Meet Krisa Gonna (Kris Barz Mendonça) | multimedia artist, drag queen & dance instructor

We had the good fortune of connecting with Krisa Gonna (Kris Barz Mendonça) and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Krisa, why did you pursue a creative career?
I had a need to express myself with drawing or dancing since very little, but my devotion to art came into my life as a side effect of bullying and being isolated/ostracized by other kids for being queer. It forced me to spend time with myself as a child and as a teenager, exploring the endless possibilities and freedoms in writing and drawing that I could not explore in the “real wold”. I grew up drawing endless hours every single day as I created and wrote stories, characters, poems. I was the kid who could draw, which eventually became one of the ways I sought validation as a child. Dance was repressed because I danced “too feminine” and in Brazil, where I’m originally from, homophobia and machismo were still very much present everywhere.

I wanted to draw clothes or do theater but in Brazil I couldn’t see a financially safe future for myself in those because my family was not rich so I chose something that was still artistic but seemed a bit safer: I graduated in Graphic Design in 2006 and started working professionally as a designer and mostly an illustrator but acting and dancing were still bubbling under my skin. As a hobby, I took samba de gafieira classes and tried some other Brazilian rhythms and then I remembered how natural dance was to my body and my soul.
My work with illustration and writing evolved to creating and writing comics, something that along with animation, I was always passionate about. In 2015, still living in Brazil, I started creating online comics with LGBTQ characters and those went viral, becoming a book the next year, the same year that I initiated the process of moving to the US. Here, I started translating them to English and creating new stories in both languages, which led me to work with The Matthew Shepard Foundation in 2017. With my work in comics and LGBTQ representation, I started to travel the US to go to ComicCons to sell my comics and give talks about the subject.

Dance came back strong to me here in the US. Missing my culture and music from Brazil, I started to rent a space for myself to dance to Brazilian music, practice and create choreography. A friend joined me and they brought a friend, who brought a friend and when I realized, by the end of 2017 I was teaching a dance class with Brazilian rhythms.
The big Halloween culture in the US allowed me to start exploring cosplay, costumes and eventually, makeup, which led me to start doing drag, In early 2019, I was going to ComicCons in drag/cosplay and by the fall that same year, I started to perform as my drag persona, Krisa Gonna. Early 2020, I gave a Ted Talk in drag tackling all things related to art, queerness, comics, homophobia, mental health and toxic masculinity, also using my work as an illustrator to support my talk with visual aids. The pandemic held my performances back for 2 years but in the meantime, I started creating online content for Youtube, Tiktok and Instagram, which was a great way to practice drag make up every single week and develop my stage drag persona in front of the cameras. By late 2021, I was back at performing and the difference was clear. In late 2021, the Ted Talk I had given a year before became an animated short I created in partnership with Brazilian animation studio Hilda Motion and the short is currently going around the world in movie festivals.

Drag and my performances embodied everything that I wanted to have done earlier in my life and everything I wanted to do from then on. It is underground, it’s inquisitive, it’s beautiful, it’s freeing and it makes people question and think, some because it makes them uncomfortable. The makeup part is like drawing a character on my face, the outfits were the fashion I was always ashamed of saying it was something I liked, I design all the marketing stuff and do all the image treatment for my social media, along with all the video editing so my graphic design background comes in very handy. My shows are heavily supported by storytelling and acting. My dance and my Brazilian background come in as something different and original for a drag queen in the US and my performances are trilingual (Portuguese, Spanish and English) and being on stage to perform for an audience is something I always wanted. Planning and executing a show is such a fun and rewarding process, especially when you can see people’s reaction.
So I see the pursuing of my artistic career as something that developed and evolved in many steps and, at the same time, very naturally. Expression and sharing stories, no matter how you do it, is the base for human connection so I don’t really have an answer to why I chose this path, but instead, why wouldn’t I? The world needs (almost) all sorts of professions, but everyone needs art, not only to observe, appreciate and keep us sane, but to keep us developing parts of our humanity that get lost in so many of us once we depart from childhood.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I overcame bullying, homophobia and machismo by creating my own world as a child. It was a lonely process and my family was also not supportive and understanding of my queerness, but I just kept telling myself that one day things would be better. I learned that things will happen when they have to and they happen when you’re ready for them. My artist journey culminating in drag makes so much sense to me now and I can apply everything else that I can do well in it and those other areas enrich my drag in ways that would not be present in Krisa Gonna’s artistry if I hadn’t done comics, graphic design, illustration and dance before. Being a Brazilian in the US who also has the privilege to travel to other countries also adds a lot of layers to my trilingual performances in Portuguese, English and Spanish.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
In Denver I love Ophelia’s, a visit to the Denver Contemporary Art Museum, some plays or musicals at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, a bike ride by the river and of course some hikes in the Rocky Mountain National Park.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
My writing teacher in high school Maria da Graça really started a spark in me to be better at writing and to be free as myself, even though she didn’t really realize the impact of her words and actions. I also need to thank all the artists that work in the business of comics and animation that kept me amazed and immersed in their worlds and for last, queer people I met throughout my life, artists or not, even before I was out, by just living their unapologetic lives, which to me is the ultimate inspiration for anyone.

Website: https://imkris.squarespace.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/krisagonna/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/KrisaGonna

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KrisaGonna

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/krisagonna

Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@krisagonna

Image Credits
stairs picture – photographer: Stevamm