Titled Homecoming Queen, it unspools Utica’s story through a painstaking curation of outfits that Mundt, now 26, crafted after leaving home-an odyssey that tested his technical prowess at Hamline University and sharpened his performance chops at Minneapolis venues like Union and Lush. Utica’s breakout moment on “RuPaul’s Drag Race” came in the form of her “Sleeping Bag” gown Running until April 3, the show takes place at the Rochester Art Center, roughly 30 miles west of the town of Utica. 4, he launches a 4,000-square-foot exhibit of 20 garments.
“I wanted to pay homage to all of the love and the spirits that I got from my little small town,” he tells me by phone. Seven months since the season finale, wherein Utica came in sixth out of 13, Mundt is now making a case for the creative fecundity of one’s provenance. (And, critical to fans of the show, she could actually sew.) At times cartoonish, at times statuesque, Utica had either emerged from a Renaissance fresco or popped out of a panel in the Sunday funnies-or both. Her breakout moment arrived in a sleeping bag that she tailored to fan out in breathtaking Björk-ery. For the many hundreds of thousands of viewers this past winter, Utica gave Drag Race a kaleidoscopic twist as the season’s most fantastical “look queen.” She held her own alongside the season’s other two aesthetic titans, both from Los Angeles (a polished club-kid punk and a Vogue-ready catwalk storyteller). Tall and lanky, Utica was proudly kooky, a self-described “wacky waving inflatable-arm tube queen.” “Cowgirl”īut any “aw, shucks” narrative would prove misleading.
In a promotional clip that aired before the show’s debut, Utica talked about her “hometowniness” and her “lovely farm goobers” (cows, chickens, cats). (Note: While using “she/her” pronouns in drag, Mundt uses “he/him” out of drag.) Mundt even took his drag persona’s name from this offshoot of a place between Rochester and Winona: Utica, Minn., whose population numbers fewer than 300. Utica Queen, then 25, regularly performed in Minneapolis, but Utica’s creator-the maestro behind the makeup, Ethan Mundt-had grown up on a farm about two hours southeast.
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