Vee Dagger
Her work draws on the aesthetics of Taiwanese opera and lesbian identity to explore the melodrama of overwhelming emotion, while incorporating her interest in theatrical fashion.
Vee completed a degree in Film Studies in 2020 and performs with AGE OF THE, a Leeds punk drag collective that aims to push the boundaries of performance and conventions of drag. She is currently collaborating with four other Leeds-based artists to run Queerencia, an arts collective focused on nurturing transgressive live art. She has accumulated miscellaneous drag experience including exhibition performance, film work and ballroom performance, but remains a DIY club kid at heart.
Vee’s Digital Residency
A major inspiration for me in my artistic practice has been the work of Cindy Sherman, especially her 1977-1980 project Untitled Film Stills. Sherman appears in all of her work but not as herself, taking herself out of context. Sherman removes her subject – herself – from her own setting, her own context, and imagines a new one.
Sherman’s self/subject in Untitled Film Stills appears suspended in a single moment midway through something else – a conversation, a walk, an escape. In my project I seek to place myself in a moment that has not happened yet, a return to my hometown that has not happened, against the backdrop of a Taipei I can only remember. My photographs of Taipei take an interest in decay, abandonment, absence and the mundane in the midst of a thriving city. The Taipei in my photographs does not exist because Taipei has grown past it, and I am not there to see this. I am from a moment that no longer exists, moving towards a blank space.
My interest in the creation of an aggressively artificial reality also stems from my fascination with the aesthetics of traditional Chinese opera, a ubiquitous part of my childhood in Taipei – in adverts, on TV, part of an elementary school field trip. My drag is a response to these aesthetics; I love the elaborate theatricality of the makeup and costuming, and have a long-standing interest in recreating the use of colour (especially vivid pinks) against a white background. The kind of face I’m looking to imitate is seen against lavish backdrops, but I’m interested in setting it against the mundanity of a hometown.
Listen to Vee’s reflection on her Digital Residency here:
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Vee Dagger
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Vee Dagger Digital Residency
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Vee Dagger
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