The Lady Ms. Vagina Jenkins embodies what it means to be a "performance artist." Since 2003 The Lady Jenkins has literally made from many and varied performance genres, art that explores race, gender, class and sexuality while engaging and entertaining her audiences.
Ms. Jenkins is a Southeastern US born queer, black, femme who's artmaking process is heavily defined by the narratives from her family of origin. The stories of working class resiliance, the secrets about sexworkers, the gossip about mental illness are the stories TLMVJ explores.
The Lady performs primarily in burlesque movement and also incoporates stand up comedy, spoken word, modern/authentic/African American vernacular dance, films/mixed media, faux queening and karaoake into her art making process.
She has also helped produce and curate showcases for the National Femme Conference ('08, '10), Mondo Homo Queer Arts Festival ('07,'10) and The National Queer Arts Festival ('13 "This Was Queerlesque",)
epli identifies as a "photo researcher". Since her introduction to the darkroom and photography at the age of 12, she has not put down her camera. Her work has been published in a variety of print/media including: Colorlines, Huffington Post, Autostraddle, BlackGirlDangerous, East Bay Express, San Francisco Chronicle and Bitch Magazine.
epli is a queer, mixed race, masculine of center woman, who feels most alive when engulfed in a photo documentary project centered around an individual or community that is underrepresented by the dominant culture's limited lens.
epli has begun developing techniques which explore and deconstruct the role of the photographer as the sole storyteller, by collaborating with the subject and empowering them to make definining decisions in how their story and image are portrayed. This approach extracts the power dynamic and polluting lens by which the subject is traditionally documented.
