The Gallery

Browse every entry from past years of the Adobe Design Achievement Awards.

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"Guise" Drag Queen Portraits

David Ayllon
Savannah College of Art and Design, United States
Fine Art - Photography
Category Semifinalist

An exhibition of photo portraits highlighting LGBTQ nightlife performers.

The "Guise" gallery exhibit ran from February 3 - March 10, 2018 at PO’P Gallery in Baldwin, New York. The exhibit featured portraits of noted nightlife & drag entertainers such as Sasha Velour (RuPaul’s Drag Race winner, Season 9), Bob The Drag Queen (RuPaul’s Drag Race winner, Season 8), Alaska, Peaches Christ, and more.

As a queer Latino, my fascination with persona grew from adolescent escapism into a process of examining gender, personal history, and self-expression through photography & design. By collaborating with noted personalities from the drag community, I can create dynamic narrative portraits that explore nostalgia and identity through the lens of artifice, urban fantasy, and pop-culture. I’ve always been drawn to larger than life characters, real or fictitious, and my goal with this work is to create worlds and situations for these drag personas to embody that are as exaggerated and strange and beautiful as they are. Although the exhibit was first displayed in 2018, the series of portraits is ongoing.

View project on Behance