LIFE IS DRAG Offers Live Pop-up Performance At The Cell

Nancy Manocherian's the cell theatre (Artistic Director Kira Simring) will host in-person street-side performances featuring the performers captured in Rachel Rampleman's exhibit LIFE IS DRAG. On Saturday March 13 at 5:00 PM Darlinda Just Darlindaand Mimi Silk will perform in the windows of the cell's space on 23rd street. The performance is free of charge however tips and donations are greatly appreciated. Masks are required and audiences are asked to maintain social distancing practices from other members throughout the length of the pop-up performance. The exhibition will extend hours until 7PM on March 13 only and will be available to view on the cell's third floor Gallery. Visitors will have the opportunity to engage with the performers during gallery hours prior to the performance.

Exploring subjects such as gender, artifice and spectacle, LIFE IS DRAG documents the most innovative and singular performers of the currently exploding international alt-drag and burlesque scenes, a portion of which have been filmed throughout the pandemic at the cell's space on West 23rd Street. On view since February 13th on the Gallery Floor, this exhibit is free and open to the public. Patrons are required to follow all city mandated COVID-19 precautions including mandatory mask wearing, filling out a contact-free survey for symptoms and potential exposure, and a digital temperature check before entry.

Rachel Rampleman utilizes processes ranging from directorial to curatorial to anthropological to showcase exuberantly irrepressible personalities who revel in challenging clichés associated with masculinity and femininity. A sampling of subjects include Girls Girls Girls (the world's first and only all-female Mötley Crüe tribute band), Tazzie Colomb (the world's longest competing female bodybuilder), and LACTIC Incorporated (an avant-garde clothing brand that takes the detritus of corporate life and reinterprets it into one-of-a-kind structural garments that challenge the polarization of gender) as well as drag and burlesque stars Agatha Crusty (NH), Arabella LaDessé (MA), Aura Tannen (OH), Barbie Crash (KY), Bender Bluefish (The Netherlands), Bunny Wonderland (ME), C'etait BonTemps (NY), Chartruice (NY), Cherry Lemonade (ME), Civilization (NY), Darlinda Just Darlinda (NY), Dick TransDyke (NY), Esther (NY), Fem Appeal (NY), God Complex (NY), Geo Soctomah Neptune (ME), Harlow Havoc (MA), JAX (NY), Jayden Jamison (MA), Just JP (MA), Kiara Chimera (OH), Kitty Willow (NH), Li Monahd (NH), Mike Hawk (NH), Menthol Menthol (NY), Muscles Monty (NY), Mimi Silk (NY), Neon Calypso (NY), Nüqueer Power (MA), Ophelia Johnson (MA), Pinwheel Pinwheel (NY), Regan White (NH), Rita Fluxx (NH), Robin from Human Resources (MA), Robyn Edges (NY), Secret Queen (MA), Sham Payne (MA), Stixen Stones (OH), Sweaty Eddie (NY), Untitled Queen (NY), Veronica T (NH), Zayn-X (MA).

LIFE IS DRAG already features over 5 hours of video featuring over 70 portraits of artists from all over the globe. Rampleman plans to create as many as 30 more video portraits during her residency and will incorporate all of these into the exhibition.

"My long-term goal is to continue to do a series of such residencies nationally and internationally, which will allow me to create portraits of drag artists from a wide variety of areas, backgrounds, cultures, ages, etc. Each portrait includes video of the drag artist performing (lip-synching, singing, telling stories, dancing, etc.) in addition to interview documentation, and will become part of an online archive as well be presented at a wide variety of art and non-art venues."

LIFE IS DRAG is open Saturdays and Sundays from 12PM-6PM until March 28, 2021 at Nancy Manocherian's the cell theatre (338 W. 23rd St. New York, NY 10011). Masks are required and capacity will be limited. Follow the cell on instagram at @thecelltheatre for updates or go to www.thecelltheatre.org for upcoming events!

Darlinda Just Darlinda (Performer) The Village Voice calls Darlinda Just Darlinda a "mastermind of bizarre extravaganza!". Darlinda has been a performance artist based in New York City since 2003 and she's toured Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, England, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland and Sweden! Darlinda created a year-long "life as art" project Year In Rainbow, Untitled Rainbow Project, and One-Woman Rainbow at Joe's Pub. She has performed Off-Broadway with Taylor Mac in A 24-Decade History of Popular Music (MacArthur Fellowship) and The Lily's Revenge (Obie Award Winner), the 29th Annual Roots of American Music Festival at Lincoln Center as well as The Cockettes Cocktail of Glamour and Anarchy at Lincoln Center. She can be found on television and film in: "These Thems", "Accommodations", "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel", "Boardwalk Empire", "The Other F Word", "Betty" and Bizzare by Etienne Faure. Darlinda is a resident artist at Blunderland, hitting stages at London's Underbelly, Adelaide Fringe, and Bethnal Green Working Men's Club. Darlinda has produced a variety of shows, some of which, The New York Times has called "Shockingly explicit!". She's a regular performer at the superb NYC venues like The Slipper Room, House of Yes, The Box, and Paradise Club at Times Square Edition. Darlinda was voted in the Top 50 International Burlesque Industry Figures and is the recipient of the Golden Pastie Award dot the Most Innovate and Creative, was the first and multiple winner of The Brooklyn Nightlife Awards for Best Burlesque Dancer and the Sundance Channel named Darlinda a "Top 10 Badass Burlesque Babe!" @DarllindaJust www.YearinRainbow.com

