Art + Performance
Visual Art
My work takes a range of forms—installation, digital media, and tactical intervention—to create spaces of possibility that resist logics of neoliberalism, technological solutionism, and gay assimilation. Drawing on my drag performance practice, I engage traditions of camp and often repurpose digital tools to question technologies’ ideologies—and experiment with tactics for resisting their harms.
Performance
I began performing drag in 2007, and as my drag alter-ego Lil Miss Hot Mess, I have appeared in venues ranging from San Francisco’s legendary worker-owned queer bar The Stud to SFMOMA, Stanford University, and Saturday Night Live. In 2014, I co-organized the #MyNameIs Campaign to protest Facebook’s so-called “real names” policy. In 2016, I began performing with Drag Story Hour, for which I now serve on the board, and have since written three picture books. At the intersection of my performance and scholarship, I aim to rethink what drag can be in contemporary culture, considering it not merely as gender reversal, but as a traditional and forward-thinking craft that helps imagine new playful political imaginaries.
Below are some photographs documenting my drag performance — for more detail, please visit my Lil Miss Hot Mess website.
