“I should fuck it up”: Sasha Velour on the importance of staying true to drag’s creative roots

INT: Your publication Velour: The Drag Magazine came to life around the time of your MFA I believe. What made you want to create a magazine of comics that were about drag queen characters?

SV: I had a couple intentions with that. One was to depict and celebrate the truth of the gender inclusive world of drag, which I was not seeing on shows like Drag Race. Another was to be really historical, which I also felt was getting lost in drag. Each issue of Velour re-published pieces of drag creativity from the 50s, the 70s, and the 90s. That was to emphasise that what we’re doing now is just a continuation of ideas that have been started by our queer elders and ancestors. That sounds kind of self-important, as if people were reading the book, which they weren’t at first. Well, I sent a copy to the Library of Congress, so it’s definitely in the Library of Congress now. The other reason I created Velour was to create a genuine connection between visual artists and drag performers, the former I knew from attending various comic conventions and the latter I knew from going out into nightlife. I felt like these people have so much in common, everyone I knew from the art world loved dressing up and partying, and everyone I knew from the drag world had a passion for design and visual art. It was like an artistic matchmaking across disciplines that don’t communicate that much with each other, but have so much in common.

INT: Sasha Velour was born, and you quickly made a name for yourself in the Brooklyn drag scene, where you stayed as a fixture right up until you got onto RuPaul’s Drag Race season nine. Was there ever a time where you were hesitant about diving more into your drag career as opposed to becoming an illustrator, cartoonist, or graphic designer?

SV: I’m not sure I gave it that much thought. I left Brooklyn and quit my day job as a layout artist for a children’s comic book company when my mum passed away. When I came back to the city, I didn’t really know what to do. I knew I could have like one drag gig a month, which paid a whopping $150. Funnily enough, by going out and being part of the queer nightlife scene I started getting more graphic design gigs. During the day, I would work on Linda Simpson’s website for her Drag Bingo, or I would make a poster for Kitten ‘N’ Lou’s tour in Australia. I can’t say I really was a full-time drag performer before being on Drag Race because I don’t think I did the kind of drag that could get booked multiple nights of the week without the status of RuPaul’s Drag Race. That has to change, but since it wasn’t going to at the time I decided to work the system for myself.

INT: I think, unfortunately, something similar is happening here in the UK now, too. Many queens are forced to compete and operate on the same wavelength as those who get on to, and subsequently validated by, RuPaul’s Drag Race UK.

SV: I think that’s really too bad. I feel like that comes from producers of these drag shows who are disconnected from the art of drag. They have a very narrow idea of what’s even on Drag Race or what people are liking about Drag Race, and it becomes a copy of pop culture rather than what it should be, which is its own fabulous art form producing new things for the culture.

INT: We both know drag is an art. Do you think the mainstream is finally considering drag as an art as well?

SV: I think by people who love it, yes. However – and I’m sure this has come up with your conversations before – so much of being considered an artist is about being recognised by various institutions rather than the spirit of the art itself. To me, of course drag is an art. Drag is one of the best kinds of art, because it is a little resistant to those institutions, because it combines so many different forms of media. But ultimately, having us recognised by institutions is still tentative. I don’t feel like we have a secure place within the history or the canon of art. Maybe the end goal is to completely disrupt those things and get rid of them. Or, maybe it’s to be seen and recognised. I don’t know which one would be better, but I don’t think we’re there yet.

INT: Interesting. I think one thing that could help is being in creative control. For example, you’re spearheading your entire art direction – from your merchandise and your graphics, to your promotional materials and typography. What kind of advice or thoughts do you have for drag artists who want to take ownership of their art direction in the way you have?

SV: Well, I think they definitely should. I mean, art direction kind of makes me laugh because it is ultimately just advertising and it should really be something that we’re having fun with. Isn’t it just another avenue for doing what we do? Drag is the vision of the queen, and it’s about creating and conceptualising. If you’re not doing that yourself, are you really doing drag? Or, are you living a pseudo-celebrity fantasy for yourself, and spending all your money on it? I save a lot of money by doing this work for myself. I also get a lot of enjoyment from it. I pursued this career to be able to bring all my visions to life, like getting to choose the colours of my costume all the way to the hand lettering.

INT: Especially your hand lettering.

