Kajanne Pepper
Kajanne Pepper is a multidisciplinary artist working in performance, video, drag, installation, theatre and dance.
Pepper (he/they pronouns) explores vulnerability, artifice and identity while turning tragic into magic and trauma into drama.
Pepper has premiered hybridized dance/theatre work at RISK/REWARD, DANCE+ The Headwater’s Theatre, PICA’s T:BA festival, Performance Works Northwest, and internationally at OFF! Biennale Budapest. Pepper has exhibited 2d, 3d and installation work at Linfield College and at The Budapest Art Fair.
Pepper has been fortunate to have been an artist in residence at:
Macdowell, Monson Arts Center, Playa Summer Lake, Monson Arts Center, Caldera Arts, Space Gallery Maine, Signal Fire, The Lucky Penny Workroom Atlanta, Pelican Bomb New Orleans, New Expressive Works Residency, CON/VERGE at PonderosaTanz and PICA's Creative Exchange Lab.
Pepper Pepper has been featured in drag at The Austin International Drag Festival, Bushwig, Off Beat Bar Budapest, MSBeat Festival Chemnitz Germany, Bar Mattachine LA, Club Mother SF and The Stud (SF) and countless fundraisers and charities across the Pacific Northwest and West Coast. Pepper produced the wildly successful Drag/Art/Ball "Critical Mascara from 2012-2017 and was featured in the book "Fabulous Rise of the Beautiful Eccentric" by collaborator and author madison moore. One time as "Pepper the Potter" they performed an original lampoon of the ceramics community at NCECA's Randall Session to a crowd of 4500!
In 2016 Pepper premiered the first cycle of their on-going project Diva Practice. Diva Practice is a performance and research project about drag queens dancing with uncertainty, technology and identity. In 2017 with support from the Regional Arts and Culture Council, Oregon Arts Commission Pepper toured the country to develop "Diva Practice: Solo" as a work-in-progress culminating in a 2017 premier in Portland OR. at The Headwaters Theatre. Pepper has brought Diva Practice: Solo to Oregon State University Bend and SPACE GALLERY Maine as well as teaching "The Diva Practice Workshop" nationally.
Pepper is honored to be a Oregon Visual Arts Commission Fellow for 2020
