Dragged from the shadows
Michail Mathioudakis aka Marcia Manhunter’s horrifyingly beautiful drag through film and photography.
Author: Dan Truong | Artwork: Michail Mathioudakis
Michail Mathioudakis
VESTIGE – Autoerotic, 2024, photograph.
Please introduce yourself and the kind of art you create
I’m Michail Mathioudakis and I am a screen artist and drag artist. At the moment, I mostly create drag-based photo and video work—but I also make the occasional comic, and I like to combine those mediums when I can.
How did you get started with drag, how long have you done it and what is the vision for your drag?
I first got into drag around 2017, in- spired by RuPaul’s Drag Race, which, like many current drag queens, introduced me to the art form. I fell in love with it quite suddenly and began exploring more drag artists, even watching a lot of John Waters! My first attempt at drag was at a birthday party that same year, where I tried a Witch of the West look with face paint, a cheap wig from eBay, and a dress from Vinnies. I had no makeup experience and thought I could pull off something like Raven with just one green palette, which wasn’t the case!
I started doing drag at small gatherings (any excuse to dress up!) but it wasn’t until late 2019–early 2020, during the onset of COVID, that I became more intentional with my drag. Drawing from my film school background, I began creating different looks and incorporating them into photo-based works, using drag as a way to exercise my creative concepts.
I’m still figuring out my vision. But I’m leaning towards bringing drag into gallery and art spaces rather than traditional performance—while drag is often performance-based, I’m more interested in using it to craft stories and worlds through the characters and settings I develop.
Michail Mathioudakis
VESTIGE – Autoerotic, 2024, photograph.
Are there taboo themes or topics that you aim to challenge in your artwork?
The idea of the taboo is central to both my artwork and drag as a whole. Drag and queer expression are inherently taboo—if they weren’t, we wouldn’t see such a push for drag bans. This tabooness, by nature, elicits such strong responses (both positive and negative!), and so I always like to test the limits even a little further.
Elements like filth, horror, and shock value are essential to my art in making audiences uncomfortable, thus pro- voking reflection. When someone feels unsettled by what I create, I want them to ask, ‘Why is this affecting me?’. Not everyone will, but that’s the reaction I hope to create.
Playing with shock value, especially in queer art, is powerful. It allows us to reclaim control and challenge the sensibilities of anyone who reacts with disgust or criticism. By leaning into these themes, I can turn the mirror back on the audience and ask, ‘Does this disgust you now? Does this scare you?’
My recent works, such as Body Double, explore body horror to address themes of gender expression, identity, and the physical body. In my current project, Vestige, I’m reflecting on digital legacy and how our cultural imprint is shaped by the desires we project onto technology, represented through a ‘sexy drag android lady.’
These themes meld together in a way that I hope disturbs audiences, pushing them to question their own interactions with and perceptions of concepts like the body, technology, gender, and self-identity.
Michail Mathioudakis
VESTIGE – Autoerotic, 2024, film still.
What’s something about the taboos in your culture that you’d like to challenge?
My background is Greek and Vietnamese, bringing together a symphony of cultural ideas and values (both cultures share surprising similarities though!). I think most significantly, my family is deeply religious— both of my parents are Catholic and, like many Australian immigrant families, there are traditional values to be upheld within my family. Such values have a heavy hand in their opinions towards my work.
It was already challenging for them to reckon with the fact that I’m gay; drag just added another layer of complexity for them to grapple with! I’ve tried to introduce my work to them with gentle consistency, but I think they are still warming up to it. They still don’t really engage with my art – whether the looks are more feminine or more creature-like, I still don’t know what is easier for them to digest. I think for them, it challenges a lot of their ideas about what it means to be a man and a woman, and questions what is ‘the right and wrong thing to do’ as a man or a woman. But you know, when I do a creature-like look on the other hand, they’re like, ‘so now we don’t have to deal with you being a woman, but why are you making yourself look like that? And why do you have to be so scary?’ My mum has even said that some of my work is “evil” or “not of God,” which isn’t the easiest thing to hear. I try to find a middle ground so I can share my art with them, but it can be difficult when their religious beliefs are so intertwined with their cultural values. I’m also working to show them that drag is a multifaceted art form, deeply rooted in queer culture. It’s not about sexual deviance or anything inherently pornographic, but rather about creativity, gender expression and identity. My mum is more open to discussing this, even if she disagrees, while my dad avoids the conversation altogether (possibly fearing where it might lead) even though he’s likely more willing to be accepting of it. I think he’s scared of the details because he’s hesitant about stepping into perhaps what he perceives is a sexual space.
I intend to challenge these cultural taboos, and question others about what makes queer people and our culture so worth questioning.
Michail Mathioudakis
Behind the scenes of VESTIGE – Autoerotic, 2024, photograph.
Please talk us through your artistic process, from the very first spark to the final piece
For Vestige, once I had the initial inspiration to create this drag creature, I started thinking about the world I wanted her to inhabit and how I wanted to convey it. I had to decide between focusing on photos or making it a video piece. Once I had those ideas in mind, I gathered visual references and storyboarded the concept.
