Presented in partnership with SAIC’s Office of Multicultural Affairs, Department of Performance, and Writing Program
Alok Vaid-Menon is a gender nonconforming performance artist, writer, and educator. Their eclectic style, political comedy, and poetic challenge to the gender binary have been internationally renowned. Their work has been staged at the Queer New York International Arts Festival, La MaMa’s Squirts: New Voices in Queer Performance, the Under the Radar Festival, and the Drodesera Festival. Vaid-Menon has experience working with gender and sexuality movements across the world, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) organizations such as the Audre Lorde Project in New York City; Gender DynamiX in Cape Town, South Africa; Alternative Law Forum in Bangalore, India; and the International Trans Fund. In 2017 Vaid-Menon was the youngest recipient of the Live Works Performance Act Award, a distinction granted to 10 performance artists across the world. Vaid-Menon is the author of Femme in Public, a poetry chapbook about antitrans street harassment, and they recently designed their inaugural gender-neutral fashion collection. The Guardian, New York Times, New Yorker, National Geographic, HBO, and MTV have all featured their work.
This program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency
Lobol, Dean. “Call me ‘they.’” The Times of India
Singh, Shristi. “Alok Vaid-Menon,” PLATFORM Creative Style
“We are nothing (and that is beautiful): Alok Vaid-Menon,” TEDx
