It’s late afternoon in Paris, where Russian performance artist Gena Marvin is busy fashioning a dress out of old egg cartons. “I’m gluing them onto a dress as we speak,” she laughs, her signature shaved head covered partially by a blood-red hoodie. “It smells so bad, everyone seems to be indignant at me!”

We’re online today to debate Queendom, the powerful upcoming documentary about Marvin’s life and performance art. The time leading up so far has been turbulent, to say the least; Marvin resettled in Paris last year after being displaced by Russia’s war with Ukraine, not long after being arrested in her home country for her own anti-war activism. “I even have papers now, so I’m legal in Paris,” she smiles. “I even have a spot to sleep and food on my table, so I’m very grateful – especially to the Queendom team. Nevertheless it’s my first time living in a giant European city, so I’m still adjusting and learning tips on how to behave here.”

These ordeals were partly captured as a part of the two-year filming technique of Queendom, a brutal but beautiful watch. You’ll see moments of queer joy, like a low-key birthday celebration where she dances in a lounge to thumping techno, surrounded by her closest friends. In addition to footage of her family and friends, Marvin’s ethereal performances are stitched throughout. She’s lithe, androgynous and staggeringly tall in her stilt-like platform boots, her body often coated in paint and adorned with couture created from junk and gaffer tape. There’s a way of post-human, otherworldly beauty to her work, however the perils of growing up trans in a deeply patriarchal and queerphobic society loom heavy throughout.

Other scenes will make your stomach lurch with vicarious fear. In a single, Marvin wipes blood from her mouth after being assaulted on the road. In a later scene, she wraps her semi-naked body in barbed wire and walks in platform boots to an anti-war march in Moscow, where she’s arrested and thrown right into a police van. “I remember being in a trance,” she recalls. “The barbed wire slashed my leg after I was thrown inside. I just sat there in a type of fog, watching my blood freeze.”

Capturing these moments was removed from easy, to the extent that director Agniia Galdanova spent a complete of two years filming and dealing alongside Marvin. Fittingly, the primary shoot took place in Marvin’s home town of Magadan, an isolated port town known for its so-called “road of bones,” built by the tortured prisoners of a gulag. Those deemed to not be working hard enough were shot dead. “It’s such a distant area that there aren’t any trains,” Marvin tells Dazed. “It’s up to now away from every part that you simply really do feel such as you’re growing up in a jail.” When Galdanova visited in winter, it was -40C. “It was a struggle on many levels,” she says, “but it surely was the proper place to begin, going straight to the tough reality of her hometown.”

Marvin was just 14 years old when she first began posting photos online. “I used to be posing with my lipstick on, I used to be definitely a neighborhood celebrity in my hometown!” This digital notoriety got here with a real-world backlash; it was her social media presence that later got her expelled from college. Still, Marvin kept posting. The looks grew more extreme and more elaborate over time, evolving into the striking, creature-like aesthetic she’s known for today. Imagine a glamazon cryptid thrown right into a post-apocalyptic wasteland, excavated after which wearing Rick Owens. Then, picture that creature jogging comically on a treadmill in nine-inch heels, and also you’ll be somewhere near envisioning one in all Marvin’s most viral posts to date.

Behind the art and fashion, pain is a standard thread in Marvin’s work. “All of it comes from growing up in such a conservative society,” she explains. “You possibly can’t really hide yourself, so that you suffer. Kids are aggressive at school, your loved ones is frightened about you, after which they beat you at home.” Now, Marvin is fascinated about exploring pain on her own terms. “I would like to see what my body is able to,” she continues. “I would like to dedicate it fully to art, regardless of how painful it may be.”

This dedication is obvious throughout Queendom. Dressed head-to-toe in high, DIY glam, Marvin stalks across frozen landscapes and puts her body through untold pain, but she reiterates that “these performances aren’t as dangerous as my life.” In reality, a few of the film’s tensest scenes feature Marvin simply standing in grocery stores, browsing absent-mindedly before being ejected because her “lingerie is showing.” Yet in even these harshest of realities, the documentary strikes a fragile balance between joy and pain. “It’s easy to point out only the bad things,” explains Galdanova, “but that wasn’t the thought; the initial goal of the documentary was to have fun the fantastic thing about queerness, to point out an inspiring story of somebody who’s fearless, who will be an example for younger generations and educate older viewers.”

These stories are vital, as censorship stays rife. “I don’t even know tips on how to use Instagram straight away,” laments Marvin. “I’ve seen people blocked for posting about Palestine, and when the war broke out in Russia, my TikTok – which had around one million followers – was banned. I realised social media can disappear in a second.”

Social media comes and goes, however the documentary paints a nuanced, honest portrait of Marvin’s work, a snapshot of a game-changing artist speaking out in a rustic that criminalised her and countless other activists for doing so. Governments have long fought to stifle or erase queer joy, creativity and existence more broadly. Queendom flies within the face of censorship. It gives voice to a culture of resistance. “The Russian state sees a threat in me,” summarises Marvin. “They need to make scapegoats of the LGBTQ+ community, because they appear at people like and understand that we’re not afraid to talk our mind. We’re able to anything.”

Queendom is out on December 1, 2023

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