Maïlys Mendes
Mailys Mendes, born in 2003 in Clermont-Ferrand, is a drag performer and visual artist.
She has been painting and experimenting since her adolescence, and it is through this that her artistic practice explores questions of puberty as women and gender minorities.
She questions how identities are shaped by social, political, and cultural norms.
Between stage, image, and text, she is interested in bodies as spaces of construction, constraint, and finally, reappropriation. How to recognize oneself in one's body and home, how to transform, inhabit, and above all, resist.
By using recycled and recovered materials, she attempts an ecological and symbolic approach. These materials become bodies, accessories that blur the boundary between stage and daily life, between body and home.
Her works therefore address the gestures that construct identities.
She wants to speak to all those who need sensitive spaces where emotions, memories, and minority experiences can be shared without shame.
"Le chatte à main"
2026
Look through the peephole of the door and enter the house. But who is this? The Hand Cat, the one we let see outside. The one who holds the gaze of men and the life of a woman.
This accessory that often accompanies the body transforms. It becomes body. The skin is mistreated, beautified for the gaze of others. We display our body/bag, we give it, we show it, we try to take care of it.
Latex, synthetic fur, belt buckle, wire.
Classified ads
2026
Seen in the newspaper La Montagne in Clermont-Ferrand, women sell their private services. The bodies of women are put on the market, in a standardized, almost innocuous language.
Reversal of the object, while it was a story of transaction, the ads become panties and lace.
This work is not for sale.
Paper mache, lace, acrylic, panty bow.
La Chouineuse
2026
The whiner is the one who cries without control, it’s not exaggerated. Because it’s just pearls that we can admire. It’s beautiful but what do I do when they explode in cascades? We keep them and transform them. Black is not emptiness, it’s the place from which we rise.
Sculpture in cardboard and paper mache, flour, acrylic, silver threads, fabrics, beads.
Ritu.elle
2026
The process of the morning routine at the sink. Preparing every morning to be a girl, and taking it off every evening. Between depth and height, between flat and 3D, let's question the reality and imagination of gender issues.
Acrylique, argile, strass, tissus, latex, cheveux, cotons, rubans, oeils.
Exercise of Masculinity
2026
In the bathroom, we do our morning routine. The razor cuts, and so do gender norms. While keeping her makeup, false eyelashes, and eyeshadow, she also wants to smell the scent of aftershave. A mask to avoid hiding.
Mache paper, acrylic, pink ribbon, razor.
