Victoria Campbell

Victoria Campbell is a New York-based American artist, independent dealer, and art critic. Her practice spans writing, performance, sculpture, and networked publishing, including competitive wiki development via her 2022-launched federated wiki platform viki.wiki.[1] She serves as contributing editor at Spike Art Magazine.[2] In 2012, she co-founded Campbell Carolan (2012– 2022), an artist duo known for an antagonistic, erudite approach to public art and collaboration. From 2018 to 2020, she co-founded Visit, Inc., a C corporation that implemented the 1971 Projansky–Siegelaub Artist’s Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement on the Ethereum Virtual Machine using the ERC-721 token standard.[3] In 2024, for a conference hosted by “individual developers who may want to play by different rules,” she presented on open problems in long-term data conservation, using bourbon and a bag of money to demonstrate an allegory for a solid-state interpreter, as documented by computer scientist N.E. Davis.

Early career

2010s and post-internet art

In 2010, Victoria Campbell participated in group exhibitions The New Old San Antonio at the Lawrence Art Center and Spencer Museum of Art in Lawrence, Kansas, and Fire in the Belly at Blue Star Contemporary in San Antonio, Texas. In 2011, she was behind Occupy Wall St.'s Twitter account during the early days of the occupation at Zuccotti Park. In 2012, she participated as a panelist in the NYU roundtable 'A Year, a Month, and a Day: Looking Back on Occupy,' organized by the Platypus Affiliated Society, discussing the movement's problems, promises, and organizational pitfalls. In 2012, Campbell contributed to organizing efforts for Free [[Cooper Union]] during the Cooper Union tuition crisis and formed the artist duo Campbell Carolan with Micaela Carolan, emerging from the Bruce High Quality Foundation's zero-tuition university.A spot painting at the 2012 Brucennial is attributed to her. In 2013, she held a happening at the [[New Museum]] and participated in panels on art and commodities. For the 2013 edition of Emergency Index, she published "Penelopemachine," an autointerview on her work as an art model via Modelmayhem.com and Tumblr as durational performance and self-portraiture. From 2014 to 2015, she appeared in video series at [[Art Basel Miami Beach]] and in the online exhibition Body Anxiety (2015), curated by Jennifer Chan and Leah Schrager, featuring "The Penelope Files," an auto-interview video exploring self-images, authorship, labour, and the body. In 2015, Campbell co-programmed with Ana Cecilia Alvarez an experimental sex education workshop series at the Bruce High Quality Foundation University, focusing on communication-based, pleasure-oriented, and politically engaged content on sex and sexuality. The series is mentioned in Sam Thorne's School: A Recent History of Self-Organized Art Education (2017). In 2016, Campbell participated in the group exhibition Memory Room at Outpost Artists Resources in Ridgewood, Queens, New York City, curated by Andrew Ross.[16][5] Campbell lives in an intentional community in the South Bronx, described as relational practices sustained without formal discourse.

Artistic Practice Interdisciplinary Methods

Victoria Campbell's interdisciplinary artistic practice centers on the politicization of language through various mediums including writing, performance, sculpture, post-internet, and video art, examining its influence on societal structures. She is represented by Alyssa Davis Gallery in New York City. Her exhibitions include presenting as a video artist in Baitball 02 at Alyssa Davis Gallery in Polignano a Mare, Italy.Campbell contributed to the film "Art Boy 2: The Undead," appearing as herself, and participated in a 2023 screening and discussion with Taylor Ervin and Caesura Magazine Editor Gabriel Almeida. She also featured in the 2024 SO MUCH panel talk at Earth (49 Orchard St, NYC) alongside Dean Kissick, Patrick McGraw, Richard Turley, David Rudnick, and Bliccy, with sound and visuals by Arthur Siller.

