Chanel Matsunami Govreau

Chanel Matsunami Govreau is an interdisciplinary artist and youth educator based in Brooklyn, NY. Under her artist name, Queen Gidrea, she uses her body, face, regalia, and word as a site of performance storytelling. She constructs luxury artifacts and plush armor with original fabric screen prints for costumed performance. In this practice, she utilizes a combination of humor and glamour to create a world  inhabited be fabulous character exaggerations and futuristic prophecies based on her experiences as a queer, multiracial, Japanese-American woman.  Working as a youth educator in NYC public schools, Matsunami combines her experience in photo performance, social justice and digital arts to create challenging culturally responsive arts curriculum. Through digital photography and graphic design she encourages young people to create radical and imaginative worlds to examine their lives as multicultural artists. Matsunami received her Bachelors of Fine Arts and certificate in Asian American Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2011.  www.queengidrea.com