Kirsten Justesen trained in classic sculpture at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts from which she graduated in 1975.

Her activities comprise a wide range of genres, from body art and performance art to sculpture and installation. Justesen was part of the avant-garde scene of the 1960s, where she became a pioneering figure within the three-dimensional modes of art that incorporate the artist's own body as artistic material. These experiments led her in the direction of the feminist art which challenged traditional value systems during the 1970s. Her later works constitute broader investigations of relationships between body, space, and language.