Virginia Kennard is Live Artist, Choreographer, Producer, Dance Writer from New Zealand. Her work spans over 15 years, and includes performance installations to dance reviewing, producing to pole performances. An eclectic live artist, she holds an MA Performance from Leeds Beckett University, UK and is currently based in Ōtautahi, Aotearoa, New Zealand. She is artist-in-residence at Studio 88 in November 2025.
Virginia Kennard is a live artist, choreographer, producer, dance writer, DJ, and arts manager from Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa (New Zealand). Over the past two decades, she has created and produced her own performance works under The Naked Brastrap, her own name, and the DJ/writer pseudonym Betty Lightbulb. Her practice navigates the intersections of queer feminist theory, performance, and embodied research—using the body as a site of resistance, disruption, and transformation.
Her work explores embodied queer ecologies, interdisciplinary performance, and the climate crisis, using movement as a way to learn sustainable ways of being entangled within ecosystems. Often raw, humorous, and unflinching, Virginia’s performances challenge neoliberal, postcolonial, and cisheteronormative structures by confronting audiences with the realities of corporeality, femininity, and environmental decay—sometimes quite literally rolling in the dirt as an act of composting and renewal.
Virginia holds an MA in Performance from Leeds Beckett University (UK), where she created and toured five new works across the UK and Romania, and has studied towards an MFA in Studio at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (USA), focusing on environmental sculpture, decolonised sound, and performance studies. She also served as a teaching assistant for art students during her time there. Her earlier education includes a Diploma in Performing Arts (Commercial Dance) from the Wellington Performing Arts Centre (now Te Auaha/Te Pūkenga) and a Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Commerce and Administration from Victoria University of Wellington, majoring in Mathematics and Economics.
As both a solo artist and dramaturg for ensemble works, Virginia creates interdisciplinary performances that foster safe, inclusive spaces for storytelling and experimentation within contemporary political and ecological contexts.
During the residency, Virginia Kennard intends to further develop her Avant-Gardening research, originally conceived during her MFA Studio at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2023–2024). She plans to undertake studio and environmental research in Chiang Mai, engaging with local artists and the rich cultural landscape of the region. Her focus is on sensory experiences of dirt, compost, gardens, and ecologies—both urban and natural.
The project explores composting as an ecological and feminist practice: digesting, decaying, and regenerating ideas as a model for performance-making. By investigating the intersections of queer ecologies, embodied labour, and sustainability under capitalism, Virginia aims to transform these processes into an embodied, interdisciplinary performance practice.
For more about Virginia Kennard, visit https://viggimakesart.nz/
Studio 88 is accepting applications on an on-going basis. Check out our residency program and apply now.
Studio 88 Artist Residency 