Kendalle Getty
Kendalle Getty | |
|---|---|
 Getty and M/other (2021-2024) | |
| Born | 1988 Los Angeles, California |
| Other names | Kendalle Fiasco, Kendalle Aubra |
| Education | BFA, Video Art and Sculpture, New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture Education and Human Development |
| Occupation(s) | Artist, advocate, and creative producer |
| Parent(s) | Gordon Getty, Cynthia Beck |
Kendalle Getty is an American multimedia artist, advocate, and creative producer. Her interdisciplinary practice incorporates painting, sculpture, performance, poetry, music, and design, often exploring themes related to identity, ritual, mortality, and language. Getty’s work engages with semiotics and hermeneutics.
Early Life and Education
Getty was born in Los Angeles, California, to real estate developer Cynthia Beck and composer and philanthropist Gordon Getty. Previously known as Kendalle Fiasco and Kendalle Aubra, she was raised primarily outside the public spotlight and has cited her delayed awareness of her familial connections as an influence on her exploration of identity and lineage in her work.[1] She received a Bachelor’s in Fine Art degree at New York University’s Steinhardt School in video art and sculpture, where she was selected as part of the senior honors studio program. During this time, she began creating installation-based work focused on themes of memory, psychology, and symbolic healing.
Artistic Practice
Getty’s work incorporates symbolic materials, personal mythologies, and sculptural interventions to investigate emotional and psychological landscapes. Her installations often blend luxurious or ornate objects with references to domestic space, familial dynamics, and transformation. Notable projects include:
Hostile Home: A multi-room sculptural installation exploring home and the uncanny featuring crystal-encrusted chairs, a hybrid creature sculpture with familial likeness, and symbolic domestic objects. According to Dazed, the work "blurs the line between opulent comfort and emotional absence," and was described by Getty as “somewhere between an exorcism and alchemy.”[2]
Mirror of Influence (Los Angeles, 2025): An exhibition presented in a Los Angeles villa during Frieze Art Fair Los Angeles. Works included a series of time-based wax bust, self-portraits , that melted during the duration of the exhibition, alongside mirrored clocks and crystal chairs. As noted in Document Journal, the project confronted themes of mortality, femininity, and performative decay.[3]
Angry Feminist Pin-Up: A calendar publication featuring women and femme-identified individuals in reimagined pin-up imagery. Proceeds supported advocacy groups for survivors of domestic violence, including Planned Parenthood and the Battered Women’s Justice Project. Through this project, Getty challenges outdated and limiting ideals of femininity by centering femmes, women, non-binary people, and other marginalized identities and bringing them into mainstream pop culture representation.
Writers have noted that Getty’s work draws on psychoanalytic theory, including Lacan’s mirror stage, as well as semiotics and feminist art history.[4]
Group Exhibitions
When The Spirit Moves You, Elijah Wheat Showroom / Geary Contemporary, Millerton, NY, 2024.
PARAMNESIA, Echo Park Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, 2024.
FEVER DREAM, Swivel Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, 2024.
OBSESSED, Zepster Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, 2024.
Poetry Performances
Mirror of Influence, February, 2025.
Poetry Brothel, August 2024.
Cortex Worship Poetry Parlour, August 2023.
Poetry Brothel, February 2023.
Critical Reception
Getty’s work has been covered in various art and culture publications:
Document Journal (March 2025): Profiled her wax-sculpture installation in “Wax, fire, and the Getty name,” highlighting the tension between inherited identity and artistic self-determination.[5]
Dazed (July 2023): Featured “Hostile Home” as a reclamation of personal trauma through symbolic form.[6]
Cultured Magazine (June 2023): Highlighted her use of mythological motifs and material excess in works involving crystallized furnishings and hybrid creatures.[7]
Philanthropy and Advocacy
Getty is actively involved in arts philanthropy and cultural initiatives. She serves as:
The chair of the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation
A member of the Performa Commissioning Council
A supporter of the Poetry Society of New York
Her work in these areas supports experimental performance, contemporary art, and poetry.
Creative Production
In addition to her fine art practice, Getty works as a creative producer:
Short Film Direction: Directed multiple short films including Happy Birthday, Mr. President (2008), a disruption of visual literacy with pop-political undertones; Political Apathy (2007), capturing the camp and schizophrenia of Postmodernism with the abject, drawn-out view of reality television—or, television reality; and Friday (2007), a study in abjection and Freud’s Uncanny. Getty also worked as the Executive Producer of Child Actor (2023), featuring the artist formerly known as Glüme.
Music Video Direction: Directed and produced Brittany, a visual project featuring Sean Ono Lennon.
Ritual Candle Series: Crafted a line of hand-poured candles embedded with symbolic objects, described by Document Journal as functional artworks tied to her installations.[8]
Musician: Released multiple tracks under the name Freudian Slit.
See also
Semiotics in art
References
- ^ "How Kendalle Getty's upbringing informed her disturbing art". Dazed. July 31, 2023.
- ^ "How Kendalle Getty's upbringing informed her disturbing art". Dazed. July 31, 2023.
- ^ "Wax, fire, and the Getty name". Document Journal. March 19, 2025.
- ^ "Wax, fire, and the Getty name". Document Journal. March 19, 2025.
- ^ "Wax, fire, and the Getty name". Document Journal. March 19, 2025.
- ^ "How Kendalle Getty's upbringing informed her disturbing art". Dazed. July 31, 2023.
- ^ "It's Kendalle Getty's Turn to Tell Her Story". Cultured Magazine. June 16, 2023.
- ^ "Wax, fire, and the Getty name". Document Journal. March 19, 2025.