Miss/They Camaraderie 2024 Pageant

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

KOREA KELLY

Contestant

Korea Kelly is the Midwest Ambassador for Trans Women of Color Collective and Founder of Cavalli Entertainment, a creative incubator cultivating spaces centering LGBTQIA, ballroom, and pageant communities specifically geared toward People of Color. Korea Kelly is an LGBT advocate, community leader, and one of Kansas City’s leading historians of local Black + Brown queer culture.

BOI BOY

Contestant

Boi Boy is a Kansas City-born artist who started in the art community while working at the nonprofit MYARTS, which instilled a socially engaged aspect to their creative practice from an early age. They graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2016. They created a set of personas (Matthew, Scott, Boi Boy, Pink, Eric, and Vee), each of which has their own color association as a tool to tell complex native through abstracted forms, often using drag to embody these personas as a performative part of there practice. In 2017, they reserved a Rocket Grant and Meow Wolf DIY Fund in collaboration with Bo Hubbard to open Alter: Art Space, a socially engaged, interdisciplinary, and collaborative artist-run space focusing on the social practice of nightlife. They received the Charlotte Street Visual Artist Award in 2019, which concluded in an exhibition at the Kemper Museum of Modern Art. In 2022, they created installations for and acted as a consulting curator for the exhibition Adorned at The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art. They taught at Kansas City Art Institute in the Fiber department for the 2021 and 2022 fall semesters while working at Charlotte Street as the Communication and Volunteer Coordinator. They are currently a MFA candidate at Tyler School of Art and Architecture in Philadelphia, PA.

ALEJ MARTÍNEZ

Contestant

Alej Martínez (all, any, and none of the pronouns) is a storyteller living and making nonsense somewhere in stolen lands. He is a graduate of Prescott College’s Sustainable Food Systems B.A. Born in Jarocho land, Alej unsettled in the US at a young age. Alej braids together lived experience with social issues to create relevant works about the intersection of systems, consciousness, and our collective shared humanity. He was an artist in residence at Charlotte Street in 2018 with funding for the program provided by a National Endowment for the Arts Our Town grant. His debut anthology Disclosure: Confessions of a Queer in Crisis was independently published in April 2018; followed by Concealment through Resistencia Press in October 2021. Other works have also appeared in Harbor Review, Hawai’i Review, About a Place Journal, and Immigrant Made Zine Vo. II. Alej used to be active in multiple spaces; currently, they focus on simply living and expressing themselves in healing ways.

DUSTIN LOVELAND

Fashion Designer

Dustin Loveland (he/they) is a non-binary designer and sewer raised in Kirksville, Missouri. They received a BFA in printmaking and art history at the Kansas City Art Institute and have worked in the local sewing industry for the last six years. After their time working in local sewing businesses producing swimwear, lingerie, and leather goods; Loveland made the decision to freelance and design full-time. Loveland designs genderless athletic apparel, streetwear, swimwear, and lingerie using playful prints and energetic silhouettes. Their influences include video games, queer ancestors, and the relationship between handicrafts and digital technologies