[Wren Tiffany]
♡ Video|Sound|Performance Artist ♡ Drag King ♡ Educator ♡ VCUarts MFA Graduate, 2025 ♡
Wren Tiffany (he/they) is a process-based new media artist and drag king known as Lady Boner. Through video, sound, and glitch, his performance work explores the wackiness of binary gender roles within the context of the internet, memory, and queerness. Their current research is informed by their transmasculine experiences with medically transitioning and their time spent in the Central Virginia drag community. Tiffany explores contemporary trans issues and drag culture through the canvas of a green-screen, a liminal space where the virtual body enters a new realm of discovery and play through disruption and manipulation. His work exists within the lineage of glitch art theory by exploring the nuances of queer and trans stories through embodiment, aesthetics, and experimental techniques. With a defiant flamboyance, his short films, animations, and installations reflect both the radical joy and entangled temporalities associated with trans visibility. He holds a Master of Fine Arts in Kinetic Imaging from Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) and a Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art from the University of Mary Washington (UMW).
video by wren tiffany
performance by ellie loor
2025
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ophelia return is a 2025 short film about transness, technology, identity, asexual erotics, and cyborg feminism.
written, directed, filmed, and edited by wren tiffany, ophelia return was performed by ellie loor (special thanks to sarah irvin of the anderson in richmond, virginia for letting us explore in the sponge gallery one last time post-thesis) ☆
Queer-keying is both my practice and my process.
Queer: non-conformity in gender, sexuality, politics, community, art, and life.
Keying: selection and destruction, hiding and revealing, erasure and creation.
My drag persona Lady Boner debuted during the early pandemic in a digital talent show, documented in my 2020 film self-made-man. Getting ready through the literal and expansive lens of a webcam became a form of bodily autonomy when medical transition was out of reach. Manipulating my digital image gave me agency in an out-of-control world.
In 2025, after starting HRT (hormone replacement therapy) and recovering from top surgery under the smog of a second Tr☆mp presidency, I’ve learned that transition, like queer liberation, is inherently non-linear. At the start of my transition, when lady boner first appeared irl (in real life) during 2023, drag became a bridge: from screen to body, pixels to flesh, isolation to community. I brought these experiences and queer perspectives into my VCUarts MFA Thesis Exhibition (The Anderson, 'Sponge gallery'), by inviting audiences into my 'living dressing room', advertently recreating a space akin to where my drag journey began at the start of the decade [+ where i now navigate my continued medical transition throughout this next chapter of my twenties].
'Queer-keying' is my rebellion, through embodied power. with a Queer methodology as my framework, the green-screen can be a [trans]formative tool. Community is at the heart of this practice and process by sharing 'Queer-keying' with my trans and drag community alike, as a means of [trans]gressive resistance in a time of increasing erasure, censorship, and surveillance.
Come with Lady Boner out of the matrix and into the neon-green slime void of the unknown, where transformation, autonomy, and salvation await!
The Slime Workshop: An Expanded Green-Screen Lecture, Film Screening, and Interactive Performance Event was a live experiment in radical [trans]formation through video and ‘Queer-keying’ performance. In this event, I explored slime as the most 'Queer' 'keying' medium—more than fabric, paint, or lighting. This methodology originated during the creation of my 2024 film DIGITAL CLEANSE (in search of bliss) that was screened at the event. The film follows performers Ellie Loor and Lichen Von Stag as they undergo a sensual, transformative slime baptism within the nostalgic Windows XP interface. Drag performer Arik LeDouche contributed to the show with a performance previously featured in a quarterly production that I worked on with The King Collective called The Drag Bazaar: A Night of Masc Presenting Performance Art, which is a drag king showcase based in Richmond, VA.
The Green Room: A Multimedia Drag Extravaganza! was a culminating event during the VCUarts MFA Thesis Exhibition that brought together my roles as showrunner, performer, and community member. Co-hosted by Zukini Lèsagna, the show was an improvisational, satirical jukebox musical. It featured performers that I had worked with previously in The King Collective, including Royalty Resignz, Mac Frost, Lichen Von Stag, Mad Maxii, and Viktor Lickter. The support and artistry of these performers shaped the success of this May 2nd thesis finale performance showcase at its core. This closing event utilized camp and comedy to create a safe space within the institutional gallery to celebrate my communities, trans and drag artists alike.
