Flora Gionest-Roussy is a French Canadian

actor An actor or actress is a person who portrays a character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek term is (), li ...

singer Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or withou ...

and

songwriter A songwriter is a musician who professionally composes musical compositions or writes lyrics for songs, or both. The writer of the music for a song can be called a composer, although this term tends to be used mainly in the classical music gen ...

who performs under the stage name Ice Blonde.

Biography

Born in Chandler,

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...

,"L'artiste Silver Catalano tourne un vidéoclip à Chandler"

Ici Radio-Canada ICI or Ici may refer to: Companies and organisations * ICI Homes, builder, Florida. US * Former UK Imperial Chemical Industries ** ICI Australia, later Orica * Independent Curators International, New York City, US * Indian Concrete Institute * I ...

, 17 May 2016. and raised in the village of Pabos Mills, Gionest struggled with anti-queer bullying for years before dropping out of high school at 15 and leaving their hometown at 17.Alain Brunet
"Quitter la prostitution, s'évader dans la musique"
'' La Presse'', 4 January 2017. He became homeless in

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...

for two years before launching Silver Catalano as a drag musical project, first attracting widespread attention in 2016 for their

synthwave Synthwave (also called outrun, retrowave, or futuresynth) is an electronic music microgenre that is based predominantly on the music associated with action, science-fiction, and horror film soundtracks of the 1980s. Other influences are drawn fr ...

single "Wave". His musical career has been marked by

LGBTQ+ ' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity. The LGBT term is ...

activism, including the production of a music video trilogy about the mental health impact of bullying and being a part of the first drag show ever staged in the

Gaspésie—Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine Gaspésie—Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine () is a federal electoral district in Quebec, Canada, that has been represented in the House of Commons of Canada since 2004. It was created by the Representation Order of 2003 from parts of Bonaventur ...

region."Gaspé LGBTQ group breaks barriers with 'historic' drag show"

CBC News CBC News is a division of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation responsible for the news gathering and production of news programs on the corporation's English-language operations, namely CBC Television, CBC Radio, CBC News Network, and CBC.ca. ...

Montreal, 20 February 2017. In 2022, he changed his stage name from Silver Catalano (2015-2019) to Ice Blonde."FLORAA : le genre et la musique main dans la main"

, 22 February 2020.

References

Living people Canadian LGBT rights activists People from Gaspésie–Îles-de-la-Madeleine Non-binary musicians Non-binary models Non-binary activists Canadian non-binary actors Musicians from Quebec Canadian electronic musicians 1995 births Canadian LGBT singers {{LGBT-bio-stub