Drag is a series of photographs and video based work looking at the art of drag to explore identity, creation, power, vulnerability and liminal spaces.
In Drag, Van Der Hout photographs drag performers in the spaces between their lived and performed identities. He’s interested in how we can access inner power as we create our own mask to be seen through.
While queens inhabit a space of power in their performative lives, this in not necessarily so in their day-to-day lives. What emerges is a new identity between the mask of the everyday and the mask of the Queen.
Accompanying the photographs is a multi-channel video focusing on three elements: the process of drag (painting) seen through a two-way mirror in which we see the queens as they see themselves transforming; an interview conducted with the queen as their day-to-day self, and an interview with their alter-ego giving them an opportunity to address the other directly.
What the series makes clear is the famous quote by RuPaul “we are all born naked and the rest is drag." All of our identities are a form of drag.