Kaj-anne Pepper
Pink Moment (V2.0)
2018 mylar, tape, monitors and looping video (16 min) Available
Statement
Kaj-anne Pepper AKA Pepper Pepper is a multidisciplinary artist working in performance, video, drag, installation, theatre and dance.
"So Spice They Named Her Twice" Kaj-anne's drag persona "Pepper Pepper" is a humorous yet thoughtful gender bending MC and entertainer. Her mix of camp and charm live in the unique strata between Fine Arts and Vulgar Marxism. Together they explore vulnerability, artifice and identity while turning tragic into magic and trauma into drama.
Pepper has premiered hybridized dance/theatre work at RISK/REWARD, DANCE+ The Headwater’s Theatre, PICA’s T:BA festival, Performance Works Northwest, and internationally at OFF! Biennale Budapest and Canada's Living Things Festival. Pepper has exhibited 2d, 3d and installation work at Linfield College, Space Gallery Maine and at The Budapest Art Fair among others.
Pepper has been fortunate to have been an artist in residence at:
The Macdowell Colony, Caldera Arts, Space Gallery Maine, Signal Fire, The Lucky Penny Workroom Atlanta, Pelican Bomb New Orleans, New Expressive Works Residency, CON/VERGE at PonderosaTanz and PICA's Creative Exchange Lab.
Pepper Pepper has been featured in drag at The Austin International Drag Festival, Bushwig, Off-Beat Bar Budapest, MSBeat Festival Chemnitz Germany, Bar Mattachine LA, Club Mother SF and The Stud (SF) and countless fundraisers and charities across the Pacific Northwest and West Coast. Pepper produced the wildly successful Drag/Art/Ball "Critical Mascara from 2012-2017 and was featured in the book "Fabulous Rise of the Beautiful Eccentric" by collaborator and author madison moore. One time as "Pepper the Potter" S/he performed an original lampoon of the ceramics community at NCECA's Randall Session to a crowd of 4500! *And you said that degree in Sculpture would take me nowhere* (Note - while Pepper has been a guest artist and lecturer at many a college S/he holds no degrees or titles besides "Ms. Willamette Realness" and "Mr. Nude Portland 2017")
In 2016 Pepper premiered the first cycle of their on-going project Diva Practice. Diva Practice is a performance and research project about drag queens dancing with uncertainty, technology and identity. In 2017 with support from the Regional Arts and Culture Council, Oregon Arts Commission Pepper toured the country to develop "Diva Practice: Solo" as a work-in-progress culminating in a 2017 premier in Portland OR, at The Headwaters Theatre. Pepper has brought Diva Practice: Solo to Oregon State University Bend and SPACE GALLERY Maine as well as teaching "The Diva Practice Workshop" occasionally with flare.
When S/he is home in Portland OR you can see her at "Drag Queen Tag Team" an all ages FREE durational improv lipsynch-a-thon every 2nd Tuesday at The Alberta Street Pub. Often you can catch her regularly prancing at Carla Rossi's "Queer Horror" film screenings and pulling stunts at gigs across the nation.
