Any drag queens 'lowed in? Corner Brook artist connects drag and mummers

It's easy to get lost among the adjectives while trying to sum up Lucas Morneau's body of work, The Queer Mummer, on display now at the Grenfell Art Gallery in Corner Brook.

It's funny, campy and unsettling all at once to breeze through the personas in his large-scale photographs that combine specific Newfoundland and Labrador references with pop culture, with a heavy dollop of drag —and blue eyeshadow — on top.

"They have different personalities. Some a lot more strict than others, some a lot more foolish," said Morneau.

In one, Morneau is dressed as a severe-looking leather-corseted mummer, with an Annie Lennox haircut and unstylish Crocs. Another mummer, Inky Twinky, is part giant squid, part Ursula from The Little Mermaid, dribbling a blue streak from its androgynous, otherworldly chin.

"The exhibition, for me, is more or less about challenging gender norms," said Morneau.

For Morneau, mummering was the perfect way to explore that, a gender bending tradition that existed long before RuPaul's Drag Race. With The Queer Mummer, he blends the two in a way he hopes has people asking questions after leaving the gallery.

"I wanted to point out that, if you had this negative view of drag, but have mummered before, you are performing in drag," said Morneau.

'Art is autobiographical'

Morneau started marrying mummers and drag in his art practice while in a master's program at the University of Saskatchewan.

There, he got involved in the Saskatoon drag scene, and one day he decided to make a mask for one of his stage personas.

"Halfway through the mask, I kind of was thinking, oh, this looks like something a mummer would wear. And then the cogs started to turn," he said.

From there, The Queer Mummer arose, drawing from the mask-making skills and themes he began developing during his undergraduate degree at Grenfell Campus.

"For me, the mask was always important, or veiling," he said.

Morneau filtering his art practice through his experience a gay student in his hometown of Corner Brook, where he said he sometimes felt he had to camouflage parts of himself to get by.

"I was dealing with issues of having to hide part of my identity, and put up these masks to perform to people," he said.

"I'm a person that believes that no matter what, art is autobiographical." 

More mummers to come

The Queer Mummer both hides Morneau under layers of handmade costumes and is at the same time unapologetically vibrant.

The photographs hang slightly above eye level, so each mummer peers down on people walking by with exaggerated faces. If there is an award in the art world for expressions, Morneau should win it.

While he does want to cast mummering in a new light, he also hopes gallery goers enjoy its tongue-in-cheek tone — Bay Thang wears a distinctly 90s windbreaker — and enjoy the work as much as someone might enjoy a traditional mummer dropping in at their house unannounced.

"I think humour is one of those things that really connects everyone, and so that's one of the reasons why I went towards that route," he said.

Morneau has more mummering ideas, including large photographs of several mummers in a scene, as opposed to his current solo mummer works. He'll also be performing at St. John's contemporary art festival Hold Fast in September.

The Queer Mummer is up at the Grenfell Art Gallery until August 2.

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