She's received death threats and been labelled 'obscene', but writer and performance artist Karen Finley tells Katrina Fox she's misunderstood.

During the 1990s Karen Finley unwittingly became the poster child for anti-censorship and free speech in the US when the government attempted to take away a grant bestowed on her by the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) on the grounds that the piece of work she created with it was obscene. The work, We Keep Our Victims Ready, explored themes of violence, sexual abuse and the female body, which culminated with Finley smearing herself with chocolate in an allusion to the true story of 16-year-old Tawana Brawley, who was found alive covered in her own excrement and subsequently accused of perpetrating the act herself.

Finley, along with four other artists who came to be known as the NEA Four, sued but eventually lost the eight-year legal battle in 1998 when a Supreme Court ruling led to the government being able to restrict funding based on 'decency standards'. "I'm still dealing with the effects of the case," she explains during a telephone interview from her home in New York, on the eve of her visit to Australia where she will be a guest of the Sydney Writers' Festival. While declining to go into detail on the personal effects (it's been reported that she received death threats during one performance), she says: "The issues are still played out and the issue in terms of decency and if the government can take funding away based on decency is that it can be used as a precedent for other cases such as abortion rights which are under threat in Dakota. I am concerned that the First Amendment and Constitution are being tampered with."

Politics, along with religion, sexuality, rape, incest, violence, AIDS and suicide, has been a major issue in Finley's comprehensive body of works (her most provocative pieces are contained in the anthology, Shock Treatment). And her latest offering, the novel George & Martha, is no exception. Based on a fictitious affair between president George Bush and domestic goddess Martha Stewart in a hotel room the night before Stewart's due to go to jail, it is an amusing satire involving cocaine use and spanking that sees 'Baby' George crawling around on all fours, screaming to 'Mommy' Martha to get Bin-Laden out of his arse. The humour is evident in this latest novel, but Finley argues that it's always been a feature of her work, even pieces that deal with heavy subject matter. "The way of viewing Karen Finley…it is still difficult for US culture to look at a woman being able to have so many different areas of intelligence, so [it's easier to make] me dark, not in the light, a Medusa/Medea character," she laments. "There is an imagined understanding of me."

Her views on the current political climate in the US, however, leave no room for misunderstandings. "We have a president who is pathologising his presidency for his own emotional unmet needs," Finley says. "We have a psychotic for a president and it's really dismal. George projects his rage onto Saddam Hussein. I believe Americans are living through the legend of George Bush's father who was also president, so we are seeing a man who's trying to live up to his father and he's a pale version. He's never lived up to his father and he disguises his rage towards his father by concentrating on Saddam Hussein. He is intent on assassinating his father - these are patricide feelings. If he could just take Psychology 101…I think 10-year-olds have more of an understanding of when they're acting out."

As for Stewart, Finley's had "run-ins with the Martha machine" in the past (she did a play about hyper-domesticity which Stewart believed was based on her). "She is the protagonist in my novel and we are all Martha," she asserts. "We are at war and George is our crisis and Martha is our comfort. In these times, people over-emphasise in their homes with decorating and baking. I wondered why people like her are on a pedestal. The novel is like reading a Greek drama or Shakespearean tragedy."

With her pro-women works, it's no surprise to learn that Finley, currently a professor in the Department of Art and Public Policy at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, considers herself to be a part of the feminist movement (although the National Organisation for Women once rejected her 'The Virgin Mary is Pro-Choice' design for a t-shirt). "I'm for equal rights, equal access to equal pay, reproductive rights," she says. "But I think we need to have liberation for men. Men have to come to an understanding that they no longer have to die for their country and can have respect for their bodies and for women."

www.karenfinley.com

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