Venus Superstar moves within a space where beauty and horror coalesce, entangle, shift, and dissolve into one another. The performer, part drag queen, part performance artist, part auteur” hailing from the San Francisco underground, is the type of queer creative whose work is as much passion as it is intrinsic to their very being. “Through Venus and my art practice, I’ve been able to transform myself, my life, and what I experience,” they say. Their work resists easy categorization, threading through visual art, film, and personal metamorphosis; a world where fantasy and reality are indistinguishable, where identity is not fixed but perpetually in flux.
San Francisco’s underground drag scene provided fertile ground for Venus’ artistic evolution. “I was young when I first started going out to drag shows and seeing performers like Mary Vice, whose lip sync and performance were so next level I was in awe.” It was an initiation into a world of uninhibited expression, where performance could be transformative, mythic, divine. Weekly shows like Pillows, hosted by Glamamore, were more than entertainment—they were laboratories for reinvention. “I could try out anything on that stage, and any skill I have performing I learned there.” Beyond drag, ballroom culture and vogueing would become fundamental to their artistic language. “I’m a guest in those spaces and very grateful to have been a part of it. Vogueing shapes a lot of the ways I move, pose, and hold myself.”
Yet to classify Venus as simply a drag artist would be reductive. “I do sometimes use the word drag as an overarching term to quickly describe what I do, but it certainly does not encapsulate what it is I truly do.” Their work is a hybrid of high fashion, conceptual art, and underground cinema, shaped by the aesthetics of transgression. “Thierry Mugler’s work spoke to me so viscerally,” they say. “A big reason I started making my own costumes was because I wanted to wear Mugler but could never afford to. I would look at photos from his collections and just cry.” Mugler’s precision—his ability to balance androgyny, power, and femininity—left an indelible mark.
Film, too, is central to Venus’ artistic DNA. “Movies like Rocky Horror, Death Becomes Her, Pink Flamingos, Singing in the Rain, and The Fifth Element—just a few of the films that have changed my life.” Cinema, with its ability to craft worlds, create tension, and distort time, informs the way they construct their own mythologies. “I think in scenes, in moments of tension, in the way something is framed. I would say it’s a mix of both instinct and intention. When I create, I do have some sort of feeling or muse in mind.”
Glamour and gore are not opposing forces in Venus’ universe but reflections of the same truth. “You cannot have one without the other. Red lipstick, for example, inadvertently enhances the bloody color on the thin membrane of our lip—it’s considered beautiful, but it’s also gore.” Their work does not merely critique beauty but unearths its violence, exposing its raw and surgical underpinnings. “I don’t consciously navigate the duality of both, I just create with this understanding.”
Collaboration is not just a component of Venus’ process—it is an extension of their philosophy. “I work with LonelyRodeoStar, a photographer and filmmaker originally from LA now living in Berlin. Her work is this very iconic burlesque, retro-fetish style. We share a lot of similar ways of thinking, so just speaking to each other and sharing ideas informs what I may be working on.” These exchanges keep their work fluid, resisting stagnation, always evolving.
For Venus, art is not a profession but a necessity. “I started making art from the place of being so unbearably uncomfortable with the way the world is. Especially as a queer person, I harbour a lot of sadness and anger that I get to exercise through this art form.” Their performances are not simply aesthetic—they are exorcisms, confrontations, designed to disrupt, to unsettle, to leave an imprint. “Hopefully, people can find connections to their own experiences in my work and find some inspiration in it. And the cycle of creation can continue.”
And what of the future? Venus laughs. “RICHES, FAME, MONEY!” Yet beyond the irony is a clear sense of purpose. “I would love the opportunity to be a full-time working artist and continue to collaborate with people whose work I admire and respect.” Their ambitions extend beyond drag, beyond performance, into avant-garde fashion, film, and conceptual art—any space that allows for reinvention, for continual transformation.
With upcoming projects pushing further into surrealism, beauty, and the grotesque, Venus Superstar is not merely bending boundaries—they are dismantling them, forcing us to reconsider where beauty ends and monstrosity begins.
Cody Rooney is the Editor in Chief and senior contributor at liminul.
He is a PhD candidate, digital content specialist, writer, editor, multi-media artist, and photographer.