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Ever forward shirt6/13/2023 ![]() I was in line, and I was like, “OK, so where do I go?” So, I came from the back, and I walked. ![]() Gericault De La Rose: So, I’m going to this ballroom event, eight-minute walk from my apartment, not knowing anyone. The scene centers queer trans and nonbinary people of color in an empowered performance space. Between the 1960s and 1980s, the city’s drag competitions transformed from pageantry-style balls to voguing battles. But in this space, we are allowed to take our 30 seconds of the spotlight and show people what we’ve got.Īnne Brice: The ballroom scene, which first emerged in New York amid the Harlem Renaissance in the early 20th century, incorporates fashion, pageantry and dance alongside community-building and self-care. Because outside these walls, the world actively wants us to disappear. Gericault De La Rose: In the world of ballroom, this is the space that we can make a name and that we can make history and be remembered. I want to actually live a life, make my name mean something.Īnne Brice: But when she walked into the ballroom scene at Oakland To All, she felt the same connection, the same radical acceptance and belonging that she felt in Chicago. My dream is to not have to struggle to survive. Gericault De La Rose: When I moved out here, I was so homesick. ![]() And when she moved to the Bay Area in 2021 for her master’s program at UC Berkeley’s Department of Art Practice, she really missed her people. It was something that I’d always dreamed of.Īnne Brice: She’d recently moved from Chicago, where she has this big, supportive group of friends. ![]() Most everyone knew how to dance or move in some way. It was majority Black and brown queer and trans folk. When I walked into ballroom, it was such a completely different experience. I really go for a dancing aspect when I go out. I went to some queer events and queer parties, even trans-specific parties, but they were mostly white, and a lot of people did not know how to dance. Gericault De La Rose: Immediately, when I walked into that space, I was seen as a woman, and it was something that was completely different from the queer scene in San Francisco. When Gericault De La Rose first strutted into the ballroom scene in Oakland two years ago, it felt like home. (UC Berkeley photo by Sofia Liashcheva) Read a transcript of Berkeley Voices episode 110: Gericault De La Rose knows who she is and won’t change for anyone.Īnne Brice: This is Berkeley Voices. Her final MFA piece is part of the Annual UC Berkeley Master of Fine Arts Exhibition, which opens on May 10 at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA). Gericault De La Rose is graduating with a master of fine arts degree from UC Berkeley’s Department of Art Practice on May 17, 2023. Read more graduation stories on Berkeley News. Learn more about the emerging artists’ work. Gericault’s final MFA piece is part of the Annual UC Berkeley Master of Fine Arts Exhibition, which opens on May 10 at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA). “I’m thinking about how much of myself is a part of them and how much of them are a part of me, and it’s kind of this final goodbye.” “It’s about disconnection and severance,” she says. For her thesis project, Gericault will unravel huge tapestries with images of her parents’ stomachs on them. When Gericault came out to her parents as trans in her early 20s, they disowned her. And what are you as a woman if you can’t reproduce?” “I look at the manananggal as kind of a metaphor for how society sees trans women - how this is literally a woman detached from her reproductive organs. One time, she dressed up like a manananggal - a kind of monster that detaches from her lower body at night to look for unborn babies to eat - and then slept in an art gallery for six hours. “Being that queer trans person completely owning herself I hope gives other people permission to be themselves, too,” she says.Ī master’s student in UC Berkeley’s Department of Art Practice, Gericault explores in her art Philippine mythology and her experience as a trans woman. Gericault De La Rose is a queer trans Filipinx woman, and refuses to change for anyone. Follow Berkeley Voices, a Berkeley News podcast about the people and research that makes UC Berkeley the world-changing place that it is.
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