Mimi Silk (Performer) Stephanie McGovern aka Mimi Silk, is a multimedia and performance artist exploring the conflicts between conventional female allure and the authentic self. Compiled through pain and exhaustion, her "purge performances" act as a means for catharsis and a repurposing of the "female" role. Her works aims to deconstruct the aesthetic metaphor associated with "woman" and "womanhood" by creating a paradox of hyper feminine objects, which includes her body. Femininity becomes a tool to draw more questions than answers and through spectacle liberates the artist to transcend her arbitrary definitions. @meemeesilk www.mimisilk.com

Originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, and currently living and working in New York City, Rachel Rampleman received her MFA from New York University in 2006. Since then her work has been shown internationally at the Shanghai Biennale, the Chennai Photo Biennale (India), JAM in Bangkok, and throughout Europe at S.M.A.K. (Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst) and Art Cinema OFFoff (Ghent, Belgium), Monte Arts Centre (Antwerp), Terasa (Pilsen, Czech Republic), C/O Berlin, Die Fruhperle, and The Secret Cabinet (Berlin), and at VIDEONALE.16 at the Kunstmuseum Bonn. Nationally, her work has been exhibited at such venues as Socrates Sculpture Park, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, Cleopatra's, Petzel Gallery, Smack Mellon, Auxiliary Projects, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Satellite Art Show, The Frank Institute at CR10, Spectacle Theater, The Wassaic Project, Flux Factory, VOX Bizarre, Cynthia Broan Gallery, NP Contemporary Art Center, Satellite Art Show, Squeaky Wheel, Envoy Enterprises, Shoestring Press, Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, The Warehouse Gallery, SELECT Art Fair, The Last Brucennial, un(SCENE) Art Show, 80 WSE Gallery, Gowanus Swim Society, El Puente CADRE, Art Gotham, Rosenburg Gallery, Cantor Film Center, Arts Center of the Capital Region, Collar Works, Paul Robeson Galleries at Rutgers University, Other Cinema at Artists' Television Access (California), Wexner Center for the Arts, The Contemporary Arts Center, The Weston Art Gallery in the Aronoff Center for the Arts, Thunder-Sky, Inc., The Mini Microcinema, Semantics, SS NOVA, (Ohio), KMAC Museum Louisville, The Lexington Art League, The Fountain Gallery at Purdue University, 1506 Projects (Washington), University Hall Gallery at UMass Boston, Icebox Project Space (Philadelphia), PULSE Miami, The Flint Art Institute, The Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University and The Andy Warhol Museum. Rampleman recently had a survey exhibition on view at the Weston Art Gallery in the Aronoff Center for the Arts (Cincinnati) as well as solo exhibitions at VOLTA NY (New York), These Things Take Time (Ghent, Belgium), 42 Social Club (Connecticut), Carl Solway Gallery and The Neon Heater Art Gallery (Ohio), and an early career retrospective at The Center for Exploratory and Perceptual Art (CEPA Gallery) in Buffalo, New York. She is currently preparing for her upcoming solo exhibitions at 3S Artspace (Portsmouth), and Auxiliary Projects (Brooklyn). Rachel's work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Art F City, Paper Magazine, Artnet, DRAIN, Domino, eyes toward the dove, HYPERALLERGIC, Gothamist, Berlin Art Parasites, the Fanzine, Seattle Pi, Absolute Arts, ÆQAI, and LeCool Bangkok, among others. www.rachelrampleman.com

Nancy Manocherian's the cell theatre (Artistic Director Kira Simring) is a non profit dedicated to the incubation and presentation of new works that mine the mind, pierce the heart, and awaken the soul. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the cell has successfully moved into both the digital sphere as well as in-person visual art programming including Dark Matter Immersive's Garden of Eden (New York Times' Top Ten Things to Do This Week), Sebastien Aurillon's Celestial Cities, Chaney Trotter's Treasures and Tremors and Steve Pavlovsky of Liquid Light Lab's Liquidverse. online programming such as Tolerance Party (Time Out New York Best Theater to Stream this Week), the Brave New World Series with Tribeca New Music, the Room | to | Breathe series with Bright Shiny Things,Nourishment "Bites" with HOLDTIGHT Dance Company, Apex Sky, Harps Uncovered. Past productions include Found, Hoard (co-produced with Off the Wall), The Pink Unicorn (starring Alice Ripley co-produced with Out of the Box Theatrics), The Evolution of Mann, Bastard Jones (Drama-Desk Nominated), Crackskull Row, Hard Times: An American Musical, The McGowan Trilogy, Hey Jude, Horse Girls and more. www.thecelltheatre.org @thecelltheatre

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