Kembra Pfahler

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.

She grew up in Southern California.

She appeared as a child actress in TV commercials for Kodak film.

She went to college at the School of Visual Arts in New York and studied under Mary Heilmann and Lorraine O’Grady.

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.

Kembra Pfahler (born August 4, 1961 in Hermosa Beach, California, United States) is an American performance artist and rock musician.

Her film work is associated with the movement known as the Cinema of Transgression.

As a musician, she leads the band The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, who are inspired by glam, punk and shock rock.

As a visual artist, Pfahler is known for self-portraits and for founding the art movement Availabilism.

She co-authored "13 Tenets of Future Feminism".

She has also been called the "godmother of modern day shock art".

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.

Also during the 1980s, Pfahler worked as a Calvin Klein model, during an advertising campaign in the heroin chic style.

In 1982, she moved into a tenement flat in the Lower East Side which she painted entirely tile red to make it look like a film set and she has remained there until the present day.

In 1984 Pfhaler and Kurtti organized The Extremist Show at ABC No Rio in the Lower East Side – 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 films of Nick Zedd, Lydia Lunch and Richard Kern, Borbetomagus and Red Dog Magazine.

She performed in XS: The Opera Opus when it was presented at the Pyramid Club.

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.

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 Richard Kern’s Sewing Circle (1992), Pfhaler had her vagina sewn shut by artist Lisa Resurreccion while only wearing a “Young Republicans” t-shirt, back stockings and garters.

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 '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.

She repeated this performance two more times, including in 1998 for Penthouse.

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.

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.