ABOUT
I am a queer Filipinx / Boricua artist based on the stolen land of LenapeHoking (so-called Brooklyn). I am a storyteller creating deeply emotional and visceral performances while exploring what it means to be a queer millennial working artist in New York. Through an interplay of drag, installation, and drawing my work explores the growing pains and joys of queer adolescence into adulthood. I challenge and dissolve colonial notions of culture and belonging to redefine my personal engagement with success, life, happiness, and love. The language of this lived experience is an ever-growing folklore of magic wands, my Mother’s flower garden, Filipinx vampires, and sad rainbow witches.
I am deeply inspired and vitalized by my given and chosen families. My Father who emigrated from the Phillipines and my Boricua Mother created a life without precedent. They made opportunities out of nothing for themselves and their children. In my DIY aesthetics and process-oriented work I pay homage to their life of the self-made and hand-crafted. My chosen family is an invigorating part of my practice and growth. My place in the Brooklyn nightlife community exemplifies how the dive bar is one of most meaningful radical sites of queer politics, intimacy, and joy.
BIO
I was born in 1984 on Governors Island, New York. I am the recipient of the Brooklyn Nightlife Award for Drag Queen of the Year 2015. I am a resident performer for RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 9 Winner Sasha Velour’s Nightgowns show. I have exhibited at Kishka Gallery, The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, The University of Connecticut, Mixed Greens Gallery, The Kitchen, Boston Center for the Arts, Honey Ramka, and the Bureau of General Services-Queer Division, among others.
I am the creator and editor of the Queer Creatives Community Directory: a free, open resource google sheet that features over 1400 Queer artists and freelancers from across the world. In 2020, I created and produced Untitled (America): the first digital drag show to feature 51 drag artists of color, each representing one state in the United States, as well as Untitled (World): the first global digital drag show featuring 47 drag artists each representing one country.
Contact
matthewdeleon84 [at] gmail.com
To purchase prints of artwork
society6.com/untitledqueen