Huge archive of drag culture takes on new urgency in today’s political climate.
By Elyssa Goodman for CNN
“The first time I saw God was at Bizarre,” says visual artist Rachel Rampleman.
She is referring to the drag artist God Complex and the now-defunct Brooklyn bar Bizarre. Inspired by the performer’s background as a dancer after seeing him live, Rampleman committed him to the screen for “Life is Drag,” a project wherein she films drag performances and conducts interviews with participants about their drag philosophies. A new exhibition showing the project’s latest works opens at New York’s SoMad art space this week, and in one of the featured videos, God Complex dances, lost in reverie, wearing a skin-toned gown twinkling with beads.
The many artists Rampleman has chronicled in “Life is Drag” reveal the multitudes of what the art form is and can be. Since 2019, Rampleman has captured more than 200 artists and 370 shows, making it the largest known digital archive of drag performance in the US.
The latest videos and portraits are the product of her artist residency at SoMad, a self-described “femme and queer led, independent art space” in Manhattan’s Flatiron District. In these new works, Rampleman chose to spotlight some drag artists who are community organizers, producers, advocates and activists, as a response to US President Donald Trump’s re-election. The importance of the project then extends beyond just the chronicle of a performance, it also becomes the validation of existence. In Rampleman’s project, the subjects can’t be erased from history.
“(It) was important to work with the people we felt were the most inspiring, and to do whatever we could to magnify and amplify their message and their voices,” she said. The people she’s worked with range from community organizer Julie J to producer Amygdala to King Molasses, the newly crowned winner of the US reality series “King of Drag.” In each interview, performers advocate for themselves and their art. “My presence in the world is non-negotiable. I am released, so there’s really nothing you can do to stop me,” King Molasses said in an interview Rampleman shot. “Drag is not, nor has it ever been, something that is interested in domination. It is not something that is interested in manifest destiny. It just is something that is,” Julie J said in hers.
