal– a flying chicken with a vivid, beating red heart.

These primarily landlocked creatures soar off into the sunset in a new series of drawings. Each work is rendered on one of her mother’s old handkerchiefs, adding depth and weight to the artist’s childlike scrawl, which feels strangely electric. All titled My Mother’s Tears, the works hang en masse on clotheslines, while the children’s song Chicken Dance plays from above. The scene feels playful at first, but it slowly unfolds into a reckoning and site for transformation. Montano implores the audience to join her in the dance and collaborate by sharing their performances online.

A digital archive of Montano’s wide-ranging video art has been compiled as a second component to Flying the Coop. These works span decades and explore topics as diverse as Alzheimers, religion, poverty, and the seven chakras.

Linda Mary Montano (b. 1942) lives and works in Saugerties, NY. She received a BA in Sculpture from the College of New Rochelle, an MA in sculpture from Villa Schifanoia in Florence, Italy, and an MFA from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Montano’s work has been included in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, CA), and the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley, CA). Montano taught performance at the University of Texas at Austin for seven years and continues to teach performance art via Zoom.