SV: I see hand lettering all the time now. When I was doing hand lettering for Velour like a decade ago, it looked crazy because everyone was using these crazy digital fonts and photos, and now I’ve been able to encourage people to make things more hands-on-looking. But the key to it is you have to do it with your own hands. One of my biggest inspirations is Linda Simpson, who was publishing My Comrade in the 90s when they didn’t have Photoshop. She was taking photos of people and literally cutting them out and photocopying them, and adding things and doodling on them with a Sharpie. That’s the history of drag graphic design. It isn’t this high-tech thing that mirrors the real world of advertising. It is something so much better because it’s free from all of that corporate hierarchical bullshit. It would be tragic if drag becomes something that has to be involved in that system too, because we’re meant to be breaking from capitalistic structures, not reinforcing them.

INT: That reminds me of other great drag artist legends like my hero, Dr. Vaginal Davis.

SV: She’s truly an artist. I recently discovered that one of the executive producers of Drag Race sang back-up for her in the 70s. It’s folks like that, who are behind the scenes and know what they’re talking about, that make the show so good. We need more of that in the management companies and agencies that represent drag queens day to day.

INT: I definitely agree. Genuine fans of drag should be involved with drag, not people who are seeing it as a money-making machine.

SV: People who know that drag has these origins in the world of art and in the underground scenes and don’t want it to lose that, versus people who see it as an opportunity to step out of those things.

INT: With your show Smoke & Mirrors, I want to discuss projection mapping, because that’s something that’s been prevalent in your career since before Drag Race. I remember watching the Cellophane performance in 2016 before your time on Drag Race, even. How did your relationship with projections start and how do you continue to incorporate it into this current tour?

INT: I guess as a performer elevates their drag, they have to remember what drew people to those bars or to their shows in the first place and not losing that magic.

SV: Exactly. And in Smoke & Mirrors I kind of joke about that because there’s this moment in the first act where the effects just keep getting heightened and then suddenly it just fails. I really thought that was key. I need a disaster in the middle of this show, where I’ve thrown everything at the wall. I have backup dancers, I have flashing lights, I have curtains and backdrops and it all should come crashing down. I should fuck it up. It’s like a myth of some kind. A tale of what happens when you lose sight of what we’re all about. You shoot for the stars and lose yourself. It’s so important to not fall into that trap.

SV: That replica was fun, I had no idea if it was going to work at all. I also wanted to teach myself a new skill. To be honest, I particularly had fun giving myself a partial nose job when I shaved down the mask’s nose to make it facially feminised.

INT: What brought about the Faces of Drag? They’re amazing creations to come out of newspaper, clay, wire, and spray paint.

SV: Around that time, I was really starting to fear the idea that we would lose the rich history of drag, that people would think we’re inventing new things when we are really honouring these traditions and continuing on the legacy. Every time I read about the history of drag, when it was so much harder to be queer, I’m particularly struck by how deeply integrated performing and political activism work was for all these people. José Sarria, for example. The masks became a great way to tell these stories, and now I see each mask as a selfie of a historical drag artist that we have very few pictures of throughout history.

INT: I also love that you included Divine. There are probably people out there who still don’t even know who she is, but to anyone who loves drag it’s a no-brainer.

SV: The bar is so low. Everything on the internet about drag is copy and pasted from Wikipedia. I took the time and showed respect to these people by doing independent research by actually looking for primary sources to make sure the things that I’m saying about them are true. I see that basically nowhere else, which says a lot about where we are in terms of truly appreciating our history of this art form.

INT: I think that’s why it’s so important that drag continues to be seen and discussed within the realm of art.

SV: But, also discussed as something that is not always perfect. I think people can get kind of idealistic about the arts, but it’s really a location of tension. Drag has a very intimate connection with blackface minstrels, because some of the first touring drag artists in the United States in the 1800s were in blackface. Drag is not free of problems, which is why it’s not automatically transgressive. We have to keep it transgressive by breaking away from easy narratives about it or overly idealistic visions of what we’re achieving when we step into that. That’s why I’m always criticising myself and everyone around me and trying to do better.

INT: How does Smoke & Mirrors play on these philosophies?

SV: Of course, I want to give people a great night in the theatre. I want to entertain, but I also want to create a possibility for what the art of drag could look like and should look like, as an opportunity for complexity. I want an event and a type of art that can fold really complex ideas and make them so accessible and fun, all whilst being critical of itself. In that way, drag continues to be such a rich metaphor for life. There’s nothing about drag that is linear or binary, and it allows us to look at the world in the same way.