Feel the Future: A Drag Show Curated by Marcel Pardo Ariza

Feel the Future features local drag performers Bionka Simone, JanpiStar, Mudd, Donna Personna, and Los Angeles–⁠based Freddie Seipoldt for an evening of fabulous fun curated by 2022 SECA Art Award recipient Marcel Pardo Ariza and MC’ed by Kochina Rude. Pardo Ariza’s installation, I Am Very Lucky, Very Lucky to Be Trans, honors San Francisco Bay Area trans leaders in a photographic site-specific installation. Come celebrate San Francisco’s vibrant drag nightlife community and the performing artists who embody queer resilience and kinship while building a sustainable queer and trans future. Chef and artist Salimatu Amabebe of Black Feast will close the evening with a collective food offering (first come, first served).

Program Details

Curator: Marcel Pardo Ariza
MC: Kochina Rude
Performers: Bionka Simone, JanpiStar, Mudd, Donna Personna and Freddie Seipoldt
Stage Manager: Churro Nomi
Food by: Salimatu Amabebe/Black Feast
 
Accessibility Information:

Seating is available at this event. For any other accessibility accommodations, please email publicengagement@sfmoma.org, and we will do our best to fulfill your request.

About the Participants

Marcel Pardo Ariza (b. Bogotá, Colombia) is a trans visual artist, educator, and curator who explores the relationship between queer and trans kinship through constructed photographs, site-specific installations, and public programming. Their work is rooted in close dialogue and collaboration with trans, non-binary, and queer friends and peers, most of whom are performers, artists, educators, policymakers, and community organizers. Their practice celebrates collective care and intergenerational connection. Their work is invested in creating long-term interdisciplinary collaborations and opportunities that are non-hierarchical and equitable.

Kochina Rude, known for her “DIY hard femme” aesthetic and harm reduction advocacy, is a drag queen, vocalist, and emcee based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Kochina is a cohost for weekly drag show, “Princess,” at OASIS in San Francisco, where she initiated an innovative overdose prevention project by distributing naloxone and educating audiences about how to reverse drug overdoses in queer nightlife settings. She also provided vocals for Bay Area punk band Lolly Gaggers (2017–2023). Offstage, she is a bureaucrat and sexual health specialist at the California Department of Public Health.

Bionka Simone is a seasoned entertainer throughout the Bay Area with over 22 years of experience as an illusionist/model/actress. When Simone walks into a room she owns it, a dynamic performer with a larger-than-life personality. Currently living in San Francisco, Simone is a featured illusionist at the world famous cabaret/restaurant AsiaSF and has several independent film credits including Ese Hombre by Natalie L. Chang, What’s the T by Cecilio Asuncion, and Lorelei by Sabrina Doyle, a 2020 Tribeca Film Festival Official Selection. In 2010, Simone swept the Bay Area pageant circuit capturing two titles: “Catwalk,” which is San Francisco’s leading all-transgender model pageant, and “Lady Golden Gate,” a Polynesian pageant geared towards education. In 2016, she went on to capture the national title of Miss Gay United States, then Miss Cabaret in Cincinnati, Ohio. Simone served as a Transgender ambassador in the Kingdom of Tonga and had the privilege of awarding several scholarships to transgender youth. Bionka is still an active member of the trans community and serves on several advisory boards.

JanpiStar was born and raised in Puerto Rico. With a degree in Drama from the University of Puerto Rico, they moved to Oakland in January 2018 to join AXIS Dance Company and had the opportunity to work with choreographers like Robin Dekkers, Arthur Pita, Jennifer Archibald, and Asun Noales. JanpiStar has been commissioned in the Bay Area by different festivals and organizations such as: Queering Dance Festival in 2019, 2020, and 2022, and Fresh Meat Productions in 2021 and 2022.

My name is Mudd. I am a two-spirit bipoc/latinx artist from central California. I use my art form to push the agenda of representation in multifaceted and intersectional identities and the narrative of artistry for people who have had to identify as an “other.”

Donna Personna is an artist and performer who first hit the stage with the legendary Cockettes. She was the subject of the 2013 Iris Prize-winning short film, My Mother, by Jay Bedwani. She co-wrote the interactive historical theater piece The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot, which premiered in 2018 at the Tenderloin Museum in San Francisco, and was the SF Pride Grand Marshal in 2019. She serves on the Board of Directors for Trans March and the Transgender Day of Remembrance, working to gain wider visibility for transgender rights.

Freddie Seipoldt (sy-pold) blasted onto the scene with their 2020 debut EP Melanin Monroe, a shelter-in-place record that defied global catastrophe and has gone on to amass over two million streams worldwide. Freddie’s music synthesizes their nostalgia for early 2000s Hip-Hop and R&B with queer, futuristic production. Their sophomore EP, TOO CLOSE, will be released to all streaming platforms on March 31, 2023.

Salimatu Amabebe (they/he) is a trans, Nigerian-American chef and multimedia artist, working in food, film, photography, sculpture, and installation. His work focuses on the intersection of food and art while centering community activism, African diasporic culinary traditions, and Black queer/trans liberation. Amabebe is the founder/director of Black Feast, a culinary event celebrating Black artists and writers through food. Amabebe is a recipient of the 2021 Eater New Guard Award; his work has been featured in Vogue, The New York Times, Eater, and in A24’s recent cookbook, Horror Caviar.