Kembra Pfahler (born August 4, 1961) is an American interdisciplinary artist and rock musician. She has been called the "godmother of modern day shock art".

Pfahler's film work is associated with Nick Zedd's Cinema of Transgression. As a musician, she leads the band The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, who are inspired by glam, punk, shock rock and the American actress Karen Black. As a visual and performance artist, Pfahler is known for self-portraits. As a result of having participated with the North-American artists Anohni, Johanna Constantine, and Bianca and Sierra Casady of CocoRosie in 2014, she co-authored 13 Tenets of Future Feminism that contains thirteen propositions engraved into rose quartz discs.

Pfahler is the daughter of surfer Freddy Pfahler who had appeared in the 1958 surf film Slippery When Wet, directed by Bruce Brown. Her brother is Adam Pfahler, the drummer of Jawbreaker. Growing up in Southern California, Pfahler appeared as a child actress in TV commercials for Kodak film. She went to college at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and studied under Mary Heilmann and Lorraine O'Grady.

Hans Ulrich Obrist described Pfahler as a 'pioneer' of the Cinema of Transgression and of performance art and 'pioneering' as a musician and actress, and has called her interdisciplinary practice a Gesamtkunstwerk. She has also been identified as a 'post-punk polymath.'

Pfahler has shown work at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome, The Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow, Deitch Projects, The Hole Gallery in New York, Bowman Gallery, and Kenny Schachter Rove Gallery, in London. Her drawings are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She is currently represented by Emalin Gallery in London.

In the 1980s Pfahler became involved East Village scene associated with ABC No Rio when she began performing in and creating low-budget films associated with the Cinema of Transgression. With best friend and collaborator Gordon Kurtti, Pfahler created live performances for Life Café, 8BC and Danceteria and was the lead performer in XS: The Opera Opus when performed in 1984 at the Pyramid Club. Also in 1984, Pfhaler and Kurtti organized The Extremist Show at ABC No Rio, featuring many of New York's sub-culture artists and groups including P.O.O.L., Samoa Moriki and his punk rock band BALLS, The Church of the Little Green Man, and the Cinema of Transgression featuring the underground films of Nick Zedd, Lydia Lunch and Richard Kern, Borbetomagus and Red Dog Magazine.

Pfahler stars alongside Jack Smith in Ari M. Roussimoff's Shadows in the City (1991). Pfahler, while in Europe, discovered and took inspiration from the Viennese Actionism movement, specifically Rudolf Schwarzkogler. In 1982, she moved into an apartment on the Lower East Side which she painted entirely tile red to make it look like a film set.

Also during the 1980s, Pfahler worked as a Calvin Klein model, during an advertising campaign in the heroin chic style. She appeared as a model in the photographs accompanying the article "These Children that Come at You with Knives" written by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain in a 1999 issue of Pop Smear Magazine. In this comic-book style layout depicting the Manson Family, Pfahler played Sharon Tate alongside Maynard James Keenan as Charles Manson.