Jake Elwes – Zizi at Outernet

Gazelli Art House is delighted to announce The Zizi Show – A Deepfake Drag Act, a major public installation at Outernet London by Jake Elwes. Drawn from the artist’s ongoing Zizi Project (2019-present), the work explores the intersections of artificial intelligence, drag performance, queer representation, and machine learning technologies.

Developed in close collaboration with members of London’s drag community, the project examines the biases embedded within AI systems, particularly around gender, identity, visibility, and data ownership. Combining deepfake technology with performer-created datasets, Elwes reclaims tools often associated with surveillance and extraction, transforming them into spaces for collective authorship, celebration, and queer world-building.

At the centre of the presentation is a choreographed lip-sync sequence performed by ME The Drag Queen and reinterpreted through custom-built AI systems trained entirely from scratch using consensually gathered footage of participating performers. Rejecting the widespread practice of scraping online imagery, Elwes instead developed the work through an ethical, collaborative framework in which performers retained agency over their likenesses and data throughout the process.

As the AI-generated figures move across the screen, wigs, makeup, costumes, and bodies dissolve, mutate, and reform in moments where the technology struggles to interpret identities existing beyond normative gender frameworks. Rather than concealing these glitches and distortions, Elwes foregrounds them, exposing the limitations and biases embedded within machine learning systems while imagining more inclusive technological futures.

The work forms part of Elwes’ wider Zizi Project, an ongoing series that uses drag both as subject and methodology to interrogate artificial intelligence systems and the structures underpinning them. Through collective performance, the project challenges the supposed neutrality of AI, revealing how technologies are shaped by systems of classification, visibility, exclusion, and power.

The Zizi Show was recently commissioned by the Victoria and Albert Museum with support from the Manitou Fund in 2023. Following its presentation in the V&A Photography Centre’s Digital Gallery, the work entered the museum’s permanent collection.

Elwes’ related installation, Zizi in Motion: A Deepfake Drag Utopia (Movement by Wet Mess) (2023), is currently on view at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art following its acquisition into the museum’s permanent collection. Presented as a large-scale installation within SFMOMA’s Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Atrium, the work marks a significant institutional presentation of Elwes’ ongoing exploration of AI, drag, and collective performance.

Participating drag performers include Baby Lame, Bolly-Illusion, Bourgeoisie, Cara Melle, Charlie Wood, Chiyo, Dahc Dermur VIII, Dakota Schiffer, HERR, Lilly SnatchDragon, Lavinia Co-op, Luke Slyka, Mahatma Khandi, Mark Anthony, Me The Drag Queen, Miss Terri Boxx, Oedipussi Rex, Ruby Wednesday, Sister Sister, TeTe Bang, and Wet Mess.