By Shelley Anderson, 1 September 2024
One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned volunteering at the TRC is how dress is a marker of identity. What we wear says so much about how we see ourselves and how we want others to see us, about our dreams and self-expression. One major identity we show by what we wear is gender.
Amsterdam drag queen Jennifer Hopelezz (l) poses with Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema (r) in front of the Stonewall Inn in New York City, in April 2019. Hopelezz’s dress reflects the red and black colours of the Amsterdam (NL) city flag.
In 2019 the TRC put together its digital exhibition Rainbow People: 50 Years of Stonewall. It was a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising, which kickstarted the modern movement for LGBTQ+ rights. The exhibition includes about 30 objects, from badges and jewellery, to a pink shirt from an Irish LGBT+ choir (TRC 2019.1992) to a hand crocheted rainbow kippa (TRC 2019.1607).
Turquoise net drag costume, with silver coloured braids and hand applied turquoise sequins, donated by Jennifer Hopelezz. Early 21st century, Netherlands (TRC 2019.1622).I thought of one item in particular as I visited the exhibit “The Art of Drag”, now on at the HAL, part of the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem. That item is a glamourous costume donated to the TRC by the beloved Amsterdam drag queen Jennifer Hopelezz. Jennifer is the alter ego of Richard Keldoulis, and the costume was made for him by his husband, Elard Diekman. It’s made of a turquoise factory-produced synthetic net material and decorated with silver coloured braids and hand-applied turquoise sequins (TRC 2019.1622).
Drag at its simplest is dressing up in clothes reserved for the opposite gender. “Drag is playing with gender. It can be a satire on gender, it can be a mocking,” Richard said to me during an interview. “When I’m in drag I let myself show my feminine side. You literally take on another identity. You begin to wonder why is this me or not me? Drag definitely makes you extremely aware about gender.”
His sentiments about playing with gender via dress were repeated time and again at The Art of Drag exhibit. The exhibit consists mostly of photographs and video (except for an amazing, larger-than-life size 3D knitted tapestry, called “Caress”, made in 2022 by the artist Yamuna Forzani), but clothing is always at the forefront.
There are paintings and etchings from early 20th century Netherlands which show women who shocked proper society by cutting their hair short and wearing trousers, like the Haarlem poet Joanna Maria Jannette van Zijl (1910-1963), who later changed her first name to Hans. There are the photographs of Julius Thissen which play with notions of masculinity by playing with clothes, like a pair of man’s trousers with a built-in corset, or a man’s suit worn backwards. “Everyone puts on a costume that is coded with a whole range of written and unwritten rules about what is supposedly masculine and feminine,” the artist says.
“Hartjesdag” (oil on canvas, Amsterdam Museum, inv. nr. SA 20352), by Johan Coenraad Braakensiek. While finished in 1926, the scene is from a celebration of Hartjesdag in Amsterdam’s Zeedijk area in 1920. Photo: S. Anderson
Drag isn’t always confined to the intelligentsia or the LGBTQ+ community, however. My most favorite object on display was an oil painting from 1926, by the Dutch painter and illustrator Johan Coenraad Braakensiek (1858-1940). The painting, called “Hartjesdag”, shows women in trousers and men in long skirts celebrating Hartjesdag in the Zeedijk neighbourhood in Amsterdam. Hartjesdag is an old holiday when women wore men's clothes and men dressed in women's clothes, and then partied in the streets.
Quotation by drag artist RuPaul at the Art of Drag exhibit.It has been celebrated for centuries on the third Monday in August in working class neighbourhoods in Haarlem. By the 1850s it had spread to Amsterdam. The day was often denounced in newspapers for debauchery and drunkenness. Indeed, it was outlawed in Haarlem because of street brawls that had ended in murder. But it continued in Amsterdam, until the German occupiers banned it in 1943. In 1997 the holiday was revived in Zeedijk, and mostly celebrated by the LGBTQ+ community. The Dutch artist George Hendrik Breitner (1857-1923) also painted scenes from Hartjesdag.
The Art of Drag is on at the HAL (Grote Markt 16) of the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem until 13 October 2024.
References
The Art of Drag, door Manique Hendricks en Maaike Rikhof, 2024, Waanders Uitgevers, Zwolle (alleen in het Nederlands).
