BAYOU CITY BE ALL

Bayou City Be All is a one-of-a-kind evening of performance, fashion, and music beyond the Gender Binary.

This community-driven project surveys queer and gender non-conforming traditions across Houston. Bayou City Be All celebrates the music, culture, and art of LGBTQIA+ Gender Non-Conforming, Genderqueer, and Non-Binary creatives through live performance, fashion, and music.

This KiKi* function features the works of six performance artists and two collectives: Black TM, Tania Breton, Junior Fernandez, iPOCA Collective, Jazmin Jett, Angel Lartigue, Isaac Reyes, and Y2K, selected from an open call. DJ HYPERFEMME is providing live beats and guest emcee B. AMES will keep the energy high and the evening moving. PLUS, there will be themed runway walks open to audience participation.

* KiKi is a low-key function that sometimes includes dancing and friendly competition – always fun, never serious.

RUNWAY CATEGORIES (OPEN TO AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION)*

RUNWAY: WERK OF ART: Bring it like your favorite Piece of Art. Are you a Pollock? A Kehinde Wiley? Perhaps you represent infinity, like Kusama’s rooms? Dress up and show off some of the most famous artworks throughout history!

RUNWAY: UNDER PRESSURE: Are you feeling under pressure? Are you a diamond in the rough? Then this category is for you – a runway walk for those who are ready to show up and underwhelm in basic couture!

RUNWAY: BAYOU’D BEHAVIOR: Whether you’re coming down or coming through, you know that Houston has something special just for you. This runway walk features Houston-specific looks. From Astroworld to Space City, Rodeo Wear to Homecoming, and BBQ to Bahn Mi – bring your local flavor!

*Sign-up for runway walks ahead of time here, or register at the event.

ABOUT THE PERFORMERS

B. AMES is one of the names that you have probably heard, especially if you’re into the underground ballroom scene. Being in the scene as an artist since 2009, B. has developed a style infused with pop and underground club beats. Producer, remixer, vocalist, drag artist and sometime DJ, B. AMES has been a part of the record label Qween Beat, founded by legendary producer MikeQ. B. AMES has produced and remixed music for RuPaul’s Drag Race performers and has released three solo albums.

Black TM (Slant Rhyme and Raven Crane) is a performance-based collaboration of Raven Crane and Slant Rhyme that consists of essays, conversations, and archival investigations that seek to explore the paradoxes, limitations, and social ramifications of trans representation within contemporary culture, and contradictions of capitalism and its deleterious effects on bodies, movement, time, and land. 

Tania Breton is a visual and performing artist. Born in Sahagun, Hidalgo, Mexico and based in Houston, Tania examines motherhood, self-hood, and kinship through her work. She is interested in exploring topics of sexuality and queerness, her role as a mother and its relationship to sex as it pertains to her body: as a symbol, as a tool, as an object. 

Junior Fernandez is an interdisciplinary artist with a BFA in Photography and Digital Media from the University of Houston. His work, ranging from photo-based installations featuring bedsheets to photographic archives of Houston’s queer life, deals with queerness’ historically vexed relationship with evidence. Fernandez was born and raised in Habana, Cuba and currently lives and works in Houston.

HYPERFEMME is a queer conceptual artist and DJ based in Houston. His text-based visual work explores themes of self-determination and power, while his high-energy dance sets highlight queer/trans artists from across the globe.

iPOCA Collective is a collective of intersex People of Color artists and artistic ally accomplices from across the United States who create visual art, live performance, and films in conjunction with public protests to bring awareness to issues that impact intersex people.

Jazmin Jett is a visual artist who solely seeks to undermine her fears and free her inner-child. “Let’s Taste,” a euphemism that suggests the viewer surrender to the sensations of their experiences, drives the intention of her work and lifestyle. Through film, photography, and collage, she invites viewers to delve into the colors that encapsulate her world. 

Angel Lartigue is a self-taught artist born and raised in Houston. Their primary motivation is to investigate and redefine the relationship between the body and land through the use of organic matter as raw material, including research training in human remains recovery at Texas forensic “body farms” in 2018. This concentration has led to experimenting with processes of decomposition in artworks and incorporating fungi, insects, and odors captured during fieldwork.

Isaac Reyes is a Mexican artist who attended the University of Houston where he received his BFA in Sculpture. Reyes works predominantly in the medium of sculpture and installation art and he has exhibited his work locally and internationally. 

Y2K is an Austin-based performance, music, and installation artist, whose work moves freely across different realms of theatrical nightlife performance, media production, and performance art. Their work explores themes of queer stigma, trauma, and sexual liberation. In their multimedia performances, they embody a queer version of the Y2K Virus/Millennium Bug that is back with a mission to spread queerness through technology (or, in their words, “the desirous virus leading the queer apocalypse”).

ABOUT BAYOU CITY BE ALL

Bayou City Be All is organized by DiverseWorks Curator Ashley DeHoyos and an advisory committee that includes artists and cultural producers from Houston’s LGBTQIA+ community.

Bayou City Be All Advisory Committee: Aveda Adera, Emilý Æyer, Ahmeir Gibson, Frank Hernandez, Koomah, Philip Karjeker, leo, Stephanie Saint Sanchez, and Donald Shorter.

SUPPORT

Bayou City Be All is supported by the John Steven Kellett Foundation, the Hollyfield Foundation, the Cullen Trust for the Performing Arts, the City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance, and the Texas Commission on the Arts. Additional support from the Brown Foundation, Inc., Houston Endowment, the George and Mary Josephine Hamman Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the Wortham Foundation.

In-Kind Sponsors: Deep Eddy Vodka, Waterloo Sparkling Water, Saint Arnold Brewing Company, and Sharespace

Media Sponsor: Arts + Culture