Amber Cadaverous is a visual artist, specialising in drag performance, photography and video/film work. Her work is unapologetically femme and focuses in on the narrative of what it means to be a femme queer woman and female drag performance artist. Drawing inspiration from strong female characters in horror and narrowing in on that otherness and femme power and how it can be harnessed.
Amber was recently featured on BBC’s Stories, where she created discourse on what it means to be female drag queen and misogyny. Also in an interview in New York at Rupaul’s Drag Con regarding women in drag. She regularly performs in drag internationally and has most recently in the Rhode Island in the USA as well as cities all over the UK such as Birmingham, Manchester, Cardiff and Glasgow.
Artist Bio
Artist Statement
Amber Cadaverous practice is her drag persona, this manifests as various visual art outcomes including performance, photography, installation and video/film work. Her work is unapologetically femme and focuses in on the narrative of what it means to be a femme queer woman and female drag performance artist in this time period. The main source of inspiration for the aesthetics of her drag persona is drawn from strong female characters in the horror genre. There’s a power and an ‘otherness’ encapsulated in hyper-femininity in the characters of the genre that really resonates with her. She focuses on narrowing in on that otherness and femme power they embody and how it can be harnessed.
Cadaverous sees her drag as an extension of herself, drag is a way to be expressive in a highly conceptual and artistic manner. Amber Cadaverous is an extension and exaggeration of herself, she is a goth brat diva who wants to be loved by the world. She is the height of extreme femininity, visually appealing and stimulating juxtaposed with a political and angry almost transgressive aesthetic. A feminist icon who empowers other women and demands attention and audience. She loves the idea of the gaze but hates the reality of the male gaze, she is the image that the male gaze wants but the male gaze hates.
The process of getting into drag is very crucial to the work painting her own flesh like she would a canvas, applying makeup as she would paint with brushes and sponges to her own body is very important. Being so personally present in my work and being so visible is another aspect that is integral. Celebrating her unconventional plus size body and lesbian sexuality proudly, which aren’t celebrated in mainstream society and media. As a queer woman It’s very much about the ‘femme’ identity and combatting the erasure of women in not only the LGBT community but broader heteronormative society. For Cadaverous the visibility that comes with being the artist and the art work is so important because it creates discourse, which opens scope for change. It’s her way of fighting sexism by using her platform as an artist to draw attention to the inequality issues in the LGBTQ+ scene and wider society.
It’s a protest to be a woman in drag and a form of activism, it’s politically charged. She uses drag as a way of reclaiming her own femininity and a protesting heteronormative society. Through the use of cosmetics, wigs, corsetry, etc, which are the tools used for her to transform into Amber Cadaverous are sold and pushed onto women from an early age as items they should use correctively to cover insecurities and maintain a standard of appearance. Women are expected to maintain this level of hyper femininity and perform to the world in a certain way to be seen as of value. As an artist Cadaverous reclaims these items by using them in an expressive and artistic manner and doing what she wants with them instead of what is expected of her as a woman. This goes hand in hand with also reclaiming the gaze, being in drag makes everything she does on her terms and her terms alone, choosing the way she is seen and demanding the attention and captivation of the audience.
Being both a woman and a drag queen enables Cadaverous to view the world and herself within it through a different lens to most, through her art she critiques and questions it using my platform to create discourse on what it means to be female drag queen and misogyny. There are strong parallels to how marginalised people have always used visual arts as a means to voicing activism. The challenge has always been to the relative existing norms and rigid gender roles. Women have constantly been involved in activism and using art in respective ways to challenge misogyny and discrimination as it appears. As a woman she is continuing the fight for equality as misogyny and sexism is still a huge issue in LGBT culture and the wider world. Using drag as her art and my own tool to directly dismantle this misogyny by creating discourse using my growing platform which involves social media and the age of the internet. Being visible as a strong queer woman that is making this type of art in the face of critique and back lash from systemic powers like the patriarchy and consent erasure of queer femme identities is what she is very passionate about. The future is female.