QUEEN ROSE AND DA CHUREN

From his original take on the daytime soap opera and sketch comedy genres to his music videos and filmic shorts, Kalup Linzy is widely-admired for his live performances, video works, and animation that explore stereotypes around sexual identity, race, class, and gender. Working as a writer-director-actor and singer-songwriter, he draws on a variety of American pop- and counter-culture genres, including early video and performance art, gay drag performance, reality TV competitions, and YouTube videos.

Among his best-known works are the iconic Churen series, which traces a set of family archetypes, narrated over a series of phone calls; The Pursuit of Happyness, an ongoing drama of love, longing and loss, featuring both narrative and music videos; and As Da Art World Might Turn, which juxtaposes videos that self-reflexively take on issues of ambition and belonging in the contemporary art world as well as the pop music and club scenes.

Kalup’s work has received substantial recognition, including grants from the Tiffany Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, The Creative Capital Foundation, Art Matters, The Jerome Foundation, and The Harpo Foundation, as well as a Headlands Alumni Award residency.

His work is included in many private and public collections including MoMA, The Studio Museum, The Whitney, The Metropolitan Museum, The Birmingham Museum of Art, and The Rubell Family Collection. His films have shown at Sundance, Tribeca, and Outfest, among other festivals, and he has been featured in New York Magazine, Interview,  V Magazine, W Magazine, Out Magazine, and, in May 2014, in a six-page spread in Harper’s Bazaar, Hong Kong.