Project Description

A multimedia project around migrant LGBTQ+ tribute artists who embody and perform as iconic divas in the Latinx community such as Jenni Rivera, Juan Gabriel, Celia Cruz, Chalino Sanchez, Selena and Paquita la del Barrio. Often performing at backyard tent parties, first communions, weddings and quinceañera celebrations, these queer artists are hired to be centerpieces of entertainment bringing elements of drag culture, comedy, dance and beloved songs to intergenerational family gatherings. 

These artworks are on view at Hollywood/Highland Station as part of the Metro Art Photo Lightbox Series.

Artist Statement

“These performance artists invite spectators to participate and to embrace closeness, holding their discomfort and often subverting it as palpable comedy.”

Ride + Consider

How does portraiture help make visible cultures and communities which have been historically invisibilized?

• Artist Website
• She photographs Latinx tribute artists through an LGBTQ lens (Article, LA Times)
• JOTERÍA | Documenting Queer Latinx in LA (Google Arts & Culture)

About the Artist

ARLENE MEJORADO is a first-generation artist from Los Angeles working with analog and digital photography, video and installations. In her practice she experiments with documentary forms, depicting truths that aren’t visibly represented or legible but are experienced viscerally. Through visual media, everyday materials, and repurposed documents, Mejorado engages in repair work, countering erasure and mending fragments in personal, collective, diasporic and migrant experiences and stories. Specific subjects she explores are quotidian spectacles, performance and pleasure, the construction of legacy in working class communities of color, culturally subversive spaces and collective gestures of catharsis and resistance.  Mejorado was awarded a Magnum Foundation Photography and Social Justice fellowship, DocX fellowship with the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, NALAC artist grant and Lucie Foundation Independent Book Award. Her photography has been published in Vogue, The Atlantic, California Sunday Magazine, Pop-Up Magazine and Los Angeles Times. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Latin American Studies from The University of Texas at Austin and is currently a Master of Fine Arts candidate in Visual Arts at The University of California in San Diego.