M ( I ) X

PERFORMANCE ARTIST | PAINTER| ACTIVIST

With a mix of monikers other than her birth name, Justin Vivian Bond first achieved prominence under the pseudonym Kiki DuRane, a has-been, alcoholic lounge singer of the stage duo Kiki and Herb. From an early age, Bond desired to sing, amuse, wear makeup, high heels and fashionable outfits. She grew up watching female role models on television and listening to their popular music from the remote Maryland suburbs.

A whirlwind of mannered and disciplined energy, Bond is a trans-genre performance artist, singer-songwriter, actor and painter. Born Stanley Huffman Bond III, she never identified as male but didn’t have the reference or language to express her true identity. In high school, Bond studied voice and theater and acted in plays whose gender and sexually ambiguous characters helped her to construct her own identity as a performer and human.

Bond uses her deep vibrato voice as art, entertainment and activism. After trying to earn a living playing straight parts, then as a gay man, she embraced androgyny and developed an identity as a queer performer. Playing an intersex character fueled her creatively and watching her friends die of AIDS compelled her politically. Bond became an activist, renaming her/himself as vself Justin Vivian Bond. As a transgender person, her identity falls between male and female and is constantly shifting. She likes and has kept her penis but also takes female hormones creating a medical imprint of her fluid self-creation.

Bond has labored tirelessly in support of LGBTQ causes and organizations. Her wide range and appeal have garnered decades of accolades and awards for her performances and activism. She uses the gender-inclusive honorific Mx and pronoun V as a reference of self-acceptance, honoring vself and nature.