Collaborations and Ventures

Campbell Carolan Duo

Victoria Campbell collaborated with artist Micaela Carolan in the duo Campbell Carolan.[17] Key works included the 2015 karaoke video for Fetty Wap’s "Trap Queen," created with PRO SHOP for the CKTV project and presented at Red Bull Studios; Soft Skills at Red Bull Studios in 2015; HAMSTERMACHINE at the 13th Street Repertory Theatre in 2017; the "Other Side of History" action at the Columbia University Graduate Student Protests 50 years after May 1968, in which Campbell Carolan produced custom aprons for demonstrators, later acquired by the Columbia University Library; NAFTA Miami at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2018; and the radio play NAFTA: Miami on Montez Press Radio on May 24, 2019. The duo also participated in BIENNALE 2020 (New York), curated by Dean Kissick with Aria Dean, Campbell Carolan, Jacky Flowers, Matt Hilvers, Paige K. B., Precious Okoyomen, Torey Thornton, Sven Loven, and Amalia Ulman.[5] The duo ceased active collaboration after producing works exhibited in galleries, theaters, and biennials, later described as "late."[2] [21]

Visit, Inc. Cofounding

In 2019, Victoria Campbell cofounded Visit, Inc., an art-adjacent tech startup focused on developing self-database and internal networking applications tailored for art studios.[22][3] Visit, Inc. ceased operations, with its open-source code made available for further development on GitHub.[23]

Professional Roles Art Criticism and Writing

Victoria Campbell's art criticism covers biotechnology, ethics, and aesthetics. Her essays critique artistic uses of scientific innovation, including synthetic biology's reliance on art for speculative prototyping. Analyses address bio-art's demystification of biotechnological processes, exposure of economic underpinnings, and ethical issues such as commodification of life and identity reconfiguration, including projects publicizing genetic engineering to challenge global power structures and feminist, community-based critiques of biomedical exploitation. Her writing contrasts art's shaping of reality through language with science's organizational function amid technological advancement. Examples include the essay "Art After Work" on Post-Internet art and a podcast interview with Kim Fine on the Spiritual America gallery via Montez Press Radio. Contributing Editor at Spike Art Magazine Victoria Campbell has served as a contributing editor at Spike Art Magazine since 2021. Her contributions include essays on art and labor in issue #62 ("The 2010s"); profiles of artists addressing themes of immorality in issue #60, such as Reba Maybury, Leigh Ledare, and Micaela Carolan; an interview with Magnus Resch; and a review of the "Apollo’s Muse: The Moon" exhibition.

Digital Manager at Kunstverein NY

Victoria Campbell served as Digital Manager at Kunstverein NY from 2011 to 2014.[30]

Gallery Involvements

Victoria Campbell represented Rainer Ganahl’s Seminars/Lectures on the Frieze 2018 sales floor for Kai Matsumiya Gallery.[30] Victoria Campbell has served as a sales representative for Alyssa Davis Gallery since August 2021. She participated in the gallery's 2022 gala event Merde! in New York City and exhibited video work in the 2022 group exhibition Baitball 02 at the gallery's presentation in Polignano a Mare, Italy.

Ongoing Work Sufi Camp Practices

Victoria Campbell regularly spends a significant portion of her time engaged in practices at a Sufi camp in New Mexico. She resides in the American Southwest.

Book on BioArt

Victoria Campbell was pursuing a book on BioArt as of 2020, a field at the intersection of artistic practice and biotechnology.

Competitive Wiki Development

Since 2022, Campbell has published and maintained federated wiki software for use in the art community, addressing data control issues for artists, curators, critics, and related professionals. Her server, viki.wiki, is part of a federation comprising over 2,000 independent content stores. Since 2026, Campbell has engaged in competitive wiki development, ranking #36 among Grokipedia editors. Her publications include Art Controversies on Grokipedia, Spiritual America (gallery), Hat Rack (Duchamp), and her own "jailbroken" Victoria Campbell Grokipedia page. She launched [[Grok.surf]] as an archive of diffs to highlight tensions around reliable sources for articles on art.