Devan Shimoyama USA, b. 1989
Vampira, 2021
Oil, colored pencil, glitter, acrylic, rhinestones, and collage on canvas stretched over panel
72 x 72 x 1 1/4 in
182.9 x 182.9 x 3.2 cm
182.9 x 182.9 x 3.2 cm
7938
Further images
Vampira is a painting by Devan Shimoyama, depicting the artist as the fictional, camp vampire character Vampira. The painting debuted in Devan Shimoyama. All The Rage, the artist’s first European...
Vampira is a painting by Devan Shimoyama, depicting the artist as the fictional, camp vampire character Vampira. The painting debuted in Devan Shimoyama. All The Rage, the artist’s first European solo museum exhibition, which opened on June 19, 2021, at Kunstpalais, Erlangen, Germany. Many of the works in the exhibition portrayed the artist in mythical, historical, or fantastical roles related to ideas of magic and transformation.
The image is deeply connected to Shimoyama’s ongoing aesthetic exploration of alternative masculinity through adorned, fantastical images of the Black, queer, male body. Through the media of painting, sculpture, printmaking, and installation, Shimoyama presents figures that are perceived as both desirable and desirous. He is aware of the politics of queer culture, and the ways in which those politics relate to black American culture. These elements come together in his works in a way that is celebratory and also complicated. The celebratory aspects of Shimoyama's work come through in his choice of materials, which include fur, feathers, glitter and costume jewels. Many of the men in Shimoyama's works also literally have jewels in their eyes, endowing them with a mystified, often vacant expression, interrupting the connection between their inner selves and the viewer, and suggesting a sort of silent suffering. Many are also shedding tears.
“Mixed media allows me to be more direct,” he says. “A lot of the materials I use are ornate, bought at stores where you would buy couture gowns, or where drag queens might buy fabric to construct a fantasy. There’s content in those materials, specific to different memories and experiences and messages. I’m thinking about branding and culture and peacocking – how what you’re wearing reflects some kind of status of yourself. The materials reflect how I think about constructing identity, and possibly code switching from era to era.”
The image is deeply connected to Shimoyama’s ongoing aesthetic exploration of alternative masculinity through adorned, fantastical images of the Black, queer, male body. Through the media of painting, sculpture, printmaking, and installation, Shimoyama presents figures that are perceived as both desirable and desirous. He is aware of the politics of queer culture, and the ways in which those politics relate to black American culture. These elements come together in his works in a way that is celebratory and also complicated. The celebratory aspects of Shimoyama's work come through in his choice of materials, which include fur, feathers, glitter and costume jewels. Many of the men in Shimoyama's works also literally have jewels in their eyes, endowing them with a mystified, often vacant expression, interrupting the connection between their inner selves and the viewer, and suggesting a sort of silent suffering. Many are also shedding tears.
“Mixed media allows me to be more direct,” he says. “A lot of the materials I use are ornate, bought at stores where you would buy couture gowns, or where drag queens might buy fabric to construct a fantasy. There’s content in those materials, specific to different memories and experiences and messages. I’m thinking about branding and culture and peacocking – how what you’re wearing reflects some kind of status of yourself. The materials reflect how I think about constructing identity, and possibly code switching from era to era.”