A Season in Hell with Sean Pablo

July 02, 2022

"I feel like celebrities acting in theater... it depends," one gray-haired socialite-aspirant in a group of cultured tourists declares, intensifying a loose conversation about the Broadway adaptation of Macbeth, as a suspicious receptionist skeptically eyes me from her booth. It's 11 AM in Chinatown, and in the sunlit foyer-slash-bar of Tribeca's lavish 9 Orchard Hotel, I'm waiting to interview Supreme skater-heartthrob-hyphenate Sean Pablo, who seems to be asleep. If he does happen to be sleeping, it's for good reason: "A SEASON IN HELL," his debut solo exhibition, is slated to open tonight at CC Projects, a low-key second-floor gallery a few minutes away from here on Manhattan's Lower East Side. If the eyes of America’s skateboard-toting youth were glued onto him for a majority of the past decade, tonight’s show may mark the highest the stakes have been in quite some time. You would probably be sleeping, too.

Text by Samuel Hyland
Photos by Waylon Bone

But he isn't. Right as I finish typing out the paragraph you just read in my notes app, the receptionist's glaring side-eye still hot on my face, I get two texts: (1) "Hey there," and (2) "Im at physical therapy." He tells me that he's really sorry, and that he'll be back in 45 minutes. I’m going to have to wait. Waiting isn't one of the first things that come to mind when you think of Sean Pablo. By the time he was 16 years old, he was sponsored by Supreme, Converse and the skater-owned conglomerate Fucking Awesome, after which, still with homework, tests, and a growing newfangled public image to be contended with, he was plucked out of the California State education system by his father to be homeschooled. Homeschooling — in major part because his dad made it a point to surround him with art and art books — fostered an already-existent penchant for creativity that prior public school experiences did little to nourish. Coming up on ten years after his first taste of such visionary autonomy, he runs a berserk all-out fashion brand, makes sparingly-released sad boy guitar music flanked by obsessive fans on SoundCloud, skates with just as much artfulness as he does hardcore flair, and, as of this evening, is looking to lug his legend up from the streets, and into the gallery.

At around half past noon, the grand lobby doors are held ajar by an assistant, and limping his way through them on crutches is Sean, who hesitantly gestures towards me and begins uttering semi-whispered, too-cool-to-be-true apologies for being late. Lanky and aloof, he has the endearingly-awkward air of Joey Ramone, or at least a version of him that grew up in the Instagram era, looked up to XXXTENTACION instead of Iggy Pop, perhaps got his scars from failed tricks, rather than the fists of his bandmates. He’s wearing a light purple Supreme hoodie over a black Monster Energy baseball cap (the word “Monster” is replaced by “Paradise,” his fashion brand), brown-tinted shades, long gray sweatpants, tall white gym socks, and a pair of dress shoes that manage to work surprisingly well with his otherwise-cozy attire. Kinky blonde and black streaks poke out from the many agents anonymizing his face, and as much as it’s obvious to everyone in the room that he’s a star of some sort — though they don’t know for what — he slips into the space like any of the several sociable tourists who filtered in and out of the foyer while I waited, exchanging pleasantries with baristas, and telling seemingly every passerby possible to have a good afternoon. By the time we take adjacent seats in an expansive couch at the room's center, the receptionist doesn’t seem so suspicious anymore.

What I want people to think? I don't know.

Sean sets down his crutches. “I have a broken tibia bone, and I got some ligament damage…” he explains. “...From getting hit by a car.” A couple of weeks ago, he was out skating in a parking lot in an Atlanta suburb, when a vehicle came out of nowhere and struck him, badly damaging his leg. This morning has been hectic. He hasn’t had breakfast yet, and his mom, who elicits a charming Forrest-Gump wave from him when she walks by us in the lobby, had to remind him of his physical therapy appointment. He’s ecstatic when a Chick-fil-A delivery man toting two large white plastic bags wanders with searching eyes into the corridor, and for the rest of our interview, he’s apologetically poring over a bowl of macaroni & cheese, accompanied by what I think is a large Sprite. He’s in a constant rotation of taking the shades, hoodie and Paradise cap off and putting them back on again, and he speaks in quiet, distant sentences that feel in equal part genius, stream-of-consciousness, press-shy, and vaguely disinterested. It’s very difficult to distinguish between the four at any given point.

