If there’s anything that the queens of High Fantasy actively challenge and explore, it’s the notion of drag: What is it? Who is it for? And how does it apply to queer identity?

On November 21, join us for the closing reception of There Will Always be Roses in San Francisco, California-based photographer Marissa Leitman’s latest exhibition on High Fantasy, the iconoclastic, experimental drag series which took place at Aunt Charlies from 2010-2018.

Featuring the beloved subjects of There Will Always be Roses in San Francisco, Myles Cooper, Mandy Coco, Kyle DeMedio, Brittany Newell, Fiera Morena, and Marissa Patrice Leitman will discuss topics on how High Fantasy began, how Aunt Charlie’s interacts with the Tenderloin, drag’s relationship with queerness, and what it means to be a part of a community.

Doors: 6 p.m.
Panel: 6:30 p.m.
Reception: 7:30 p.m.
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This event is part of a larger series of events and exhibitions about the pioneering drag queen performers at the legendary Aunt Charlie’s. Aunt Charlie’s is one of the oldest continuously operating queer bars in San Francisco, the last working class queer bar in San Francisco, and the last of its kind in the Tenderloin district. Our project aims to celebrate and lend visibility to Aunt Charlie’s as a remarkable space of socio-historical importance that is graced nightly by offbeat, eccentric characters whose seemingly idiosyncratic lives open up universal themes related to beauty, community, and self-acceptance.

Aunt Charlie’s: San Francisco’s Working Class Drag Bar highlights the work of numerous LGBTQ artists with a history of working in the neighborhood, and who reflect diverse approaches to portraiture: James Hosking, Tim Synder, Raphael Villet, Marissa Leitman, and Darwin Bell. Our project hopes to draw into focus the Tenderloin’s low-income LGBTQ community, to reflect on the area’s history as a center of drag performance, and to engage the intersectionality of drag as it relates to questions of class, race, gender, and beyond.