Cammisa Buerhaus

Headshots is the first New York solo exhibition by artist Cammisa Buerhaus and presents new paintings of light-reflective paint on found metal surfaces, such as disused sawblades and old road signs, photographs of the artist performing for the camera with her cat, as well as the performance script “Nights Like This”, written by the artist, which is being performed by legendary actress Kate Manheim.

Born and raised in Delaware County, New York, Buerhaus received a BA in Media Studies from the New School and an MFA in Music/Sound from Bard College. For the past ten years, Buerhaus has worked in between artistic disciplines, developing a hybrid practice across harsh noise, theater, television, and visual art. Buerhaus writes and directs confessional-performative psychodramas, written in a signature hallucinatory mode. Buerhaus lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

"Some still say women do not have last names only first names.

The longing to achieve continuity with the other is burned into my brain and built into my body. Longing can warp the body like a pregnancy.

There is simultaneous pleasure in being subject to the gaze and actively destroying it. This is a continual, individual process. The works in this show are in movement toward their own reality.

Photography and writing are impossible documentary mediums. The actor’s headshot, erotic cat photography, a dramatic monologue about eggs and sex. Even the tangible materials of the paintings are focused on the illusory.

What the circumstances of this exhibition provide is a opportunity to play the secret agent of synthesis, a potentially hallucinatory optical experience complete with portrayals and betrayals, free from ‘true’ vision."

—Cammisa Buerhaus, 2025