Tonight’s exhibition opening comes at the tail end of two decades spent taking in a slew of rapidly-changing surroundings, boasting the undertakings of an artistic eye incubated amidst what’s probably one of the more interesting come-ups among America's 24 year-olds. He grew up in the fabled Fairfax of Tyler, the Creator and Odd Future, flocking with like-minded skaters, and, at least up to the point of his senior year homeschooling, skipping high school classes to haunt the streets of Los Angeles with friends. Though his mom is an educator herself, she was supportive enough of his creative endeavors to give him the room he needed to grow, and by the time Supreme sought him out — he speculates that fellow skater Sage Elsesser may have put in a good word for him — any inkling of an instance that could have been spent looking back was long gone.

Over his meteoric ascent from scrawny teenage shredder to masterful multi-hyphenate, as life has moved faster and faster, his art has been the chief agent in helping make sense of the ever-growing list of things on his plate. “I’ve always wanted to do a photo exhibition,” he says. “And it makes sense, because I’ve been shooting photos since I was a young kid, so it was always something I wanted to do. It’s crazy that it took a long time. It’s all photos from my past, and it’s about the whole time that I’ve been, like, in the public eye.”

Because of how quiet he is, both in-person and on social media — his Instagram is composed mainly of artsy photos of his homies, with the occasional cryptic billboard or street sign — to some extent, Sean’s image in public perception is chiefly informed by the way he appears in skate clips. It’s terrible journalistic practice to cite tweets in articles, but if there’s any certain one that should be permitted to break the rule in this context, it’s probably one that speculated, in 2019, for two hard-earned likes, the following: “I’ve never heard Sean Pablo’s voice but I assume it sounds like Him from Powerpuff Girls.” (It does not.)

In most skate videos he’s featured in, besides, perhaps, horny old women who declare that he needs to “bring it down the pipe to mommy,” much of the conversation both from and around him is hushed. He skates with a trademark glare, kickflipping somewhat menacingly over unsuspecting garbage cans, all the while maintaining a certain graceful control that makes it all seem imposingly mechanical. “I guess,” he says with a chuckle, asked whether he thinks people may see him as somewhat ominous, “maybe when I’m skating I’m, like, concentrating so hard, so it looks like maybe I make a weird grimace or something.”

It’s an interpretational ambiguity that, come tonight, he’s looking to replicate with his artistic practice. When I ask him what he wants his work at the exhibition to do for other people, it’s one of those moments where you can’t really tell whether his words are the result of genius, a steady stream-of-consciousness, press-shyness, or vague disinterest. But if anything, they're honest. “I don’t know,” he starts. “Hopefully it can convey my life, and the way that I… see stuff. I don’t know, honestly. It’s really hard to say. What I want people to think? I don’t know.”

Sean Pablo’s analogousness to Joey Ramone goes beyond aesthetics and soft-spokenness. His own music — “Maybe a little Lil Peep influence… maybe The Cure… Joy Division maybe… I don’t know, maybe for all those things to get mixed together,” he tells me, when I ask him what a Paradise album might sound like — much like the gangly punk rock pioneer’s late-career solo stuff, rings torrentially, unapologetically emo, and it’s an unmentioned shame that there isn’t more. “You used to be my anti-depressant,” he groans, over layered, ultra-reverbed guitar strums, in his most popular SoundCloud loosie. “Now I be taking antidepressants.” Corny to some, but on-brand for skateboarding’s lanky boy next door: if being hit by cars, missing breakfast, and limping your way back to a hotel to meet pestering journalists was your day-to-day, you’d probably be singing about anti-depressants, too. In trying to explain to him how he’s a lot like Joey Ramone, I trail off mid-sentence, stammering my way through something along the lines of On the outside, you’re both kind of imposing and hardcore, but deep down…

“The greatest person ever,” he concludes, with a boyish grin.

