bambi@fizzymag.com
cultural critic
Tour / Détournement
Summer 2024
19 May
Chicago
Bambi Kunst in Algotrapping
Lincoln Park Conservatory
Site-specific four-channel audio installation in the fern room with performance activation for Florasonic, hosted by Experimental Sound Studio. Curated by Whitney Johnson (Matchesse) & Raven Chacon.
Tour/détournement announcement show.
31 May
Chicago
In the Group Chat
Coll
Ⓐ
1450 W 18th St. Pilsen
Brian Bartz – Brianna Perry – Camilla Carper – Francesca Bayegan – Jonathan Worcester – Kyle Stecker – Maddy Inez Leeser – Mariel Fishel-Rich –Maya Nguyen – Paolo Puck – Rex Delafakran – Sidony O’Neal – Siobhan AJR Wood – Steph Patsula – Tarik Kentouche
Apartment gallery group show of painting, sculpture, and sound objects curated by Bambi from various artist group chats.
20 June – 28 August
Lisbon,
Bremen, Berlin, Rome, Monte Castello di Vibio, Venice, London, Chicago.
Bambi Kunst is Conceptual Artist Trope
1 pair black pants & 8 white tees,
made-to-measure by Jacob Gouin in Pilsen, Chicago.
50% cotton 50% cashmere deadstock
“It really is just me, no bra, and a baby tee against the world.”
–Bambi
“I’m thinking for the edges 2 hemmed, 2 overlocked, 3 raw, and then 1 inside out. So as the tour goes on, you can wear progressively more deconstructionist shirts.”
–Jacob Gouin
25 June
Bremen, Germany
I Went from the Margins to the Center and Back. Top Ten Things They Don’t Want You to Know.
Hochschule für Künste Bremen
Artist talk in the style of clickbait article, given for Temporary Spaces Atlier, the class of Asli Serbest. Organzied by exiled Ukranian performance artist/club kid/scholar Go Piss Girl.
4 July
Berlin Fashion Week
Bambi Kunst in Conceptual Art Therapy
with Cyrstal Reneè Drake
Three hour performance as both model and critic for FIZZY Mag at Pandora Art Gallery, during an art-fashion show hosted by Therapy Berlin, Tata Christian, and Fade Out Label.
Music by Mattam Matta, Zona Interdunar, and T.O.W.P.E.
Live fashion-drawing by Georg Martin.
[Performance Score – Have a real therapy session live on Zoom from the front row of the Thearpy Berlin runway during Berlin Fashion Week. Actual, real-life Conceptual Art Therapist Crystal Reneè Drake joins remotely from Chicago. I review the runway while Drake reviews my art practice.]
Crystal Reneè Drake is an indigenous, queer, relational therapist, who strives to offer compassionate support tailored to clients’ experiences of grief, life changes, and mental health. Their practice deeply integrates art as a transformative tool, using relational art therapy to blend cultural values, identity, and community connection. This approach not only aims to decolonize therapy but also empowers the people and artists.
5 July
Berlin
Bambi Kunst is Seemingly Always En Route To the Gig
with Sammie Veeler at Trust Fund
Spontaneous day with artist/e–girl/curator Sammie Veeler, who is currently trapping out of Trust. We went on the computer and she printed out posters and graphic scores for me.
Wondering,
Is this also the performance?
6 July
Rome
7–21 July
Bambi Kunst is
Crowned Prince of Semiotics in The Tower
Monte Castello di Vibio, Italy
Institute for Contemporary Art Italy
12-day performance accompanied by drawing and writing in a 15th century landowner’s surveilance tower built from Etruscan Stones reimagined as a Doomscroll Tower Card. Thanks to Michelle Grabner and the Institute for Contemporary Art Italy for the invitation to experiment, and to art-critic Nikki Cormaci for archiving the performance.
Writing on echo chambers, accelerationism, trend forecasting, the algorithmic flattening of image culture and heartbreak, to be announced.
24–27 July
Bambi Kunst in Venice is Drowning
Venice
P E R F O R M A T I C A
60th Annual Venice Biennale
90-minute rags-to-riches fairytale set in the climate apocalypse, using the global art market as a backdrop. Curated by Hector Canonge for Performatica: Foreign Bodies All Over during the 60th Annual Venice Biennale.
2 August
Absent Art Star at Local Opening
Venice / Chicago
Bloko Venice
Stasia’s Gallery Gold Coast
A conceptual performance commissioned uses out-of-town-ness as a medium to concider Lacan’s petit-a small object of desire.
