Never in the history of RuPaul’s Drag Race have I seen a contestant use drag to showcase culture, fashion, and art the way Nymphia Wind does. 

Watch as the Taiwanese American drag queen uses the runway to highlight Japanese Butoh (the category was “Dancing Queens”). 

“Butoh to me is about revealing death, finding beauty in dying, thats why I chose to use real dead flowers and cut up/burned up lace to hang off the body,” the Season 16 contestant said. “As an Asian drag queen, I’m just really honored to be able to bring a different side of Asian culture on to the main stage.”

Butoh arose in the late 1950s and was pioneered by Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno. Butoh was a direct rejection of Western dance (classical ballet and modern dance) which had also begun to influence Japanese dance after World War II. Butoh explored taboo topics and themes like death, disease, mental illness, and homosexuality.   

Below, Nymphia Wind shares her creative process behind this iconic look.