Five hours later, I’m at 17 Allen Street, but it turns out to be the wrong 17 Allen Street, because no matter how much I try to reason with a pair of shop owners adamant that their kitchen hardware store is closing, they look at me like I’m insane when I ask how to get to floor number two, and after about a minute or two of this, they resolve to ignore me — as, in retrospect, I, too, would have — and I’m awkwardly pacing the intersection of Allen and Canal, gesturing towards the closed kitchen hardware shop, annoying strangers with frantic questions about how I’m supposed get to floor two, all the while wondering with dread whether I misread the address on the advertisement. The minutes are counting down to opening time, and out of the throngs of bystanders trudging to and fro along the corner, the ones who have come for the event are somewhat easy to pick out. They’re aimlessly pacing the gallery’s surrounding streets, looking up from their phones at the slightest bit of a hint that the doors might be opening, posturing with crossed arms in ill-executed efforts to appear as if they know what’s going on. An increasing number of kickflips can be heard slapping against sidewalks as the moments pass. Around me, there are about a dozen different variations of beaten-up Adidas Superstars.

A few minutes after the show’s originally-scheduled start time, a fashionable gallery assistant somehow rocking Adidas track pants with bright purple socks and dress shoes opens the door, but with the caveat that the space isn’t ready yet, and it’s going to be a five to ten minute wait. For anywhere from about half an hour to forty-five minutes, I’m standing against a wall in a small, dingy lobby area, shared with a rotating cast of eager characters who come in, get the apologetic spiel about the show starting late, opt to stick it out in the impromptu waiting room, give up and go outside for fresh air, then repeat the process. It feels a little bit like that one time Kanye announced a surprise make-up concert in this very city, got a bunch of A-list cultural figures to stir up hype about it on Twitter, and then ultimately no-showed. “I saw it on some [Instagram] stories,” one bike rider in blue shorts tells me. “So I was like, ‘Yeah, I gotta come.’”

But Sean Pablo is no Kanye, and at about quarter to seven, we’re ushered up a dark stairway, and into a modest-yet-intimate gallery setup that looks a lot like someone gave an emo stoner a full calendar year to decorate a university dorm suite. One entire wall is dedicated to various hand-drawn renderings of women in various stages of nudity, save for the occasional grinning Mickey Mouse or conglomerate of cartoon skulls. Behind an ominous doorway with “ENTER HEAVEN” scrawled just as ominously in thick black spray paint that coats its perimeter, there’s a dark room with a single chair in its center — the kind a grandfather with old-world values and a Wall Street Journal subscription would die in — and on a large sheet that doubles as a makeshift projector screen in the front, a video featuring gyrating men, knives, ambiguous gatherings and motorcycles is on endless repeat. Besides “ENTER HEAVEN,” other scrawlings on the wall, alternating with subtle chaos between spray paint and jagged marker, include “HEAVEN IS ALWAYS HERE AND NOW,” “LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER,” “LISTEN TO WOMEN,” and “LISTEN TO YOURSELF.” On another wall, under the smiling supervision of a spray-painted penis doodle, prints of photos Sean took of his friends are stationed adjacent to one another, at some points interrupted by larger images illuminated by bright lights that have been installed behind them. A popular corner features three mini-TVs stacked atop one another, each little screen playing cult-evocative footage — Rob Tyner of MC5 falling into crazed mid-song spasms, a televised church service in which parishioners flail around like ragdolls, a gruesome murder scene in a slasher film — that drones with no end, cueing curious visitors to stare, and then awkwardly wander away once they get bored.

Earlier today, back at 9 Orchard, Sean broke down his interplay between Heaven and Hell like this: “I think it’s just the idea of Heaven as a funny kind of motif. And obviously Paradise kind of plays on that. Because with religion, the idea is that this life isn’t important; it’s what’s coming in the afterlife that you should be concerned about, and that’s why you should do this and that. I think you should live in the moment. And appreciate the moment. I’m not saying one thing or another. It’s just however you want to interpret it.”

Tonight at the show, the open-endedness seems only to result in more questions. When, in the aforementioned grandpa-couch-projector-screen room, a pair of loud long-haired 20-somethings let out a boisterous laugh, and one turns to the other and says “This is crazy,” it’s hard to tell whether they’re laughing with the show or at it. The air of the gallery is rife with trepidatious intrigue, and many of its inhabitants seem to have shown up out of curiosity from the slew of large accounts that promoted it on their Instagram stories today. This event seems to be a good portion of the crowd’s first art opening — the biker I spoke to earlier thought it was the premiere of a skate clip — and for the small demographic that appear to have been experienced in this sort of thing, they certainly haven’t been to one informed by Sean Pablo’s inner machinations.

