Kimberly Austin was born in 1965. She
grew up in the Bay Area of California, and has made her home
in San Francisco with Matt, her partner of 13 years. Her childhood
in northern California was a rich experience of hippies, heroine
addicts, and Hayward misfits, all of which have greatly informed
her work.
Surrounded by the unusual within her immediate
family and their weekend trips to potluck parties in Berkeley,
Kim developed an early appreciation for diversity. The contrast
between her suburban home in Hayward and the colorful life
near San Francisco intrigued her. As a child, she looked forward
to the after school excursions that lead her to concerts in
People's Park and reparatory theatres that played Performance
almost nightly.
By the time Kim became a teenager she
developed cancer, and she began to see a facet of diversity
that was much more intimate than she had previously known.
Where she had embraced "difference" as a child,
she suddenly became self conscious. The pressure to conform
and blend had entered her consciousness.
As an artist, Kim has reflected intimately
on the experience of normalcy. How is normalcy defined, by
whom, and for what purpose? She examines the notion of healthy,
happy, normal people and finds the discrepancies woven into
the fabric of this social construct. Her work is an ongoing
investigation of the space that lies between acceptable and
deviant behavior, that which is congratulated in society and
that which is condemned.
Kimberly received her undergraduate degree
in Art at California State University Hayward in 1988. She
studied for a year in Italy in 1985, which was undeniably
the most influential period of her official studies. In 1988,
she moved to San Francisco and began her graduate studies
at San Francisco State University. Extending her three year
degree into five, she lived in Madrid for a year with Matt,
where she had her first European exhibitions. Since receiving
her MFA degree in 1994, Kimberly has continued to produce
work that furthers her quest of redefining natural behavior.
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