Curated by Veronika Clements for the opening of Our Delicate Armor, a painting exhibition featuring Caleb Yono, Anne-Joelle Tan, Bambi Kunst, Jewlya Sturtevant, and Virginia Kidd.
[Performance Score – Miss your own opening of bad girls of painting genre show to review sculptural chirs made by artist/curator Victor Miklos in the courtyard garden of Bloko Venice by sitting on them. Enjoy the shade of passionflower. Call the act of refusal something obvious like Bambi’s Day Off or Absent Art Star at Local Opening. Appear only in the curator’s stress-dreams alongside a cast of her ex-boyfriends. Buy yourself flowers. Crown yourself with your own laurels. Carry your own gear-bag. Okay, actually maybe Victor can carry the bag. Pin yourself with a ribbon that reads, curator’s favorite, but attach the pin up-side down. ]
5 August
Copenhagen
Coll
Ⓐ
Floating Pop–Up on Nyhavn Canal
Embodied Nihilist at the Digital Escapist Garden Party is a 4 hour happening at The Raft, a floating sensory structure built for the 2023 International Union of Architects (UIA) World Congress by Studio Coquille and Tan & Blixenkrone in Copenhagen’s Nyhavn Canal. Happening can be viewed from BLOX, Lille Langebro, or by boat from the water.
The day after the happening, there will be a guided sign-walk through Nørrebro led by Bambi & sign-painter Veronika Skilte. Veronika is a trade painter known within the craft as the best signpainter in the world with a speciality in gold leaf. transfeminist sign-painting collective Burds of the Brush. Her work went viral this year in the form of an ASMR video with 4 million views. Veronika and her collaborator Line were comissioned to paint SUPERFLEX’s contribution to Danish Pavillion at the 60th Annual Venice Bienalle by hand for the Designmuseum Denmark.
Wondering:
Sign-Painting and Viral Videos. Is it Art?
7–14 August
Bambi Kunst and Vanity Crystal in Fever Dream
London
Merging, Stillness Lane
Week long research residency with sound artist Vanity Crystal (ViVi) from the UK Hardcore bands Rubber and Negative Space. We contracted Punk Flu together and did not perform. Evidence of research can be found on ViVi’s radio show Repetitive Strain, out monthly on Balamii, and on episode 3 of anarchist podcast Backshots Pod, entitled “High Speed Railed.”
“Punk ruined my life.”
– Vanity Crystal
“No, yeah. Reading theory ruined mine.”
– Bambi Kunst
15–18 August
Co-Prosperity, Lumpen Journal
Performance Cancelled! Due to Punk Flu and Injury that occured off the page! New Date TBA.
31 August
Love Interest with Amnesia
48 x 72 in
paint, snail secretion filtrate, lube, under–eye masks, USB drive, bikini bottoms, white-Tshirt, safety pin on deadstock Balenciaga nylon micro–canvas in color: caviar.
Chicago
Stasia’s Gallery
Love Interest with Amnesia is a painting that has forgotten itself. Or a performance yet to be realized. A large black canvas stretched from deadstock Balenciaga nylon micro canvas in the color caviar sits blank, waiting for the artist to create the painting live, during a 2 hour performance on the exhibition’s closing day. The materials list betrays what the canvas could become. This duet of two new works under one name take on femininity as seen through the lens of TV and movie tropes like the born-sexy-yesterday fembot or the I-can-be-what-you-want-me-to-be bombshell with no past. Wondering: What happens to the love interest when they are out of the frame?
“You showed up in my dreams last night. It was you, my ex-boyfriend from high school, and my ex-boyfriend from college. So congraduations.”
– Veronika Clements, curator
“...”
– Bambi Kunst
[Performance given while wearing ballgag, in response to nearly being censored from the show for having an illegible interpretation of feminity.]
September 25
POV: Artist Studio Gameplay Infinate Loop
Chicago
Warehouse Location Released Day Of Show
Performance score: Chain self to wall during the last gabber rave of summer. Paint for 8 hours in the middle of a two-room warehouse rave while wearing ear protection, a ballgag, a bikini, mini skirt, and platform boots. Concider this a reperformance by-way-of translation of Spring 2025 collaboration with Gartex and Signal Clearance, Rave Bambi Bound to Speaker Stack 4 Hours.