Olympia Bukkakis, a white drag queen with minimal makeup, a shaved head and long earrings in a long dress of crimson velvet lies among a tangled mess of cables. She looks into the camera with an expression of ironic vulnerability. The visual reference is that of a cheesy soprano publicity shot, but she means it.
Photo Mayra Wallraff

Olympia Bukkakis

Queen of the Heavens and of the Earth, Empress of Despair, Architect of Your Eternal Suffering, Olympia Bukkakis is a drag queen, choreographer, moderator, and writer living and working in Berlin. Since moving here in 2012 she has organised various queer performance nights including Get Fucked, Apocalypse Tonight and Queens Against Borders. She operates from a white, migrant, nondisabled, trans-socialist perspective. In 2019 she graduated from the SODA masters (HZT) with her piece Tales From a State of Shemergency. Since then she has premiered: Gender Euphoria (2019), Work on Progress (2019), Under Pressures (2019), A Touch of the Other (2020), Too Much (2021), and replay (2023). Her book chapter Gender Euphoria: Trans and Nonbinary Identities in Drag was published by Bloomsbury. A polemic called A Case for the Abolition of Men was published by Spector Books through HKW. She is inspired by the tensions and intersections between queer nightlife and contemporary dance and performance.