Art. Activism. Community.
The Drag Arts Oral History Project [DAOHP] is a new multimedia social impact project that aims to fill significant public and professional knowledge gaps around the actual lived experiences, views, needs and histories of drag artists and performers. As keepers of oft undocumented and suppressed queer histories and cultures, these artists are often unsung activist and artistic heroes in the fight for queer futures and community, as well as against racism, systemic violence and oppression of all kinds.
The project is ultimately meant to explore Drag as distinct art form.
In the age of drag celebrity, the proliferation of drag events and performances, and the international pop culture success of Ru Paul’s Drag Race, and conservative political persecution - drag has become a highly visible and commoditized cultural artifact and kind of text (by queer and hetero audiences alike). This success sometimes relegates the form to one that is packaged for broad public consumption and corporate media profit - and co-opted/distorted by those wishing to vilify the form and its practitioners.
These trends have also positively influenced the career trajectories and commercial possibilities for a fraction of drag artists who attain significant media exposure through emerging and traditional platforms. In the swirl of this, local artists (drag queens, kings, monarchs and performers of every stripe) are largely left to their own devices in a genre that typically falls outside of the systems of support reserved for the arts + culture sector, relying on their own resources to self-produce their work in the face of a number of intersecting odds and factors.
Through this project, we aim to get back down to the roots of “drag” by honing in on the “local” and by amplifying the experience of producing and performing drag in a contemporary context. Through the use of oral history methods we respectfully offer up narrative power to the form’s community of practitioners and explore the genre through artistic, activist and community-focused lenses.
VOLUME I: PHILADELPHIA [2021-2024]
The project was founded in Philadelphia in 2021 by interdisciplinary artist and cultural producer, Wilfredo Hernandez, and is produced by Communitas Arts & Culture, LLC - a national thought and action lab focused on producing and consulting for equity and with community. The initial project was launched with the lead generous support of a grant from the Independence Public Media Foundation & Knight-Lenfest Local News Transformation Fund.
Philadelphia’s drag art and queer nightlife scene is well populated with a dynamic and diverse community of artists that are pushing boundaries, uplifting critical voices with care and evolving with the challenges that living and producing in post-COVID-19 times presents. Their stories deserve to be heard in an unfiltered way - especially those performers who are Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) and those who navigate other marginalized, intersectional identities across the city. Through the methods of oral history work, the artist is the narrator of their own story and can dive deep on topics and themes that otherwise would be left unheard of through other standard mediums of documentation.
We believe this method will help foster and support the increased agency of drag artists and amplify the stories and needs of communities typically excluded from typical philanthropic/nonprofit support and community media-making efforts.
The inaugural collection of the project currently features 17 full-length (approx. 1hr+) interviews with artists.
