2025
My artistic research and practice originate from the relationship with fungi. I’m looking for horizontal, non-binary, and deep listening relationships. My principle is radically gentle.
I go and sit with the fungi in the woods. My favorite species are the ancient ones, whose fruiting bodies live for several decades and populate tree trunks. But I’m also receptive to fungi living on my path through the city. Our sessions of shared time, attention and care merge in ideas of future co-existance, kinship and becoming between the other-than-human and human species.
I create bodies and environments in which fungi are welcome as co-creators and can entangle as free agencies. Microbiological milieus, intuition, liveliness and deathliness, woman’s ancient wisdom, a strange mix of “materials” and technologies are important to me.
Research, drawing, photography, installation, video, sound, storytelling and performance are part of my work. I often collaborate with people from other disciplines.
It’s about togetherness and diversity, beyond the human supremacy over the so-called natural world.
Exhibitions
Her work was presented in institutions, galleries and festivals in Germany, Italy, France and the US, amongst: Galeria Hybrida Contemporanea, Rome (2009) (S); Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2010); Museo Laboratorio di Arte Contemporanea, Rome (2011); Gallery Karin Wimmer Contemporary Art, Munich (2015) (S); Underdox/Videodox Festival (2015); Festival Kino der Kunst in corporation with gallery Karin Wimmer (2017) (S); Jahresgaben Kunstverein München (2010-2017); Kunstraum München, Munich (2018) (S); Gallery Boutwell/Schabrowsky, Munich (2022) (S); Wunderkammer Naturalia / Artificialia, Stuttgart (2020); Kunst()Klima Stuttgart (2024).
(S) = solo exhibition
Lectures & Residencies
In 2019, she received the WimmelResearch-Fellowship from Akademie Schloss Solitude in cooperation with Bosch GmbH Center for Research and Advance Engineering, Renningen/ Germany. She lectured on: „NeuroAlchemie – How a Neural Network Sees the World“, KIT Karlsruhe (2020); „Visualisation of Data in the Arts and Economics“, Kunstraum München (2019); “Introduction in Artistic Practice”, echolot, Kunstverein Stuttgart (2017); “10. Nov. ’38 – Data Leak of a Nazi-Crime“, Auditorio Maestre Pie Filippini Rome (2016); „Strategic Art?“ – Symposium, Universität der Künste Berlin (2012).
Collaborations
2013-2015, artistic research on “digital nature” in collaboration with video artist Johannes Evers; co-founding the performance group “Professionelle Öffnungszeiten” (2013-2015). In 2016, collaboration with cook and foodpreneur Vincent Fricke. In 2019, collaboration with Zhongyu Lou, research engineer for machine learning. From 2020-2021 member of the transdisciplinary research group “Non/Post-Human Ecosystems of Knowledge”, curated by Aouefa Amoussouvi. 2021, co-founder of “Transfungal Ensemblage” with herbalist and fashion theorist Katrin Seiler. From 2023 on, co-inviting to the “feral reading group”, experimental reading sessions on new materialism. Since 2023, collaboration with scientist J. Philipp Benz from TUM-School of Life Sciences, among others.
Education
Christina Maria Pfeifer completed a multidisciplinary education. She graduated in political economy at the university in Germany, studied Romance languages and (art) history in Paris and Florence, and attended Andrea Fogli’s drawing class and Klaus vom Bruch’s multimedia class at the International Summer Academy in Salzburg, Austria. Inspired by Japanese culture, she attended various courses in Butoh dance. She worked as a researcher at university and earned an interdisciplinary PhD in the social sciences. As member of the board of a small think tank and software house, she co-developed visual tools for complex decision-making and applied them in politics and industry in Europe, Africa, South-East-Asia and in the US.