But by the time he arrives, still on crutches, and flanked by gallery workers, it seems like he wouldn't have it any other way. He’s wearing a white Supreme box logo tee, a beaded necklace, dress pants, and the same tall white socks and black dress shoes as before. Puffing on his vape every now and then, he blends in the same way he did in the hotel lobby. Either that, or most people are just scared to talk to him. He poses for a photo here and there, and eager followers, many of which are likely still populating the comments sections of his year-old SoundCloud loosies, nervously encircle him, almost as if to wait their turns to offer anxious, rushed, “congrats dude”s. When I catch him near the corner with the stacked mini-TVs, he doesn’t have any complaints besides the fact that he wishes the audio could be a little louder. I would put a quote here, but whether it’s because his voice is too quiet, the people are too loud, or both, my tape recorder picks up nothing.

Outside, flocks of punkish young adults are dispersed as loosely as they were an hour or so ago, when no one knew whether the show was still happening or not. I spend several minutes tapping a few nonchalant skateboard-toting high schoolers on the shoulders, their disinterest in me only seeming to grow when I ask if they’d be down to answer a few questions about the opening. “It was really interesting,” Michael Mankong, a polite videographer from Brooklyn, tells me. “I watch a lot of their videos from FA and Supreme, and it’s cool to see little photos and Sean’s art. He has it on his Converse sneakers. It’s cool to see it more intimately. [...] I feel inspired to maybe in the future do something like that for myself and my friends.”

The easiest way to gauge how people generally responded to the show is to spend five minutes in the room with the couch and the projector. When I do, everyone is vaguely annoyed at me because, as I realize in retrospect, I happen to be blocking the entrance to a refrigerator containing cold drinks for the taking. The space, much like the stacked TVs, can be conceptually condensed into an experiment in attention spans: one by one, people wander in through the ominous doorway, hesitantly find places for themselves in a haphazard line slinking along the walls, stare, chuckle, stick around until it feels awkward, and file out.

At some point, the fashionable gallery assistant with the purple socks flashes a playful smile behind the chair, and sitting in it is a little girl, no older than five, who is hysterically laughing. She is the only human being present who isn't actively treating the spectacle like a church service. You can’t help but wonder if there’s a certain type of person best fit to appreciate Sean’s art, or, maybe, a right way to react. And by the time the lights are off, the gallery is closed for the night, and the kickflipping high schoolers on the sidewalk have gone home for good, the only applicable prognosis is that, just like celebrities acting in theater, it all depends.

Culture

Mowalola x Miss Sixty Launch with H. Lorenzo

I swing my legs over the ropes that guard the VIP entrance. Always over (I’m 5’10), never under. I’m late to the H. Lorenzo x Mowalola event, and the line is wrapped around the block. I don’t want to be an asshole, but I hate waiting in lines; it just ruins everything.

“Hey, my friend is DJing right now. My name should be down,” I say.

The youngish security guard looks me up and down. I have made an adventurous choice for this type of crowd. Neon pink hoodie, bright orange vest, my Raimundo jeans, and Jeremy Scott animal print sneakers. I let him take me in and look over his shoulder. Hmmm… I will be swathed in darkness when he lets me in. Dark night, dark clothes, dark makeup, furs, hoods, leather accessories, and sunglasses. I don’t recognize anyone, but it’s hard to tell who anyone is because I can’t see after 8 pm without my glasses. Night blindness. I can still catch a vibe though.

“She’s in the bathroom,” Mr. Guard says, interrupting my squinting.

“Who?,” I ask.

“The woman in charge of the list.”

That’s a drag. I want to dance. Lately, I am going out in the name of music.

“So…can I go in?” I ask.

“Just wait for her to get back.”

That sounded fine. I wait. The outdoor smoking area is packed. I imagine the inside to be a mirror of this, hopefully with people dancing instead of blowing smoke in each other’s eyes.

“You got instagram?” The guard asks me after about ten minutes of flirting.

“Can I go in?” I said.

