ARTIST STATEMENT / PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
I create bodies of work that explore gender, artifice, and spectacle. Utilizing directorial, curatorial, and anthropological processes, I showcase irrepressible personalities who challenge convention, rewrite the rules, and embody the range of gender expression. A sampling of subjects include Girls Girls Girls - the world's first and only all-female Mötley Crüe tribute band, and Tazzie Colomb - the world's longest competing professional female bodybuilder.
With my current and ever evolving project Life is Drag, I use high definition video to document performances by and interviews with the most innovative and singular artists who embody the height of neo-burlesque and experimental drag. Having so far captured over 370 performances by more than 200 artists, the Life is Drag archive has evolved into a vast chronicle of American drag culture, spanning cities, generations, and genres - and serves as the largest digital archive of drag in the United States.
(Below image: 20-channel drag king video installation at The American LGBTQ+ Museum's inaugural REVERB event, New York City, 2025)
With a background in experimental video and documentary, I approach drag as a total work of art: a poetic synthesis of performance, costume, sculpture, sound, and identity. I capture numbers by each performer in veritable, full-body high definition videos framed consistently each time and showcased with minimal, if any, editing. Every performer engages in a structured interview, captured in full-look—hair, makeup, costume, attitude, exemplifying the height of their stage persona while offering deeply personal reflections on their craft, community, and lived experience. Using a consistent set of questions, I invite a spectrum of interpretation: for some, drag is political; for others, it’s not. While some say drag is about gender; others say drag transcends gender. In the end, one truth emerges: life is drag.
(Below image: Klondyke Performing "Soul in My Body" (Pin Clouds) on view at Satellite Art Show, New York City, July 2024)
(Below image: Menthol Menthol, Pinwheel Pinwheel, Esther & God Complex during an Unforgivable Emotional Carnivore pop-up show at The Cell Theatre during Life is Drag residency 1 (of 2), New York City, April 2021)
Life is Drag is about celebrating the power of this vital and expansive form of art and its wide range of practitioners and manifestations. It is about creating a record - an archive - of these brilliant but ephemeral performances, from grand theaters to gritty dives. At a moment when LGBTQIA+ spaces and drag as an art form are increasingly under attack, Life is Drag becomes more than documentation: it is a collective act of celebration and defiance. Viewed as a whole, Life is Drag is a collaborative, living archive of queer expression, resistance, and artistry.
(Below images: Esther, me, Joe E Jeffreys, Julian Castronovo, Murray Hill, La Zavaleta, Klondyke & Paris L'Hommie during Life is Drag at Symphony Space in partnership with the Municipal Art Society, New York City, 2023)
Currently in the midst of a year-long residency at SoMad® in Manhattan's Flatiron District, I am working to document a truly stellar lineup of artists; visionaries of the Brooklyn art drag scene and powerhouses of the NYC and DC drag worlds—artists who inspire locally and globally through their brilliant and joy-inspiring drag, and who create and connect beyond the stage through their unique and artistic activist voices. My goal is to honor, conserve, and amplify these voices, and to share them with the world, ensuring that the impact of drag as an art form continues to grow.
(Below image: Video still of Amygdala Performing “From the Air” (Laurie Anderson) at SoMad®, New York City, April 2025)
From the autumn of 2020 until the summer of 2021, I was an artist in residence at The Cell Theatre in Chelsea NYC, where I expanded Life is Drag in the midst of the pandemic to include neo-burlesque performers and performance artists whose work explores gender performativity. I also spent a few weeks in the summer of 2021 working with drag artists in Pittsburgh, documenting their performances and interviews at culturally significant local venues such as the historic Blue Moon Bar and Kelly Strayhorn Theater, as part of my Bloomfield Garden Club residency. This was followed by a whirlwind 2-night "residency" in NYC in September at Bushwig - where I documented 30 performances down the hall from the main stage, as part of Bushwig's 10-year anniversary.
(Below images: Shots featuring Martha Wilson, Carrie Able, Joe E Jeffreys, Elena Zavalev, Esther, Fem Appeal, Stephanie McGovern, X-Emma, Sir Cum Sized & Junior Mintt from "Pride as Performance: Preserving the Ephemeral" event, the finale of my Life is Drag residency 2 (of 2) at The Cell Theatre (in partnership with Franklin Furnace & CADAF, New York, New York, 2023)
My 2022 residency at Wave Pool Gallery in my hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio included creating video portraits of performers from the drag haus ODD Presents, members of the neo-burlesque troop Smoke & Queers, and other alt-drag and burlesque artists from the tri-state area. This residency also included a solo exhibition featuring this ever-growing archive, as well as multiple live performance events. In December of 2022, I began my 2nd residency at The Cell Theatre in NYC, where over the course of the next 6 months I added 100+ new video portraits to the Life is Drag archive. In June of 2023, I organized panel discussions about this project (also featuring pop up art exhibitions and live drag performances) at Symphony Space, co-sponsored by the Municipal Art Society of New York, and also at The Cell Theatre, in conjunction with Franklin Furnace & CADAF.
Upcoming in 2026 is a residency with BFF in Omaha.
