The Daily Aesthetics of Alexander Martin

(tap water flowing) - [Friend] They're gonna judge us so hard.

- They're so critical.

- [Friend] They're just going to like watch us, and nit-pick everything about us.

(upbeat music) - Here we go.

(upbeat music) Thank you, he told his parents.

I appreciate that you tried, but I'm looking for something special, and a partner by my side.

- None of them are right for him.

- Nope.

(children applauding) Yeah, run this makeup.

I'm not gonna cry.

(bright music) I am an artist.

I do a lot of work about gender and identity.

I'm originally from West Virginia.

I have moved to the Midwest four years ago, for graduate school and now I live here in Peoria, Illinois, where I maintain a studio practice, and I adjunct at a local university and I barista sometimes.

Peoria is weird.

Well, the Midwest to me is weird.

Like it's depending where you're in Peoria, you can see, like miles of sky and cornfield, but then there's like kind of tall buildings, and they're all like tan bricks.

So it's kinda has like a rusty vibe to it.

It's like rusty, but charming.

There's a lot of good energy here.

It's a great space to just be and make and think.

I was thinking a little bit about race with the fencing, those black iron fences, like those.

Here they've been used like systematically forever, for like poorer neighborhoods.

I like these parallels of like hard and soft.

Like this is feminine, this is masc, but like a mix of both.

(upbeat music) So you go to the farmer's market and you have peppers.

There's red peppers and yellow peppers, and they're priced differently.

Some of those peppers, like if you've ever grown a vegetable, it's not gonna be a hundred percent that color.

You have orange ones, some that are more yellow, some that are more red.

But you force them into those categories, so you can classify them.

And that's the parallel, like how we force people into a gender binary, when in reality, that's like ridiculous.

And because we have to communicate, like we come up with terminology, that helps us meet on a common ground, but really each person's, like gender and sexuality, is like uniquely their own.

(funky music) The daily aesthetics, that I was documenting my clothing for a hundred days.

But I was just really interested, in like how there's certain things people will wear, or won't wear.

Like, I have friends who are like cisgendered women, and they will never wear a skirt.

It's like, they just, they...

Doesn't feel right for them.

I was really drawn to that.

Like why do we dress a certain way?

And like, how does that reflect, like our gender?

And it's not something, it's not like I wake up being like, I feel boyish, I feel girlish, but it's like, when I put on certain clothes, they won't feel right that day.

And so I sort of curate my outfit, to go with how I'm feeling.

I used to do a lot of work with... Like I'm obsessed with language.

I studied Japanese in undergrad.

It dealt with a lot of miscommunication, and misinterpreting what information that you're given.

Like seeing the conclusions, like when I force text with like object together, and like the forced connections people would make.

(laughs) But I was always afraid of being like honest with my work.

I became less afraid of incorporating myself, and then it really made me sort of analyze queerness, and like my gender.

(gentle music) I use he/him pronouns.

But because of the way I dress, the way I express myself, my body shape, like I'm very curvy.

I come from a line of curvy folk.

I get mistaken for a woman all the time.

In drag, I don't.

Like they know I'm a man.

That's the kicker.

They know I'm a man when I'm in drag.

But in drag, I use she/her pronouns.

So I am a representation of femininity, but I'm not a woman.

I'm something else.

Drag is something other.

(drums hitting) But I would say I'm like aggressively femme.

I think would be how to describe my gender in drag, it's like an aggressive form, a sharp form of femininity, and like a caricature of femininity.

That's not... Has nothing to do with womanhood.

For me though, it's letting me explore, facets of my gender identity and my gender expression, but it's not trying to be a woman, 'cause I don't feel like a woman.

Artemisia VanHo is my drag name.

I came to that name, after doing a little bit of art history research.

So Artemisia Gentileschi was a painter in the 1600s.

She studied under one of her dad's mentors, and during her tutelage with him, he sexually assaulted her.

Afterwards, she kept painting and making work, but she became pretty well known, for a picture of Judith beheading Holofernes.

But Holofernes said the painting, looked suspiciously like her instructor that assaulted her.

So she's become a pretty big feminist icon.

And I feel like with drag, it's using something that I was ridiculed for, as like a weapon, but I'm not gonna decapitate anybody.

(crowd applauding) - [Woman] Do you have family in Peoria?

- Um.

Yes and no.

As a queen, I have my drag family here.

We are friends in our real life, but then when we put on the get up, we go out and we go-- We have girls nights out where we go out in drag, and we have a drink or like have food, something fun.

It's almost like having a bunch of wild and crazy aunts.

Everyone back here is a drag queen right now.

- Hey girl.

(laughs) - [Woman] Is there anything else you wanna share?

- There's some people who don't exist in that binary.

It's expression and like freedom.

The thoughts and things you push to the side, that feel uncomfortable, sometimes you have to think about them.

And if you can confront those things, then you can confront all kinds of other things.

Gender is like an experience and not a thing.

So that's why it's hard to pinpoint, because it's your perpetual experience, as you blast your way through the universe.

(laughs) (upbeat music)