He laughs. He lets me in the event without a wristband.

Inside, I understand why the other guard was gone for so long. I made a mental note to not drink too much liquid, the bathroom line is almost as long as the line outside. The party is popping, far from a flop.

I push through the crowd solo, following the speakers to the DJ booth. The immersive visuals provided me with enough light to make out Mowalola in a gold bikini and her low rise denim. My pulse races like the horse printed on the front of her coochie. That’s the point of the collection, obviously.

My hips swing around before I head towards the open bar. I smile to myself, noting that it’s a mezcal forward menu. I see a drink that disgusts me so I order it without hesitation. It’s a mezcal coffee concoction. My heart ’s ran through already, why not go all in? I head back to dance when I hear Shigecki’s set start. I’m jumping around, sweating, and when I pause for a beat I let out a yelp. There are strippers working poles opposite and behind the DJ booth. Good. Events should be sexy.

I end the night smoking my friend’s Korean strawberry cigarettes taking in the air of cool- when a man comes up to me wild-eyed exclaiming that we look just like one another. I look at him- no, not at all. I turn slowly, remembering what I should be doing: listening to DJ G2G’s set. Back inside, she is playing reggaeton type beats with lasers beaming out of her headphones (I want these). A rave in it of herself.

Too bad all the events end at 2 am in LA.

Culture

Vans Pipe Masters 2024

On the first night, Steve Van Doren and the Vans team hosted the heat draw for the competitors at a casual backyard barbecue. The son of Vans’ co-founder Paul Van Doren, Steve has worked in the family business for decades, and is now known as the Ambassador of Fun. Wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a cowboy hat made out of old shoes, he was definitely dressed for the part. The surfers, along with family and friends gathered in a relaxed setting as 40 men’s and 20 women’s names were drawn from a shoebox. The competition would run in 3 rounds, the top 4 men and 4 women with the highest scores moving onto the finals. When asked about their strategies, most gave answers along the lines of “get waves.” Refreshingly simple.

After waiting a few days for favorable conditions, the first day of competition kicked off with Women’s Round 1. It was finally time to see Pipeline in action. Banzai Pipeline is known as one of the most dangerous places to surf due to the powerful waves breaking over shallow and sharp reefs. With the potential to crash into the rocky edges or have leashes caught in caves, it takes a ton of skill–-and even more courage–to surf here. No stranger to these risks, the first heat included favorites Caity Simmers and “Queen of Pipeline” Moana Jones Wong, who showed off exactly why they’d been successful here in the past. Midway through the heats, Mother Nature decided to throw in another element as a light drizzle turned into a proper downpour. Rain or shine, the athletes went out unfazed, focused on getting their first points on the board.

After another short day’s break, the competition continued with the women’s second round and the men’s first. The beach was filled with spectators, locals and tourists alike, as the competition was free for all to attend. While fans rooted equally for the women and men, the most popular were the local Hawaiian athletes, which made up about half the competition. The women started off the day again, hyping up the crowd with incredible rides. One ride by Bettylou Sakura Johnson earned the first Bag of Cash of the day– a cash prize (of undisclosed amount) awarded in a brown paper bag to any surfer that pulls off a wow moment, excites the crowd, and pulls off something spectacular regardless of what the conditions might look like.

Winds picked up as the men’s competition began and two strategies quickly emerged: an aggressive approach, targeting any decent waves to build small scores; and a patient approach, waiting for the perfect wave to chase a high single score. Even the waves that were unrideable were a spectacle in itself. The sheer size, illustrated by the length of surfboards riding up and over, and the following crash of white water spray was hypnotizing. Then imagining having to experience it out on the water, duck diving under or being lifted over, brought a renewed respect for the surfers.

After watching these early rounds, it was time for office to head back to the cold. With the competition officially spanning from December 8-20, it seemed the forecast was gearing up for some massive waves— and it didn’t disappoint. Following from afar through Vans’ Instagram and live updates, we saw the full extent of what it means to surf at Pipeline. After a series of electrifying and daring surfs, the 2024 winners were crowned: Erin Brooks and Nathan Florence.

