& Friends Gallery

Krista G Profitt - Drama Club

Drop the lights. Cue the music. The show is about to begin. 

Entering the ring are our fighters, created, costumed, and coached. 

The crowd boos at the villain. They cheer for the hero.  

Rippling muscles glisten under hot lights. Sweat drips from noses. 

A canary yellow feather falls from a boa onto the stage floor. 

Our champions are ready to fight.

This series of paintings explores the idea of “masculinity” and its aesthetics that often get blurred as they are represented. I have chosen to focus on wrestling, as it presents the biggest dissonance between its typical audience of young men, the hyper masculine performers, and the overlap with theater. In these paintings, I depict men in their peak physical form, showing off to an anonymous audience while wearing neon, little boots, and sitting on top of one another. Masculinity often discourages intimacy between men. It discourages touch. It discourages self-expression, and yet in wrestling, none of this is taboo. The closeness, the costumes, the color - it all goes against what men are told to be, and yet the seats in the theater are full. The Drama Club on another stage.