[upbeat music]
- Hi Name is Jenkin.
Today I'm gonna be getting ready
into prosthetics and then a kind of Kabuki makeup look.
I guess my kind of everyday look is this
like highly theatrical sort of like ballet russes dancer,
that's been dragged through the medieval hell mouth.
And I've always kind of collected theater costume
from like cheap costume knock off sales
and like online auctions.
Yeah. I kind of wear like head to toe theater
costume every day.
But today we're kind of shifting
into this like more elevated,
inflatable latex, muscular fantasy.
So for the first stage,
I'm gonna apply my contact lenses off camera.
'Cause I have very stubby, awkward fingers.
And then I'm also gonna just pin back my
awkwardly grown out DIY lock down hair.
Okay. So that's my eyes and hair out of the way.
So first off, I'm gonna clean the area around my forehead
and then I'm gonna apply the silicone horns.
So I do wear horns every day
and I've gotten into the bad habit
of sleeping in horns as well,
which I feel like is a one way street
that I'm not gonna be able to get back from.
So I grew up in Surry to like two South African parents,
in this kind of quite leafy, sleepy foresty area.
I just had like a really obsessive, interested
and this spooky and gore, anything like horrific.
So I guess like all kind of spooky children,
I used any occasion as an excuse for a fancy dress.
So weddings or like friends birthdays
will be some kind of excuse to get into a bog witch outfit.
And I would start by like kind of
like breaking into my mom's like bathroom
and like slathering on Sudocrem,
a centimeter thick all over my face
and then setting it with talcum powder.
Like fashioning womanhood out of like whatever
I could find in my mom's closet.
As I grew up, like I became like really lured
in by Fams in music, people like early PJ Harvey
like Rid of Me era.
Nico, Grace Jones and Kate Bush,
who all sort of used role play in their music
to harbor these like different like sometimes like violent,
sometimes erotic, sometimes like hopeful fantasies
that I think taught me in this idea that like
identity could be something slippery and multiple.
So I'm gonna do the ears next.
I first moved to London when I was 18
and moved there to do a foundation art course.
On the first day when I was moving my bags in
and my flatmate Alice was sat in the kitchen
with her legs like spread like wide,
pouring a slurry of like mushy peas
and re fried beans over her fanny.
And I was like, "Oh, I've like arrived at art school."
When you're like thrown into this kind of
like queer landscape, the most important and like
vibrant thing about queer culture is this idea
that it's both optimistic but necessary.
Sort of like laboratory for the construction
of new identities, whether they be sort of deviant
or troublesome or vibrant.
That even if something is like really horrific,
to approach it with a kind of lightness and playfulness
is really important to me.
Art can be the best excuse for bad behavior
and it lets you kind of get away with things
that can be like disruptive and subversive.
I grew up like, I was really like groomed
by the like filmography of people like Almodovar's.
I would like obsessively like rewatch
and rewatch and rewatch his films.
And then people like John Waters.
I think I had like my first
erotic experience watching Chicago
and have ever since been in love with Velma Kelly.
That heady mix of like high femme and melodrama,
like really embedded this queer subconscious
that I wasn't really even able to articulate
or figure out in my own work or.
And I think that it was when I moved to London
that a lot of these ideas all got consolidated.
It's like liquid latex.
So you like stick all this on
to cover up my bad scissor marks.
Like give it some slight texture and stuff.
So it's kind of like a Pinocchio,
just style, like puck nose.
The nose is new.
I'm filling that up with spirit gum.
I found like when I moved to London, I was...
A lot of the like parties that I was going to
were either these like
hi kind of dress up like drag parties.
Or like really slippery, like grimy basement corridors.
I think that's when I realized that like my fantasies
for like wearing like five piece, like heavy brocade,
like Tudor theater costumes,
didn't really like line up with the like club experience.
I much, much, much prefer dressing up to do something
really pedestrian or every day,
like going to a museum or like... Just making an occasion
out of like going to feed the ducks.
I actually find like... I find like dressing up
to go to a club like at points like in South
would be like painful and like annoying,
and like I'm happiest going out when I'm wearing the least.
Now that the prosthetics are on,
I'm gonna start applying the clown white
and just cover everything.
We're doing this kind of blueish white.
It was only like really in my final year studying it
on my BA that I kind of started the current trajectory
of installation work that reconfigures and recycles debris
and detritus from film and theater sets.
And then since then,
I've kind of been working on this like trio of films.
This partially abandoned like spaghetti Western film set
in the South of Spain that we broke into
and filmed this kind of like cowboy horror.
So it was this kind of process of like ducking
and diving, hiding from like guard dogs.
I made this film Lunas that was set in these huge
Game of Throne fortresses that were decaying
in the Atlas mountains.
The most recent film that I've made in vitro
features this sex type of Gores
that are breeding cakes in an underground bunker city
made up of the husks of buried charter jets.
Just thinking about this way in which capitalism
and the universe in which these characters exist,
positions identity as the center of the universe.
And in this film, the characters kind of try and break free
through a call for like multiplicity and proliferation.
So now I'm gonna do the kind of face framing,
black painting around my neck, the ears, and my hairline.
Now that the base is on,
I'm going to set it with a setting powder.
So these are just like highlighting bright areas
on your face with white powder.
Now I'm gonna go with the blue powder contours.
So I think like my favorite kind of like costuming
is this combination of like high pomp and like high femme.
My favorite piece that I had is this like
slightly tatty matador outfit.
And then I love to wear things like chain mail
and armor at anything that like blends
like absurd with the fantastical.
Now, I am going to kind of like add the blush
on like pink areas of the face.
So I guess this is like a progression
from the blue Kabuki makeup that I've been doing,
but just like protruding like all of the pointiest
parts of the face.
So we are... Where are we at the makeup?
Now I'm going to kind of start to map out
some of the like graphic details on the eye
and the chin and kind of like hair curls.
So for that
I'm just gonna use like liquid eyeliner.
Dash.
I'm just a big drag fan.
I love like old drag, like Blackpool drag.
I think the best like drag queen and under
is Sharon LeGrand.
She's like a good old friend and like icon.
And I think that she mixes this like perfect blend
of like kind of really old school drag aesthetics
with like insane humor and slagginess.
And I think it's like really inspiring.
I'm gonna carry on like kind of mapping that out
through the rest of my face
and then like color in order of the sections of the eye.
Yeah. So now I'm just gonna add like some kind of
highlight details, to pick out that [indistinct] eyes.
And then we're done with the eye makeup.
I'm gonna do some lips.
The kind of core thing that I'm looking at in my work is
this idea of like having fun with things that hurt you.
And so a lot of the films tease out this kind of like
queer reenactment of those kind of masculine tropes,
in an attempt to sort of like blow them out of proportion
and run to them like ridiculous.
So I'm just gonna start kind of distributing pearls
across my face, just to add some light dimension
into these like hollowed out eyes.
Cool. Yeah. I think I'm gonna like release
the hair and then set things in place.
I guess beauty for me,
it should be like a joyful thing that like
constantly surprises you.
It's always like looking for opportunity
to surprise yourself through like the places
that you can reach with it.
It's a case of like realizing that,
to like approach yourself and the way that
you put yourself together
is something that's not static.
And is always like open
to letting desire surprise you.
So I'm done with the face.
I just need to kind of slick the hair around
and get on some accessories,
and then I'm gonna slink into
my Mission Man inflatable suit.
[upbeat music]
Important to take fantasy really seriously.
For me, like fantasy is the only thing
that helps make sense of the world that is so like
unceasingly non-linear and harsh.
I think like kind of being able to like
make opportunity for fantasy in the everyday
is like really important.