Kembra Pfahler

Early life and education

Pfahler is the daughter of surfer Freddy Pfahler who had appeared in the 1958 surf film Slippery When Wet, directed by Bruce Brown. Her brother is Adam Pfahler, the drummer of Jawbreaker. Growing up in Southern California, Pfahler appeared as a child actress in TV commercials for Kodak film. She went to college at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and studied under Mary Heilmann and Lorraine O'Grady.

Career

Hans Ulrich Obrist described Pfahler as a 'pioneer' of the Cinema of Transgression and of performance art and 'pioneering' as a musician and actress, and has called her interdisciplinary practice a Gesamtkunstwerk. She has also been identified as a 'post-punk polymath.'

Pfahler has shown work at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome, The Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow, Deitch Projects, The Hole Gallery in New York, Bowman Gallery, and Kenny Schachter Rove Gallery, in London. Her drawings are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She is currently represented by Emalin Gallery in London.

1980s: East Village scene

In the 1980s Pfahler became involved East Village scene associated with ABC No Rio when she began performing in and creating low-budget films associated with the Cinema of Transgression. With best friend and collaborator Gordon Kurtti, Pfahler created live performances for Life Café, 8BC and Danceteria and was the lead performer in XS: The Opera Opus when performed in 1984 at the Pyramid Club. Also in 1984, Pfhaler and Kurtti organized The Extremist Show at ABC No Rio, featuring many of New York's sub-culture artists and groups including P.O.O.L., Samoa Moriki and his punk rock band BALLS, The Church of the Little Green Man, and the Cinema of Transgression featuring the underground films of Nick Zedd, Lydia Lunch and Richard Kern, Borbetomagus and Red Dog Magazine.

Pfahler stars alongside Jack Smith in Ari M. Roussimoff's Shadows in the City (1991). Pfahler, while in Europe, discovered and took inspiration from the Viennese Actionism movement, specifically Rudolf Schwarzkogler. In 1982, she moved into an apartment on the Lower East Side which she painted entirely tile red to make it look like a film set.

Also during the 1980s, Pfahler worked as a Calvin Klein model, during an advertising campaign in the heroin chic style. She appeared as a model in the photographs accompanying the article "These Children that Come at You with Knives" written by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain in a 1999 issue of Pop Smear Magazine. In this comic-book style layout depicting the Manson Family, Pfahler played Sharon Tate alongside Maynard James Keenan as Charles Manson.

1990s: ''The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black'' and ''Sewing Circle''

In 1990, Pfahler and Samoa Moriki, her husband at the time, founded the band The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black (VHOKB), named in homage to actress Karen Black. They released three albums: A National Healthcare (1993); Anti-Naturalists (1995); and Black Date (1998); as well as several limited-edition presses on vinyl.

Pfahler and Samoa shot many horror films and used visual and performance art for their performances. VHOKB's live performance of The Wall of Vagina appears on Disinformation DVD – The Complete Series. VHOKB also appear on the album Virgin Voices: A Tribute to Madonna. Other performances developed at this time included walking on bowling balls and cracking paint-filled eggs on her vulva. In nearly all her performances, Pfahler appears in her signature "look": naked with monochrome body paint (most often red), knee-high black pleather boots with white laces, a huge stack of black fright wigs with bows and black teeth. She often works with the "girls of Karen Black", who dress in similar attire and support her performances.

Pfahler sang backup on the song "Shoot, Knife, Strangle, Beat and Crucify" on the album Brutality and Bloodshed for All of GG Allin and the Murder Junkies.

In Richard Kern's Sewing Circle (1992), Pfhaler had her vagina sewn shut by artist Lisa Resurreccion while only wearing a "Young Republicans" t-shirt, black stockings and garters. She repeated this performance two more times, including in 1998 for Penthouse.

2000s: Art exhibitions and shows

In a 2005 Pfahler held a solo exhibition at Rove Projects in London. The exhibition, titled File Under V, consisted of self-portraits, performance documentation, and band props from VHOKB. In January 2007, Pfahler, with Julie Atlas Muz, curated a mixed-media art exhibition titled Womanizer at Deitch Projects. The show included works by E.V. Day, Breyer P-Orridge, Vaginal Davis, and burlesque performer Bambi the Mermaid. Her contribution was an installation with a bed set that contained a skeleton and dolls painted in multiple colors, surrounded by walls plastered with red paste, as well as a video that shows her ripping the dolls out of a birthing canal. As part of the 2008 Whitney Biennial and with support from the Art Production Fund, Pfahler and Voluptuous Horror gave a performance in the Park Avenue Armory's Drill Hall on March 14, 2008. These performances included her works Actressocracy and Whitney Live.

