Gena Marvin (born ) is a Russian

performance art Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...

ist known for her surreal and creature drag. Her art focuses on themes of identity, self-acceptance, different forms of beauty, and the surreal.

Early life and education

Gena Marvin was born in

Magadan Magadan ( rus, Магадан, p=məɡɐˈdan) is a port town and the administrative center of Magadan Oblast, Russia, located on the Sea of Okhotsk in Nagayev Bay (within Taui Bay) and serving as a gateway to the Kolyma region. History Maga ...

, Russia. She grew up practicing drag makeup in secret in her parents' house. She said she was bullied and tormented growing up in her small village. This, alongside the tale of Slender Man, would become a major inspiration for her artwork. She attended two colleges, and said she experienced homophobia at both. She was expelled from the second college a year before graduating.

Art

Marvin's art primarily consists of creature drag, and she often wears latex, gloves with exaggerated fingers, platform heels, and white face paint. Much of her performance art incorporates the reactions of others to her appearance. Although she performed in public in Russia, she has spoken of the danger she faces in doing so, and has said she feels safer posting her artwork on social media platforms including

Instagram Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. The app allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters and organized by hashtags and geographical tagging. Posts can ...

and

TikTok TikTok, known in China as Douyin (), is a short-form video hosting service owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which can range in duration from 15 seconds to 10 minutes. TikTok is an international version ...

. . One of her performances involved wrapping her body in tape, expressing her belief that Russia had "no freedom and where the freedom of my body was not permitted". Marvin is the subject of ''Queendom'', a documentary directed by Agniia Galdanova and produced by

David France David Harry France, (born 30 June 1948) is an author, football historian and philanthropist. Throughout the past two decades, he has been the driving force behind numerous initiatives related to Everton Football Club including Gwladys Street's H ...

and Igor Myakotin. It follows Marvin from 2019 until February 2023, and shows Marvin performing her art while facing the risk of imprisonment or death in Russia where LGBTQ people face legal and extralegal risk. The film premiered at

South by Southwest South by Southwest, abbreviated as SXSW and colloquially referred to as South By, is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and Convention (meeting), conferences organized jointly that take place in m ...

, and won the Next:Wave award at Copenhagen's CPH:DOX and The Audience Award at the Camden International Film Festival. The film premiered in cinemas in the United Kingdom on 1 December 2023.

Personal life

Marvin lived in St. Petersburg beginning in around 2019. After an April 2021 performance at a protest supporting Russian opposition leader

Alexei Navalny Alexei Anatolievich Navalny ( rus, links=no, Алексей Анатольевич Навальный, , ɐlʲɪkˈsʲej ɐnɐˈtolʲjɪvʲɪtɕ nɐˈvalʲnɨj; born 4 June 1976) is a Opposition to Vladimir Putin in Russia, Russian opposition ...

, she said she moved to

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...

"to push even harder". In 2022, Marvin became a refugee from the Russian invasion of Ukraine and moved to

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

. Marvin is non-binary and

queer ''Queer'' is an umbrella term for people who are not heterosexual or cisgender. Originally meaning or , ''queer'' came to be used pejoratively against those with same-sex desires or relationships in the late 19th century. Beginning in the lat ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Marvin, Gena 2000s births 21st-century Russian artists 21st-century Russian women artists Living people Non-binary drag performers People from Magadan Queer artists Queer entertainers Refugees in France Russian drag queens Russian LGBT entertainers Russian non-binary people Russian performance artists Russian refugees Wikipedia Student Program Year of birth missing (living people)