Meet Me in New York: Kembra Pfahler | Frieze New York 2024

“I moved to New York in 1979 to change the world,” says Kembra Pfahler from her NYC apartment studio, painted entirely blood red—walls, floors, ceiling, even bathtub.

Pfahler was an unmistakable figure on the 1980s East Village experimental performance scene: Marina Abramović meets The Cramps, but Pfahler’s practice spans music, film, photography and sculpture as well as performance. As fierce and uncompromising as ever, Pfahler's confrontational feminist persona is inseparable from her oeuvre, whether in rock shows as The Voluptuous Horror Of Karen Black or in her “Cinema of Transgression.”

In this intriguing snapshot of Pfahler’s everyday life, she explains “anti-naturalism” as “a way for me to describe how I interact with urban beauty,” and her practice of “Availabism”—using whatever materials or impulses are at hand—which in this case involves her taking an axe to the walls of her apartment. “Harsh times require harsh voices,” says Pfahler. But creativity and beauty, too.

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