The RuPaul’s Drag Race winner talked about how she became a performer, what goes into creating her dazzling looks, and why she’s proud to represent Taiwan
LaWhore Vagistan, right, conducted the on-stage interview with Nymphia Wind, the first East Asian drag artist to win the TV show’s competition. Photo: Anna Miller
Addressing the crowd at a sold-out event sponsored by the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, drag queen Nymphia Wind took a moment to talk about visual art. Specifically, she threw some shade on the controversial conceptual artwork by Maurizio Cattelan that recently sold for $6.2 million. Titled “Comedian,” it is perhaps better known as the banana stuck to a wall with duct tape.
“Did you guys know the person who bought the banana ate the banana?” Wind asked incredulously. While she loved the idea of the artwork, “that amount of money should have gone somewhere else,” like education, she said. “That was ridiculous.”
Wind understands a thing or two about the intersection of art and bananas. The winner of season 16 of RuPaul’s Drag Race, Wind, also known as Leo Tsao, is famous for her head-to-platform-heels yellow outfits that often call to mind—or flat out manifest—the fruit.
She spoke about how the banana became her trademark, the artistry that goes into her most notable looks, and the importance of representation as a Taiwanese performer at the Dec. 6 event, which was organized by Kenson Truong, AG18 (MFA), associate director of SMFA graduate programs, and held at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
A slideshow at the event showed how Nymphia Wind weaves Taiwanese and Asian culture into many of her outfits. Photo: Anna Miller
LaWhore Vagistan (the drag persona of Kareem Khubchandani, associate professor of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies) conducted the on-stage interview with Wind, the first East Asian person to win the TV show’s competition. Author of the new book Decolonize Drag, Vagistan asked how Drag Race fans have reacted “now that they know there’s a Taiwanese queen?”
“I guess they finally learned that Taiwan is not Thailand,” Wind said. Taiwan is recognized among Asian nations for its progressive stance on LGBTQ+ issues. She pointed to same sex marriage, which Taiwan was the first Asian country to legalize, in 2019. Taiwan also hosts East Asia’s largest Pride march.
Wind wove Taiwanese and Asian culture into many of her outfits on the show, including one inspired by Butoh theater founder Kazuo Ohno and one that embodied bubble tea—a Taiwanese invention that became a worldwide addiction.
“We don’t get a voice internationally, we don’t get to be heard,” Wind said, referring to China’s claims on the island that have led it to go unrecognized, officially, by most other nations. “As a Taiwanese person, it’s so important to put ourselves out there in any way or form,” Wind said, adding that being a drag artist and ultimately reaching a large audience through the show “was a way for me to voice Taiwan in the queer perspective.”
She traced her first moments of drag to middle school, when she dressed up as one of the members of the South Korean girl group Girls’ Generation. In high school, she developed her artistic, performative side in a dance class, doing experimental routines: “I would paint my face all white and then take the makeup off and then wrap myself in tissue and all that.”
LaWhore Vagistan, Nymphia Wind, and Kenson Truong pose backstage after the event. Photo: Anna Miller
Her fruit identity started when she began wearing all-yellow outfits. “I just ran around the clubs calling myself a banana, and it just stuck,” she said. “And now I have to commit to the banana bit.” But she considers the fruit iconic, sexual, and a muse for many artists, from Andy Warhol to Cattelan.
In 2022, she moved to New York City “with the idea of maybe auditioning for Drag Race, but not daring to say it out loud,” she said.
Of the many looks she made for the competition, she said the most difficult and most rewarding was a Peking opera-style outfit topped with a magnificent headdress called a phoenix crown. “This was the most intense, because there’s so much detail in the phoenix crown,” she said, noting the long hours and sleepless nights involved. “But the payoff is incredible.”
