About me
Transdisciplinary artist from Brazil based in Berlin. I'm mostly known for my drag persona Lilith the Quing, but I'm also a writer, educator, club kid, host and much, much more.
The long version
Talith (they/them) is a genderfluid white able-bodied neurodivergent Brazilian transdisciplinary artist living between Berlin and Brazil. They are, above anything, a storyteller, and they use different media to shape their stories — the main ones being writing and performing.
Talith (elu/ile/ele/ela) é ume artista transdisciplinar brasileiro residindo entre Berlim e Brasil. Elu é, acima de tudo, um contador de histórias e utiliza diferentes mídias para moldar suas histórias, atuando mais frequentemente como drag performer, mestre de cerimônias, club kid, escritore e educadore.
They grew up in a village in rural Minas Gerais, and from an early age, influenced by an artist/educator mother, they were encouraged to explore their artistic side, acting in plays that would become part of a travelling theatre designed to educate the public about environmental issues of the region of Mantiqueira.
Ela cresceu em uma vila no interior de Minas Gerais, e desde cedo, por influência de uma mãe artista/educadora, foi encorajade a explorar seu lado artístico, atuando em peças que foram parte de um teatro itinerante destinado a educar o público sobre as questões ambientais da região da Mantiqueira.
An avid reader since childhood, Talith is an autodidact, having learned many things and skills by themself or from observing others. They studied International Relations at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, but quickly became frustrated with the academic world, which still reproduces violent structures that reinforce elitism, racism, ableism, cissexism and still values mainly knowledge produced by cis-white high/middle-class men from Europe and North America. They still managed to draw valuable knowledge from university — however not only from inside the classroom — like decolonial, feminist and queer theory, which they carried to their art, as a way of sharing the knowledge they gained from having the privilege of being in such an environment in a more accessible language than the academic one.
Leitor ávide desde a infância, Talith é uma autodidata, tendo aprendido muitas coisas e habilidades por si mesme ou observando os outros. Ele estudou Relações Internacionais na Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, mas rapidamente se frustrou com o mundo acadêmico, que continua reproduzindo estruturas violentas que reforçam o elitismo, o racismo, o cissexismo, o capacitismo e ainda valorizam principalmente os conhecimentos produzidos por homens cis de classe média/alta da Europa e da América do Norte. Elu ainda conseguiu extrair conhecimentos valiosos da universidade — mas não apenas de dentro da sala de aula — epistemologias decoloniais, feministas e teoria queer, que ele trouxe para dentro da sua arte, como forma de compartilhar os conhecimentos adquiridos por ter tido o privilégio de estar em tal ambiente, só que em uma linguagem mais acessível do que a acadêmica.
In Berlin, they started exploring drag performance through the character of Lilith the Quing, although they explore other characters as well, such as Ken Marroska, Miss Verständniss and Arthur King. Drag is as political and interdisciplinary as it gets, which meant for Talith to merge and integrate all their passions: art, writing, film, performance, queerness, gender (bending), music, dance, fashion, acting, crafting and activism. They use a lot of materials that would become trash — repurposing them is not only a sustainable choice but also an anti-capitalistic one.
Em Berlim, elu começou a explorar o drag através das personagens de Lilith the Quing, Ken Marroska e mais algumas que aparecem eventualmente. O drag é tão político e interdisciplinar, e isto significou para Talith fundir e integrar todas as suas paixões: arte, escrita, cinema, performance, queerness, gender(bending), música, dança, moda, atuação, artesanato e ativismo. Ela utiliza muitos materiais que se tornariam lixo ou um desperdício, reutilizando-os não apenas como uma escolha sustentável, mas também como uma escolha anticapitalista.
Selected work
Lilith the Quing performs regularly in venues like Silver Future, Tipsy Bear, Schwuz (before they started censoring artists in solidarity with the Palestinian cause), Salon – Zur Wilden Renate, and Monster Ronson's.
Lilith was a member of the now inactive collective Venus Boys, having developed with them projects such as: This is Not Wonderland, an immersive walkthrough art experience part of Overmorrow at Salon – Zur Wilden Renate with installations and performances within the Alice in Wonderland theme; Not Dead Yet, a show presented at Cabuwazi Beyond Borders as part of Festiwalla; Siren Quingdom, a nautical treasure hunt funded by Draussenstadt; performance at the art event MONDO BIZARRO by the Berlin collectives Pornceptual, Buttons and Gegen; the festivals Fusion, Whole and go drag!.
They also organised and produced Venus Boys Fluidity Show, hosted by Lilith the Quing, as part of Fluidity, an event funded by Draussenstadt and produced by the collective fluid.vision, which Talith is also part of and continues to organise events that involve music, art and education, as well as creating an environment for queer people to feel at ease and which encourages experimentation in gender expression for everyone — it became a resident party at Re:mise.
In 2023 they co-founded a Brazilian drag collective BRag Kultur, with other Brazilian artists based in Berlin to share some tupinikim magic with this cold continent and brag about how rich their culture is. More recently they have been performing at large-scale events such as Luxemburg Pride, Dragify, Mx Kotti, and at the Psicotrópicos festival of Brazilian culture together with BRag Kultur, and was even a judge at the Schwuz Drag Open Stage Finale 2023.
In 2021 and 2022 they also participated in the dramaqueer project and wrote the plays Mind the Gap, which had a public reading in Salon – Zur Wilden Renate, and Unconditional, which was read in Salon – Zur Wilden Renate and public parks in the Friedrichshain district of Berlin. They also acted in audiovisual productions such as Boom Boom Bruno (as an extra) and Dream Dwellers by TV WOW!, an anticapitalistic streaming platform.
Talith is currently pursuing a MA in Interdisciplinary Latin American Studies with a focus on gender studies at Freie Universität Berlin and is developing research on how drag can be a tool to explore non-binarity, queer/healthy masculinities and queer utopias in Brazil from a queer and de/anti-colonial perspective, recognising their whiteness and positionality.