Dr. Tracy Spencer Stonestreet

Specialization

Contemporary and Performance Art

Education

Ph.D., Virginia Commonwealth University, 2019
M.F.A., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2011
B.A., North Carolina State University, 2004
B.A., North Carolina State University, 2004

Biography

Tracy Stonestreet conducts visual and scholarly research at the intersection of contemporary art, queer theory, and time studies. She is particularly interested in static artworks produced in tandem with performances, and how such hybrid creative practices blur distinctions between art and documentation. Current projects include articles on American artists EJ Hill and Sonya Clark, as well as research into global artistic shifts toward liveness. Tracy received her PhD in Media, Art, and Text from Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), where she researched the rise of action as a contemporary medium, as well as museum practices of cataloguing and archiving hybrid artworks. She has an MFA in Studio Art from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she studied sculpture and contemporary practice. Before coming to VCU, Tracy was an assistant professor of Fine Art at Hampton University, and served as the guest editor for the International Review of African American Art. 

Research Interests

Late Modern and Contemporary art movements of the 20th and 21st centuries; contemporary hybrid art practices that incorporate live elements with static forms; histories of action art, performance, and other time-based artforms; the role of gender and gender perception in artistic production and art historical record; current institutional practices of registration, categorization, and archive; theories of feminism and gender; theories of time, performativity, and liveness

Publications

Stonestreet, Tracy. “At the VMFA: The Dirty South,” CAA.reviews, November 2021

Stonestreet, Tracy. “Destabilizing the Patriarchal Time of Art History: A Consideration of the Nonlinearity of Hybrid Artworks,” Against the Canon: Art, Feminism(s) and Activisms from the 18th to the 21st Centuries, Fundação Bienal do Mercosul, 2020

Stonestreet, Tracy. “Breaching the Document/Artwork Divide: Performance, Hybrid Artworks, and the Lingering Problem of Categorization,” Art Documentation 39.2, 2020

Presentations

Stonestreet, Tracy. “Indexicality of Endurance: MC Coble and the Re-Presentation of Pain,” Southeastern College Art Conference, Richmond, Virginia, 2020

Stonestreet, Tracy.  “The Artist as Parent as Academic,” Southeastern College Art Conference, Chattanooga, Tennessee, 2019

Stonestreet, Tracy. “Irreducibly Present: Finding Subjectivity in Cassils’ PISSED,” Feminist Art History Conference, American University, 2018

Stonestreet, Tracy. “Flexing the Lexicon: An Artist’s Confrontation, Exploration, and Application of Performance Terms to Making,” Southeastern College Art Conference, Birmingham, Alabama, 2017

Stonestreet, Tracy.  “Cases of Truth and Fiction in Performance-Based Visual Art,” Southern Humanities Conference, Savannah, Georgia, 2017

Stonestreet, Tracy. “Invisibly Present: A Look at the Artist’s Body through Performance Objects,” University of Mary Washington, 2017    

Funded Research Projects and Grants

Faculty Research Grant, Virginia Commonwealth University, 2020

Gulnar Bosch Travel Award, Southeastern College Art Conference, 2018

Research Grant, Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts, 2017   

Hibbs Scholarship for Mothers in Graduate School, Virginia Commonwealth University, 2017