Drag/Strip

Drag is American kabuki. Both are performance arts featuring over-the-top costumes, stylized storytelling, and actors who blur gender distinctions. Drag queens are art incarnate. But they are typically depicted with glamorous high-key lights, busy backgrounds, and over-the-top poses—clichés. Instead, this work in progress juxtaposes many dozens of drag icons wearing their burlesqued costumes (in color, which you do not see in this submission) side by side with another take on their personas (as submitted in part here): portraits executed with the reductive drama of b+w to reveal each drag queen's authentic and often vulnerable self lying underneath. Hence the name Drag/Strip. To see the color and black-and-whites displayed as diptychs is a powerful yet intimate experience. The b+w portraits exhibited by themselves are also powerful, albeit in a completely different way. Drag/Strip portrays character; and with this particular presentation the subjects are portrayed lieu of caricature. It is an attempt to humanize queer and trans people and, as they hope and I do too, these portraits will encourage dialogs with among and with those who are more or less naive about how deep this culture's roots extend.