Laura Kikauka


Laura Kikauka is a Canadian installation and performance artist. Kikauka is known for her sculptural installations and performances incorporating found objects and electronics.

Career and work

Kikauka is known for functioning hand-etched electronic circuits. Her aesthetic has been described as kitsch, while also being compared to self-organizing systems. She has lived and worked in New York City, and for nearly two decades in Berlin. She currently works in Ontario on her long-term project the Funny Farm.
Kikauka's 1996 piece Hairbrain 2000 presented an early "virtual reality" headset based on an analog system of electronic relays activated by ball bearings as the viewer moved their head.
Her 1988 performance collaboration with artist Norman White, Them Fuckin' Robots involved two robots, a "female" one by Kikauka and a "male" one by White. Both robots were assembled and activated in a single day in front of an audience. Kikauka's robot was an abstract, cloud-like assemblage hanging from the ceiling, powered by an electronic sequencer that activated various combinations of found objects. Her robot produced electromagnetic fields that charged the anthropomorphic "male" robot's capacitor, resulting in an eventual robot orgasm.
Kikauka has built two long-term found object installations, both titled Funny Farm, in her homes in Meaford, Ontario, and Berlin, Germany. She has two permanent installations in Germany: one at the Wolfsburg Science Museum in Wolfsburg, Germany, the other at the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen in Berlin.
With her long-term partner Gordon Monahan, Kikauka organizes the annual Electric Eclectics festival in Ontario. Performers have included artist Tony Conrad, theremin player Dorit Chrysler, artist John Kilduff, electronic music pioneer Suzanne Ciani, Mary Margaret O'Hara and the Nihilist Spasm Band.

Notable exhibitions and performances