The thrill of watching top athletes compete at the highest level of their sport, even remotely, never fails to inspire. Few sports surrender so completely to the forces of nature as surfing does. And at its core, surfing is all about having a deep respect for the ocean—its unpredictable whims, its immense power, and its ever-changing moods.

Culture

The Cost of Queendom

December 17, 2024

One summer afternoon in New York, a few days after their New York premiere of the acclaimed documentary Queendom, office met up with documentary filmmaker Agniia Galdanova and producer Igor Myakotin at a tattoo parlor on the west side of Manhattan. While Agniia received a tattoo of the portmanteau “DOCU CUNT” across her fists, she — unfazed by the needle on her knuckles — answered our questions alongside Igor about the making of the stirring story that has traveled around the world.

One of the opening scenes of Queendom depicts a ritual many of us are all too familiar with in the 21st century. Jenna Marvin, the documentary film’s central subject, takes her friend along with her to take photos for Instagram. When she finds a suitable backdrop, she poses, poses, poses, and then reviews the photos. Dissatisfied, she gives her notes, and then returns to pose, pose, pose again.

By Brook Aster
Photos by Liv Solomon

The ritual may be familiar, but nothing else about the scene — from its setting to its stakes — is ordinary. The backdrop behind Jenna is a sweeping expanse of ice and snow in a small Russian port town called Magadan. Jenna is dressed in drag, but not drag of the Rupaul’s Drag Race variety; her drag has been referred to as “creature drag.” Her signature white face paint, platform heels and surrealist costumes, with their exaggerated sculptural proportions and use of duct tape and repurposed items, catches the ire of her neighbors and the love of online admirers alike. Jenna eventually accrued a following on social media for her public and technically illegal drag performances, which often involved little more than her walking or being in public spaces but nevertheless were often met with abuse and threats of imprisonment.

But when Agniia first encountered Jenna, she hadn’t yet reached the level of virality that would eventually come in the years to follow. The filmmaker was researching different drag performers in Russia for her sophomore project, which she thought would be a docuseries, when she heard from a friend about a young drag queen from Magadan. “I was like, this is impossible. I have to meet this person,” Agniia remembers. “And I could not actually go meet her because I was in Moscow and she was in Saint Petersburg, so I sent a friend of mine with whom I’d been studying with in film school, and she went and filmed the sample.” The simple video, showing Jenna and her friend getting dressed up for a party, struck something in Agniia. The drag was an earlier, more prototypical version of the style Jenna is now known for; less duct tape and ornamentation, but still that signature striking makeup. “Something sparked. I knew I just had to stick to this feeling,” Agniia says. She decided to turn the docuseries into a documentary solely focused on Jenna.

Around that time, the entire world came to a grinding halt: the onset of COVID-19 pandemic had just led to lockdowns around the globe. With only a couple thousand followers on social media at that point in time, Jenna had tried to branch out and connect with other drag artists in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, but faced rejection; her drag was extremely unconventional, and not even other drag artists quite understood it. “I think we found each other at the right moment, because nobody knew what to do, how to cope with all this,” Agniia says. “Jenna was saying that she was lost, and she also didn't know how to develop her art next.”

Unlike some of the other artists Agniia had initially researched, Jenna didn’t need much convincing to allow the camera into her life. “[Especially] after COVID came, there wasn't really [any] drag in my life,” Jenna recounts when I speak to her later over Zoom. “I realized that what drag is for me is not just a costume, a dress, something that you leave, that you take off and then in the dead of the night you put back on. Later, I understood that this is who I am, that I am art and I am drag, and that this is way bigger and more important than just clothing or costume.”

[LEFT TO RIGHT: Agniia Galdanova, Jenna Marvin, Igor Myakotin]

When it came time to move into production stages, Agniia sent a clip to Igor, who had been referred to her by a past colleague. When Igor saw the footage, he was similarly struck by Jenna — and even more struck to find out she shared his small hometown of Magadan. “It was just so fateful to know that I also come from this town, and I've never seen it through this cinematic lens, through the vision that Agniia has,” he says. “I was mesmerized by the footage, mesmerized by Jenna. I thought to myself, I have to do everything I can [for us] to work together, whatever the collaboration is gonna be.”

