FOR KALUP LINZY, the wig is almost beside the point.
Call him a gender illusionist, a post-modern butch-queer performer,
a post-drag performance artist. Whatever you do, just don’t call him a
gender-fucker.
“I just learned the term ‘gender-fucking’,” Linzy says on the phone
from his home in Brooklyn, and laughs. “It’s a little harsh.” How
about, uh, post-drag? He shrugs off the suggestion, and then throws out
his own—”minimal drag”—to describe the stripped-down,
glamour-free approach he takes to female characters in his work.
“It’s performance, you know what I mean?” Linzy says. “It’s just
performance.”
I can assure you that whatever Linzy does is not “just performance.”
As a visual artist, filmmaker, musician, and performer of variable
gender, orientation, and race, Linzy is a tirelessly inventive modern
artist, as chameleon as they come.
A quick scan of Linzy’s hyperactive YouTube channel (youtube.com/user/kklinzy) gives a
few clues about what to expect from his Portland appearances: In the
soap opera series Conversations Wit de Churen—which he
wrote, directed, edited, and stars in—Linzy plays all the members
of a typically bizarre modern family, riffing on money, sex, and drama.
In another clip, Linzy brings one of his most distinctive characters,
an effete young man named Taiwan, to delirious life in a song bursting
with heartache and humor:
“I went to see the lady, and asked her why he left me,” he bellows
in a plangent baritone. “You wouldn’t believe what that bitch said to
me. She said, ‘You are needy, and oh boy, you’re shady. But most of all
you’re stingy with your asshole.'” It has to be heard to be
believed.
For this year’s TBA Festival, Linzy is one of the most programmed
and visible artists on the schedule: Conversations Wit de Churen plays over several nights at Portland Art Museum’s Whitsell Auditorium,
and a new episode of the series Lil’ Myron’s Trade, created in
collaboration with Portland’s Laika animation firm, debuts Thursday,
September 3 at the Works. Linzy’s also headlining a Tuesday, September
8 late-night Works show, SweetBerry Sampled and LeftOva, and
he’ll team up with Neal Medlyn on Thursday, September 10 for a TBA
noontime chat.
Ultimately, according to Linzy, his performances are simply a chance
to “dress up and play different characters”—but his biting social
commentary on race, gender, and sexuality is an undeniable part of his
work’s allure.