Jibz Cameron

With a background in experimental music and performance art, Jibz Cameron has been a beloved staple in the queer punk scene for more than two decades in the guise of her alter ego, Dynasty Handbag, a character she first developed while opening for bands in San Francisco in the late 1990s. Her drawing practice has always run in parallel to her live multimedia work, allowing her to materialize performance ideas and visualize how they connect. In both aspects of her practice, Cameron satirizes her own lesbian and queer communities as well as the expectations placed on them by mainstream culture, exaggerating stereotypes but ultimately failing to fulfill them. Cameron’s drawings are crude in their execution and populated by a cast of distorted human figures. Her works on paper frequently debase and make fun of popular representations of feminine beauty or strength.

Jibz Cameron (b. 1975, California) received a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1999. She has performed as her alter ego, Dynasty Handbag, for more than twenty years. Cameron produces and hosts Weirdo Night, a comedy and performance event held monthly in Los Angeles and occasionally elsewhere. She has performed and screened works at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2016); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2015); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2015); The Broad, Los Angeles (2014); REDCAT, Los Angeles (2014); Brooklyn Academy of Music (2014); and New Museum, New York (2013), among other locations. She is the creator of Weirdo Night (the movie), directed by Mariah Garnett, which was a 2021 Sundance Film Festival selection. She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (2022), United States Artists Fellowship (2021), and Creative Capital Grant (2020).