Gena Marvin

Last updated

Gena Marvin
Born2001/2002(age 22–23) [1]
Occupation Performance artist

Gena Marvin (born 2001or2002) [1] is a Russian performance artist known for her surreal and creature drag. Her art focuses on themes of identity, self-acceptance, different forms of beauty, and the surreal. [2]

Contents

Early life and education

Gena Marvin was born in Magadan, Russia. She grew up practicing drag makeup in secret in her parents' house. She said she was bullied and tormented growing up in her small village. This, alongside the tale of Slender Man, would become a major inspiration for her artwork. [2] She attended two colleges, and said she experienced homophobia at both. She was expelled from the second college a year before graduating. [3]

Art

Marvin's art primarily consists of creature drag, and she often wears latex, gloves with exaggerated fingers, platform heels, and white face paint. Much of her performance art incorporates the reactions of others to her appearance. [3]

Although she performed in public in Russia, she has spoken of the danger she faces in doing so, and has said she feels safer posting her artwork on social media platforms including Instagram and TikTok. . [3] One of her performances involved wrapping her body in tape, expressing her belief that Russia had "no freedom and where the freedom of my body was not permitted". [4]

Marvin is the subject of Queendom , a documentary directed by Agniia Galdanova and produced by David France and Igor Myakotin. [1] [5] It follows Marvin from 2019 until February 2023, and shows Marvin performing her art while facing the risk of imprisonment or death in Russia where LGBTQ people face legal and extralegal risk. [1] The film premiered at South by Southwest, and won the Next:Wave award at Copenhagen's CPH:DOX and The Audience Award at the Camden International Film Festival. [6] The film premiered in cinemas in the United Kingdom on 1 December 2023. [1]

Personal life

Marvin lived in St. Petersburg beginning in around 2019. After an April 2021 performance at a protest supporting Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, she said she moved to Moscow "to push even harder". [3] In 2022, Marvin became a refugee from the Russian invasion of Ukraine and moved to Paris. [4]

Marvin is non-binary and queer. [1]

Related Research Articles

Camp is an aesthetic and sensibility that regards something as appealing or amusing because of its heightened level of artifice, affectation and exaggeration, especially when there is also a playful or ironic element. Camp is historically associated with LGBTQ+ culture and especially gay men. Camp aesthetics disrupt modernist understandings of high art by inverting traditional aesthetic judgements of beauty, value, and taste, and inviting a different kind of aesthetic engagement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cheburashka</span> Russian character

Cheburashka, also known as Topple in earlier English translations, is a fictional character created by Soviet writer Eduard Uspensky in his 1965 children's book Gena the Crocodile and His Friends. The character subsequently appeared as the protagonist in a series of stop-motion animated films directed by Roman Kachanov for Soyuzmultfilm, the first of which was made in 1969, with songs composed by Vladimir Shainsky.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Isaac Julien</span> British artist and film director (born 1960)

Sir Isaac Julien is a British installation artist, filmmaker, and Distinguished Professor of the Arts at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Valie Export</span> Austrian media artist

Valie Export is an avant-garde Austrian artist. She is best known for provocative public performances and expanded cinema work. Her artistic work also includes video installations, computer animations, photography, sculpture and publications covering contemporary art.

<i>Paris Is Burning</i> (film) 1990 film by Jennie Livingston

Paris Is Burning is a 1990 American documentary film directed by Jennie Livingston. Filmed in the mid-to-late 1980s, it chronicles the ball culture of New York City and the African-American, Latino, gay, and transgender communities involved in it.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Madonna as a gay icon</span> Aspect of Madonnas reputation

American singer and actress Madonna is recognized as a gay icon. She was introduced, while still a teenager, by her dance instructor, Christopher Flynn, an openly gay man who mentored her. Since then, Madonna has always acknowledged the importance of the community for her life and career, declaring that she "wouldn't have a career if it weren't for the gay community".

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer+(LGBTQ+)music is music that focuses on the experiences of gender and sexual minorities as a product of the broad gay liberation movement.

Terence Alan Smith, also known as Joan Jett Blakk, is an activist, political candidate, and drag queen from Detroit, Michigan. Smith is an African-American actor, writer, and political candidate. Smith, as Joan Jett Blakk, first came to national attention when running for president of the United States in 1992.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michelle Handelman</span> American contemporary artist, filmmaker and writer

Michelle Handelman is an American contemporary artist, filmmaker, and writer who works with live performance, multiscreen installation, photography and sound. Coming up through the years of the AIDS crisis and Culture Wars, Handelman has built a body of work that explores the dark and uncomfortable spaces of queer desire. She confronts the things that provoke collective fear and denial – sexuality, death, chaos. She directed the ground-breaking feature documentary on the 1990s San Francisco lesbian S/M scene BloodSisters: Leather, Dykes & Sadomasochism(1995), described by IndieWire as “a queer classic ahead of its time, a vital archive of queer history.” Her early work included 16mm black and white experimental films combined with performance. She is also known for her video installations Hustlers & Empires (2018), Irma Vep, The Last Breath (2013-2015), and Dorian, A Cinematic Perfume(2009-2011). In 2011, she was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship for her film and video work.

