Eloina always knew she wanted to be on stage as herself, rather than perform in a play that “some old white dude wrote a million years ago”. A queer performance artist known solely by her first name, she has made shows about menstruation, body hair and female ejaculation since graduating in 2018 and is quite often undressed on stage. The nakedness is always for a reason, she stresses. “It is about decensoring the body for myself,” she says. “At the same time, it’s to liberate others in their own bodies.”
She began by performing in underground spaces – the kind of weird and wonderful cabaret nights that switch from burlesque to drag “to a video piece about birthing – and then someone emerges wearing a pig’s head,” she says playfully.
