Justin Vivian Bond

About Vivian's Work

Justin Vivian Bond (Viv) is an artist and performer working in the cabaret tradition weaving history, cultural critique, and an ethic of care into performances and artworks animated by wit, whimsy, and calls to action. Bond uses cabaret to explore the political and cultural ethos of the moment and tie it back to history to address contemporary challenges, in particular those facing queer communities.

Bond’s decades-long journey across the landscape of gender has both informed their artistic practices and played a significant role in ongoing conversations around gender identity and LGBTQ+ rights. In the mid-1990s, Bond gained acclaim for their role as Kiki DuRane in the lounge act duo Kiki and Herb. As the AIDS epidemic devastated gay communities, Kiki and Herb channeled communal grief, exhaustion, love, and rage through song and wildly imaginative tales of glamour, hardship, and perseverance. As a solo performing artist, Bond captivates and connects with audiences through an eclectic repertoire of classic and original songs and personal narratives. Their performances use wit and wisdom to call attention to ongoing threats to basic human rights, and Bond’s musical interpretations bring contemporary significance and poignance to the songs. Recent productions have considered the history of protest and political action (Jasmine and Cigarettes: Songs from the Hippy Counterculture, 2024) and celebrated LGBTQ+ Pride Month and the summer solstice (Night Shade, 2024). Bond has inspired a younger generation of transgender artists and performers, and they have generously used their platform to uplift future voices. In Only an Octave Apart (2022), Bond collaborated with the countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo to create an evening-length performance combining elements of opera, avant-garde performance, and campy stage review. The different textures of the artists’ voices impart new shades of beauty to the program of songs.

Bond’s artistic practice moves across genres and includes watercolor painting, installation, photography, and video. For their gallery exhibition Fall of the House of Whimsy (2011), Bond arranged items from their former loft into an intimate environment for displaying original pencil and watercolor portraits of friends and loved ones. The intermingling of floral and human forms references themes of hybridity and evolution that have played a role throughout Bond’s life and art, and the exhibition pays homage to the lives nurtured within the space of the loft. A pioneer of queer performance and a dearly beloved LGBTQ+ elder, Bond explores embodied existence in a unique artistic practice that centers queer joy and community.