(Below images: Life is Drag at Wave Pool Gallery with Stixen Stones, Tara Newone, Vanta Black, Calamity Adams, Montana Ba Nana, Kiara Chimera, Clinica Deprecious & Manuka Honey-Stix, Cincinnati, Ohio, 2022)
(Below images: Life is Drag at the Kelly Strayhorn Theater with Pissy Mattress, the Carnegie Museum of Art with Zayn-X, and the Blue Moon Bar with Cindy Crotchford and Luna Plexus (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 2021)
Life is Drag has been exhibited at such venues as the Carnegie Museum of Art and Bunker Projects (PA), 3S Artspace (NH), Wave Pool and the Weston Art Gallery at the Aronoff Center for the Arts (OH), & Symphony Space, La MaMa ETC, Satellite Art Club, Satellite Art Show, Bushwig, SoMad and The Cell (NYC).
If you would like to donate to this project, please click on the SUPPORT link above.
If you would like to join the mailing list, or bring Life is Drag to your town, please send me a message via the CONTACT link above.
(Below image: Group shot with Aladdin Firm, Amygdala, Mimi Silk, Linda Felcher, Esther, Darlinda Just Darlinda, Chevy Lace, Evangeline, Mauve & Viruscella before the Life is Drag brunch at Satellite Art Show, New York City, July 2024)
BIO:
Brooklyn-based artist, archivist and cultural anthropologist Rachel Rampleman creates bodies of work that explore gender, artifice, and spectacle. Utilizing directorial, curatorial, and collaborative processes, she showcases irrepressible personalities who challenge convention, rewrite the rules, and embody the range of gender expression. A sampling of subjects include Girls Girls Girls - the world's first and only all-female Mötley Crüe tribute band, and Tazzie Colomb - the world's longest competing professional female bodybuilder. With her current and ongoing project "Life is Drag", she uses high definition video to document performances by and interviews with alt-drag and neo-burlesque artists. Having so far captured over 370 performances by more than 200 artists, the "Life is Drag" archive has evolved into a vast chronicle of American drag culture, spanning cities, generations, and genres - and serves as the largest digital archive of drag performance in the United States.
Originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, and currently living and working in New York City, she received her MFA from New York University in 2006. Since then her work has been shown internationally at the Shanghai Biennale (Brooklyn Pavilion, 2012-13) in China, the Chennai Photo Biennale (India), JAM in Bangkok, Thailand, and throughout Europe at S.M.A.K. (Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst) and Art Cinema OFFoff (Ghent, Belgium), Monte Arts Centre (Antwerp, Belgium), Terasa (Pilsen, Czech Republic), C/O Berlin, Die Fruhperle, and The Secret Cabinet (Berlin, Germany), and at VIDEONALE.16 at the Kunstmuseum Bonn.
Nationally, her work has been exhibited at such venues as The American LGBTQIA+ Museum, Socrates Sculpture Park, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, Cleopatra’s, Petzel Gallery, Smack Mellon, Auxiliary Projects, The 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, Squeaky Wheel, Envoy Enterprises, Shoestring Press, The 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, The Arts Center of the Capital Region, and Collar Works (New York), Paul Robeson Galleries at Rutgers University (New Jersey), Other Cinema at Artists' Television Access (California), The 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, and SS NOVA, (Ohio), KMAC Museum Louisville, The Lexington Art League, The Fountain Gallery at Purdue University (Kentucky), 1506 Projects (Washington), University Hall Gallery at UMass Boston (Massachussetts), Icebox Project Space (Philadelphia), PULSE Miami (Florida), The Flint Art Institute, (Michigan), The Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University, the Carnegie Museum of Art, and The Andy Warhol Museum (Pennsylvania).
Rampleman recently had a survey exhibition on view at the Weston Art Gallery in the Aronoff Center for the Arts (Cincinnati, Ohio) as well as solo exhibitions at La MaMa ETC, SATELLITE Gallery LES, VOLTA NY, The Cell (New York), These Things Take Time (Ghent, Belgium), 42 Social Club (Connecticut), Carl Solway Gallery and The Neon Heater Art Gallery (Ohio), 3S Artspace (Portsmouth, New Hampshire), Bloomfield Garden Club (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), Wave Pool Gallery (Cincinnati, Ohio), and an early career retrospective at The Center for Exploratory and Perceptual Art (CEPA Gallery) in Buffalo, New York.
She also organizes panel discussions about her current project Life is Drag (also featuring pop up art exhibitions and live drag performances) at venues such as Symphony Space, in conjunction with the Municipal Art Society of New York, and at The Cell in conjunction with Franklin Furnace & CADAF, as part of her 2023 residency at The Cell (New York City). She is currently working on expanding her Life is Drag archive as the inaugural production Artist in Residence at SoMad in NYC, and the new work will be premiered at SoMad as a solo exhibition September-December, 2025.
Rachel’s work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The City Life, amNewYork, The Huffington Post, White Hot Magazine, Art F City, Paper Magazine, Artnet, The American Journal of Drama and Theatre, Autostraddle, DRAIN, Domino, eyes toward the dove, HYPERALLERGIC, Gothamist, Berlin Art Parasites, the Fanzine, Seattle Pi, Absolute Arts, ÆQAI, and LeCool Bangkok, among others. She has also created curatorial projects with Vanessa Albury as The Sun That Never Sets for venues such as The Frank Institute at CR10 in the Hudson Valley and SPRING/BREAK Art Show in NYC.
(Below images: Life is Drag at 3S Artspace with Miss Malice, Arabella LaDessé & Sham Payne in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 2021)