In 2009 alongside gallerist Kathy Grayson, Pfhaler published a photographic catalog of her work in the form of a book titled Beautalism. In these exhibitions Pfahler started creating 'butt prints' through 'sit ins' where she uses the colours of the body paint from her Karen Black costumes, inspired by Yves Klein's practice these work's create paintings via bodily action. These butt prints feature in Season 6, Episode 6 of Gossip Girl (2012).

2010-Present

She has starred as 'Sister Kembra' in Bruce LaBruce's The Misandrists (2017) and was interviewed as part of the documentary The Advocate for Fagdom by Angélique Bosio about the queercore filmmaker.

Pfahler has held three solo shows in the UK with Emalin. In 2016, Capital Improvements recreated her apartment in the gallery and used London-based artists as the 'girls of Karen Black' including Angel Rose and Phoebe Patey-Ferguson. Rebel Without a Cock (2019), featured a giant mirror ball penis and 'mirrorballs' and a performance on roller skates and On the Record Off the Record: Sound Off (2022), consisting of new works and collages of documentation from her work in clubs in the 1980s.

In fall 2019, Pfahler walked in the Mugler Spring 2020 ready-to-wear fashion show. She has also modeled for Rick Owens, Rodarte, Marc Jacobs, and Helmut Lang.

References

1. "Kembra Pfahler : Whitney programme".
2. (January 15, 2017). "Future Feminism, Art and Shock; a conversation with Kembra Pfahler – Too Much Love Magazine".
3. Nicolas Ballet, ''Shock Factory: The Visual Culture of [[Industrial Music]]'', [[Intellect Books]], pp. 440-441
4. Engle, John. ''Surfing in the Movies: A Critical History'', McFarland, 2015, {{ISBN. 978-0786495214
5. Magazine, BOMB. (November 11, 2015). "Kembra Pfahler: You Will Lose Friends for Your Art".
6. Obrist, Hans Ulrich. (2020). "The Voluptuous Horror of Kembra Pfahler". Autre Journal.
7. Church, Lewis. (March 1, 2019). "Everyone was doing everything: The post-punk polymath on the Lower East Side". Punk & Post Punk.
8. Love, Too Much. (January 15, 2017). "Future Feminism, Art and Shock; a conversation with Kembra Pfahler".
9. (2012). "You killed me first : the cinema of transgression". KW Institute for Contemporary Art.
10. ""To qualify as an artist, you have to be practically willing to die"—Kembra Pfahler in conversation with Stoya".
11. [[Richard Meltzer. Meltzer, R.]] ''Disinformation: The Interviews'', New York: Disinformation Ltd, 2002, {{ISBN. 0-9713942-1-0pp.68-80
12. (2010). "Women of the underground : music : cultural innovators speak for themselves". Manic D Press.
13. Johnson, Dominic. (2019). "Kembra Pfahler: Rebel Without a Cock". Art Monthly.
14. GG Allin and the Murder Junkies: ''After Hours'' DVD, Volume 2
15. "[https://www.huffingtonpost.com/bomb-magazine/feminism-and-performance_b_8528188.html Kembra Pfahler: You Will Lose Friends for Your Art]", ''[[Huffington Post]]'', November 11, 2015
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19. "2008 Whitney Biennial".
20. Kembra., Pfahler. (2008). "Kembra Pfahler : beautalism". Deitch Projects.
21. Sherlock, Amy. (June 26, 2019). "What's Behind the Voluptuous Horror of Kembra Pfahler?".
22. (February 23, 2011). "The Advocate for Fagdom". Variety.
23. (October 25, 2011). "Bruce LaBruce: 'The Advocate For Fagdom'".
24. (November 21, 2016). "Kembra Pfahler, Capital Improvements, review: 'schlocky warnings and stark illustrations of current moment'".
25. Dazed. "Backstage at Mugler SS20".
26. Love Michael, Michael. (April 30, 2019). "ANOHNI Honors Renowned Intersex Performer Dr. Julia Yasuda".
27. [https://bombmagazine.org/articles/kembra-pfahler Kembra Pfahler interview] by Brienne Walsh, ''[[Bomb (magazine). Bomb]]'', November 6, 2015
28. Johnson, Dominic. (November 5, 2008). "Perverse Martyrologies: An Interview with Ron Athey". Contemporary Theatre Review.
29. (March 2014). "Artist Highlight: KEMBRA PFAHLER {{!}} SFAQ / NYAQ / LXAQ".
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31. "Saturdays @ WMC".
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33. (2008). "Kembra Pfahler: Beautalism". Deitch Projects.
34. (September 5, 2014). "Five Women Artists Are Setting The Stage For A Future Feminism".
35. "Women on their way: Future Feminism at The Hole".
36. (April 24, 2018). "Future Feminism".
37. (August 18, 2017). "The future is female: the 13 tenets of Future Feminism".
38. . ["Hillary Clinton: "Yes, the future is female""](https://www.reuters.com/video/2017/02/07/hillary-clinton-yes-the-future-is-female/). *Reuters Video*.