M&D: Of course, you change physically into Lil Elote, but how has she changed you? How has drag and performance influenced, for example, the way you carry yourself, or the way you read interactions with others?

YJK: Sure, I feel I’m incorporating more of Lil Elote into my every day life through time. In terms of interactions, many people are still afraid of drag queens. They don’t see the struggle and the pain and
trauma, or they’ve still got a lot of repression they’ve not yet dealt with. It’s one of those polarizing things, where you can immediately tell, when you walk into a room in drag, who’s down and who’s not,
takes out a lot of the guesswork in figuring out who’s a douche. In that way, it’s been kinda nice.

M&D: Let's maybe talk about drag in relation to other parts of your practice, and by extension, your entrance into the reality TV audition process. First, how do you choose to integrate drag into your
practice? Is it a logical/linear conclusion that you've arrived at over time? Or something more multi-faceted? I've noticed that though you come from a painting-heavy background, you have an eye for
materialty, sensuousness, and camp. How do these seemingly disparate ways of working inform each other?

YJK: Through a natural progression, creating a painting may lead to doing a sculpture to a performance, and so on. I like to see how my ideas translate between different mediums and certain ideas will call for different mediums. Formal considerations and thematic considerations are intertwined for me. I must make a distinction between my doing drag, and incorporating drag in my art. While drag satisfies a more compulsory function, I can explore drag in a more critical manner in my artwork, and have fun with either.

M&D: How did you decide to audition? What about it compelled you? Explain a little about the entry process, the prompt for the first audition tape and how you responded.

YJK: The premise is absurd but the promise was alluring, and no matter how minuscule the possibility that it wouldn’t be trashy, I was curious, and I felt like I needed more information, and I could only do that by going through the process. I wasn’t counting on it, because I’d already enrolled in grad school.
The experience was like showing my work for inclusion in a group show at a gallery, and making work that fits in with the theme of the show, which I’ve done. In all of these cases, I’ve stayed true to my line
of thought, my ideals, I never felt I had to compromise my vision. For legal reasons, I can’t talk about this too much. It was a learning process. It was validating for me that people liked my work,
and I made some more work that I’m proud of.