The two followed Jenna for over three years; Agniia first relocated to St. Petersburg, where Jenna had taken up residence after leaving her grandparents’ home in Magadan, and later Jenna moved in with Agniia in her home in Moscow. All the while, Igor and his team worked remotely from the United States to meet Agniia’s production needs. Inevitably, with all their time spent together, Agniia and Jenna became close.

“There is an unspoken rule in documentary filmmaking that you have to keep this line, and you can’t overcome certain boundaries,” Agniia explains. “In my first film, it was not an easy subject [to do this with] as well. I was following a family for seven months, and [we became] close, but I always was trying to keep my distance, and was constantly thinking about it. How much should I say? How much should I give?” But as she got to know Jenna, it became clear that this time, that distance wouldn’t be possible. “With Jenna almost from the very beginning, I was like, fuck it. That’s not going to work with this one. I'm going to break this rule 100%. I never regretted it, because that's actually what built up the trust that is there.”

As Jenna's public performances continued and began to garner more public attention, her online audience multiplied. Among her virtual admirers was French fashion maven Michèle Lamy, who would eventually sign onto Queendom as an executive producer. Lamy's discovery of Jenna led to an invitation to walk in the Rick Owens show in Paris — her first time modeling, and her first time leaving Russia in her life. Of course, Agniia and her camera followed. But most of their excursions were not so glamorous; many of Jenna's performances shown in the documentary were undertaken at a real risk to her physical safety, and by extension, to the safety of Agniia. But neither of them were daunted.

I remember who I am. And this is what carries me through this life.

After all, Jenna was used to both taking risks and documenting them well before she was the subject of a film; she and her friends long filmed the often impassioned, sometimes violent reactions of strangers and policemen to their mere existence in public spaces in drag. And after a protest performance in which she wrapped herself in the Russian flag, Jenna was kicked out of beauty school, her last attempt at a practical route before pursuing her drag as a full time venture.

The only time Agniia tried to dissuade her was on Paratrooper’s Day, a Russian military holiday often characterized by the drunk soldiers roaming the streets. The risk for violence was especially high. “On Paratroopers Day, people say you can't come out in skinny jeans or with nail polish,” Jenna describes. “[I think] you should do the opposite. You should really make a statement and come out wearing what you want to wear. I think that clothes, what we wear, is really at some point beyond our psyche, our mind, our understanding. It is as if it's a certain kind of spice that is enticing you and you follow the scent of that spice and you don't see anything else except that scent and you follow it. That's how I see it.”

“I was like, ‘girl, maybe we should not do that,’” Agniia says. “Igor was stressing out and she told us, ‘well, you don't need to follow me. I'm gonna go and do it. I don't care if you're coming or not.’” In the end, Jenna ventured out for her performance anyway, protesting the then-recent invasion of Ukraine. Agniia followed. Not shown in the film is that the two were arrested, and managed to talk the police out of their arrest.

Not too long after, she would have to leave Russia again, this time moving for Paris for good; the film follows her struggles to get a visa in time to leave the country after the onset of the war. “It's already been three years that I've been in France, and it is important for me to understand and remember who I am, and to remember that pain, those moments when we were back in Russia doing drag, fighting with the police and law enforcement,” Jenna says. “It is important that this resistance continues and that those voices are not being silenced. Yes, here there’s much more freedom, there are pride parades and queer people can get married, but this is an illusion because there are also places where you cannot get married and you cannot enjoy the same freedoms. I cling to who I am, who I was from the very beginning. I remember who I am. And this is what carries me through this life.”

“Meeting Jenna gave me hope for the future of the country, because governments come and go, people in power come and go, but the generations change at the same time,” Igor says. “So it warms my heart to see that someone like her came from somewhere like that. If I saw her back then at a similar age, it would be even more personal. I think I would’ve accepted myself as gay quicker, and I wouldn't be nervous or closed and not open to the world or myself… Working with this project also meant that we were amplifying the voices of many, many people who couldn't speak like Jenna could.”

For Agniia, the honor of telling Jenna's story is only paralleled by the honor of having her in her life. “We found each other,” Agniia says. “And what I learned from Jenna is so precious; about life, about art, about surviving. And I appreciate it a lot. This film grew so much larger than just a documentary, because I have a family now, a working family.”

Queendom is now available to stream on Apple TV.