“Kids always knew I was a little off,” Kalup Linzy says of his youth. After moving from Florida to New York in 2003, his satires of soap operas—in which he addresses race, gender, sexuality, and family, all while wearing form-fitting drag—were championed by Klaus Biesenbach, director of MoMA PS1, and Thelma Golden, director of Harlem’s Studio Museum. Since then, he’s collaborated on a project at PS1 with Diane von Furstenberg, and last summer appeared on General Hospital with pal James Franco.
Tell me about your obsession with soap operas.
They are a family tradition. My great-grandmother even listened to
Guiding Light on the radio. When I was on General Hospital, James
Franco’s production company sent a camera crew to film my family
watching it on TV. To people back home, that’s what fame is, not the New
York Times art review. When they saw me on General Hospital, they
finally understood the context for my art.
You’re doing an album with James Franco under the moniker Kalup
and Franco.
It’s Motown inspired, but I’ve been playing with other sounds. I’m also
adapting two stories from James’s book, Palo Alto, into an animated
series, in addition to working on an opera for the San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art.
Will you return to General Hospital?
They’re talking about it. I would be there so quick—but I’d only do a
real soap full-time if I had a say in the storyline.
Do you have a dream TV project of your own?
I want to make a glamorous, scandalous, prime-time soap opera set in the
contemporary South.
Whom would you cast?
Tyson Beckford, my friend [model] Liya Kebede, and Meryl Streep.
Meryl Streep?
I’m just stuck on her. Also, I’m obsessed with Toni Braxton and her four
sisters. They just came out with a reality-TV show.
HAHN-BIN
Ever since he was five, Korean-American violinist Hahn-Bin, now a
23-year-old virtuoso, has been telling personal tales of “sorrow,
terror, and beauty” through incantatory stage shows and a startling
look: part alien life form, part avenging angel (his stage attire runs
toward Gareth Pugh and Jeremy Scott). His life story has been one of
misfit on the run—from Seoul to Los Angeles, and finally, to New York,
where he’s come under the wing of maestro Itzhak Perlman.
It must be quite something to be mentored by Itzhak
Perlman.
The wonderful thing is he understood that I am different from him, yet
we went together like oil and vinegar. I am the vinegar, of course.
Are you enjoying the recent attention from the art and fashion
worlds?
Absolutely. I used to walk in the Museum of Modern Art thinking, I would
love to perform here. So to have just finished my series of 10
performances there, I couldn’t believe it! And I made my debut at
Carnegie Hall. I don’t think I’ve ever cried so much from joy.
