Cornella: The Story of a Burning Bush (1985) by Kembra Pfahler
Saturday, February 11, 1989, 8:30 pm
LIBIDINAL ILLUMINATIONS
Artist Kembra Pfahler and Somoa in person
Kembra Pfahler’s films and performances (most notoriously with rock musician Somoa) have been compared to Jack Smith and Karen Finley in the way she transforms the detritus of culture and her own psyche into mythic and disturbing creations. “The artist’s persona emerges from the artifacts, films and performances. She is a self-invented myth shaped by her mass of contradictions, a tragi-comic temptress-saint fighting to be as comprehensible as she is elusive. Every gesture is her own birth and death in the womb and wound of her impassioned narcissism… Her work is at once exhibitionistic and private; only making public the sexual transgression of her psyche to use the energy of her audience’s taboos to search deeper inside herself.” – Carlo McCormick, East Village Eye. Presented with the A.T.A. (Artists’ Television Access) Gallery.