Mayor Kiki

EDUCATION
2018-2021 the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf
2021-2026 the State Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe

GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2019, 2020 Annual Exhibitions, Kunstakademie Düsseldorf
2021, 2022, 2024) Annual Exhibitions, State Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe
2022 Schloss Scheibenhardt, Karlsruhe
2023 Badischer Kunstverein
2023 Kallinowski Raum
2024 Luis Leu
2025 Graduation Exhibition (Diploma), Karlsruhe
2025 Casa Figueira / Residência São João
2026 Kunstverein Pforzheim Master Student Exhibition

Gleb: You studied in Düsseldorf and Karlsruhe. I’m curious whether that academic context finds its way into your work. Do you feel any dialogue with institutional frameworks in your practice, or more of a tension with them?

Mayor Kiki: Studying I always felt like I was trying to conform to academic aesthetics and practices. Often spending a lot of time on conceptual pieces that in hindsight did not represent who I am as an artist or what actually interests me. I was struggling a lot with these notions and often needed to take months long breaks with Professors wondering where I was. I was always more drawn to places and experiences outside of academia than sitting through actual seminars on art history.
I think the institutions are not really up to date with the topics, anxieties and aspirations of my generation, many of whom spent a large part of their adolescence growing up and finding their identities online.
During a residency in Brazil I met the right artists to inspire me to let go of the need to fit into that framework, and it was there that I picked up drawing again. My work has always felt most fulfilling when I let go of the idea that it needed to fit into an academic context. I felt this most strongly while drawing in sketchbooks during my travels, using them as a way to reflect on my thoughts and memories.  

Gleb: You describe drawing as direct and intimate. What does that intimacy actually feel like — technically, psychologically? Could you walk us through your experience of working on Teenage Angel specifically?

Mayor Kiki: Drawing is a very private act for me and as it almost requires no preparation it feels very immediate. That is also what I like most about this medium. I use it as a way to collect my thoughts or reflect on questions that are bugging me. I need a lot of privacy creating a work before I decide it can go public.

"Teenage Angel" has this very personal adolescent vibe to it for me. I glued two pieces of paper together and started to work on the left side. After that was finished I wanted to visualise some form of progression on the right side of a paper. A dissolvement of the image, maybe self-image. 

Gleb: Oversexualized imagery and fetish aesthetics run through your work — is this a critical position for you, a way of thinking through the boundaries of personal freedom, or something else entirely? 

Mayor Kiki: I feel there is a strong parallel between outsider art and fetish art. Both are driven by an urgency to call something into existence that otherwise could not exist. For me there is something beautiful and unifying about that impulse. It also raises the question of purpose in the act of creating, which in this case feels just simple and clear. There is also a sense of freedom that comes with drawing something that feels outrageous or transgressive.  

When it comes to the oversexualised nature of some of the media I consumed growing up I also reflect on it quite critically. I wonder how the cutesy, clumsy, and infantilised female characters that populate so much older anime (or for that matter many other forms of media) have shaped my understanding of my own gender. How much have I subconsciously tried to embody those tropes? As I get older I find myself rejecting that ideal of cuteness, yet at the same time incorporating it into my art. I have become interested in examining and reworking those notions through drawing.