Queendom may refer to:

Wu Tsang is a filmmaker, artist and performer based in New York and Berlin, whose work is concerned with hidden histories, marginalized narratives, and the act of performing itself. In 2018, Tsang received a MacArthur "genius" grant.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sasha Velour</span> American drag performer and artist

Alexander "Sasha" Hedges Steinberg, known professionally as Sasha Velour, is an American drag queen, artist, actor, and stage and television producer, based in Brooklyn, New York. Velour is known for winning the ninth season of RuPaul's Drag Race, her drag revue NightGowns, and her one-queen theatrical work, Smoke & Mirrors.

<i>Gaga: Five Foot Two</i> 2017 American film

Gaga: Five Foot Two is a 2017 documentary film about American singer-songwriter Lady Gaga. It documents the events around the production and release of Gaga's fifth studio album, Joanne, and her halftime performance at Super Bowl LI. The film, directed by visual artist and documentarian Chris Moukarbel, made its debut at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival before having a worldwide streaming release on Netflix on September 22, 2017. It was also shown during the European leg of Gaga's Joanne World Tour, before each of her shows.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Crystal LaBeija</span> American drag queen, trans woman, founder of the House of LaBeija

Crystal LaBeija was an American drag queen and trans woman who co-founded the House of LaBeija in 1968. The House is often credited as starting the house system in ball culture. She became a mother figure for homeless LGBTQ youth.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">RuPaul's DragCon NYC</span> Drag culture exposition in New York City

RuPaul's DragCon NYC is an annual fan convention and expo of drag culture held in New York City, which debuted in September 2017. It is based on the successful RuPaul's DragCon LA which was launched in Los Angeles in 2015 billed as a “convention that celebrates ‘the art of drag, queer culture and self-expression for all’”. The NYC event is considered the "world's largest celebration of drag culture" with 100,000 attendees. The event is an outgrowth of the internationally successful RuPaul's Drag Race, which generated Drag Race Thailand, RuPaul's Drag Race UK, RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars, and Chile's The Switch Drag Race. RuPaul's Drag Race and the two DragCons come from World of Wonder Entertainment (WOW), a production company based in Los Angeles. The first RuPaul's DragCon NYC was held in 2017 at the Javits Center, with over 40,000 attendees at the two-day all-ages event; it “garnered 687 million (online) impressions in 2018.” Based on the success of the original LA event, the NYC event expanded to three days in 2019: both had over 100,000 attendees in 2019.

Queer art, also known as LGBT+ art or queer aesthetics, broadly refers to modern and contemporary visual art practices that draw on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and various non-heterosexual, non-cisgender imagery and issues. While by definition there can be no singular "queer art", contemporary artists who identify their practices as queer often call upon "utopian and dystopian alternatives to the ordinary, adopt outlaw stances, embrace criminality and opacity, and forge unprecedented kinships and relationships." Queer art is also occasionally very much about sex and the embracing of unauthorised desires.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Patruni Sastry</span> Dancer, Performance Artist, Drag queen

Patruni Sastry, popularly known as Patruni Chidananda Sastry or Suffocated art Specimen is a Expressionist dancer, performance artist, visual artist, model and drag queen.

<i>A Night at Switch n Play</i> 2019 American documentary film about drag and burlesque artist collective

A Night at Switch n' Play is a 2019 American documentary film produced by Chelsea Moore and directed by Cody Stickels. The film is about the long-running, Brooklyn based drag and burlesque artist collective, Switch n’ Play. The documentary features performances and commentary by Divina GranSparkle, Pearl Harbor, K. James, Miss Malice, Vigor Mortis, Nyx Nocturne and Zoe Ziegfeld. The film had its world premiere at the Inside Out Film and Video Festival in Toronto on June 1, 2019 and its New York City premiere was at NewFest on October 26, 2019, where it won the Audience Award for Best Documentary. It also won Best Ensemble Performance at the Fargo-Moorhead LGBT Film Festival, and won for Best Feature Film at the Trans Stellar Film Festival. The collective has also won 'Best Burlesque Show' at the Brooklyn Nightlife Awards in 2017, 2018, and 2019. It was filmed on location in Brooklyn at the Branded Saloon, where the group regularly performs.

Camille O'Grady was an American musician, visual artist, poet, drag king, and performance artist. She described herself as a "multimedium" artist.

<i>Queendom</i> (film) 2023 LGBT+ documentary film

Queendom is a 2023 American-French documentary film, directed and co-written by Agniia Galdanova. It portrays the Russian performance artist Gena Marvin, who attracts the attention of the public and the government of her country with her provocative works, in which she transforms her own body into gigantic, menacing silhouettes.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Robson, Graham (13 November 2023). "Queendom: New documentary follows Gena Marvin, a queer artist from a small town in Russia, who wants to change people's perception of queerness in Russia". Scene Magazine. Retrieved 19 November 2023.
  2. 1 2 3 Cadogan, Dominic (16 April 2023). "Artist Gena Marvin turns her childhood trauma into nightmarish drag looks". Dazed . Retrieved 22 February 2023.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Wilson, Mo (25 August 2021). "Gena Marvin Is Redefining Russian Beauty". Paper . Retrieved 22 February 2023.
  4. 1 2 Moussaoui, Rana (30 June 2022). "Russian LGBT artists find sanctuary in Paris". The Jakarta Post . Retrieved 22 February 2023.
  5. Carey, Matthew (11 March 2023). "Dynamic Queer Artist Defies Russia's Anti-LGBTQ Crusade In SXSW World Premiere 'Queendom'". Deadline . Retrieved 19 November 2023.
  6. Morey, Alice (2 October 2023). "Queendom: UK cinema release date announced for Gena Marvin doc". Gay Times . Retrieved 19 November 2023.