please join us Tuesday for a lecture by the inimitable
Kembra Pfahler
Tuesday, September 18 / 6:30pm / Prentis Hall, Room 101
Kembra Pfahler is a New York City-based interdisciplinary artist, and is the current lead singer of her band The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, along with her long-time partner in the arts, Samoa.
Pfahler grew up in Los Angeles amid the first wave of LA punk in the 1970s, on a surf goth diet that included Diamanda Galas, The Screamers, Johanna Wendt, Parliament Funkadelic, and surf filmmakers like Bruce Brown. After high school, Pfahler left for New York to attend the School of Visual Arts (SVA). Her films and performances were shown in New York throughout the 1980s. During this decade she lived through the AIDS epidemic, which would shift the course of her life forever. She gave up all harmful substances in the late 80s in honor of her friends who had died from AIDS, and started a band that combined what she had been articulating through an abyss of mediums for ten years. The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black was born: a theatrical rock band the likes of which none had experienced in some time. Over the course of a decade beginning in the 90s, she toured, made records and films, and cemented her footprint in the landscape of minor cultural icons. In 2006, The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black gave a conceptual concert, entitled Sound of Magic, at Deitch Projects. Recently, the Independent Film Channel produced a special film on the group called: I Believe in Halloween. She claimed popularity was an abscess that would pop, and is a self-claimed anhedoniac.
After 2000, she resumed a life in the art world, exhibiting all around the world. Major solo exhibitions include CAPITAL IMPROVEMENTS, Emalin, (London, 2016); Fuck Island, Participant Inc. (New York, 2012); File Under ‘V’, Rove Gallery (London, 2005); Availabism and Anti-naturalism: A Feminine Experiment, American Fine Arts Company (New York, 2002); and Riddle of the Sphinx, Deitch Projects (New York, 2002). Selected group exhibitions include Future Feminism, The Hole (New York, 2014); New York Minute, Garage Center for Contemporary Art (Moscow, 2011) traveling to MACRO Museum (Rome, 2011); Dead Flowers, Vox Populi (Philadelphia, 2010); and the 2008 Whitney Biennial (New York). Pfahler also performed with Anohni during her tours Turning and Hopelessness. She is currently represented by Emalin Gallery, and recently received a Golden award from Bust magazine.
She founded Availabism, a philosophy put into practice since the 80s, which means making the best use of what is available. She formed P.L.O.W. (Punk Ladies of Wrestling), a women’s wrestling team that performed with The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black. She practices Gothletics: a form of parcour and gymnastics.
Pfahler developed the 13 Tenets For Future Feminism with Anohni and Johanna Constantine and has done shows in New York and Denmark pushing the directives of the FF movement. She founded Performance Art 101 in 2010, with the encouragement of her friends, which she has taught in Chicago, Los Angeles, Berlin, and Aarhus, Denmark. Currently, Pfahler teaches a performance course at Columbia University called The Queen’s Necklace.
Photo by Christelle De Castro
