The surreal artifice and hyperreality of drag artist Sgàire Wood

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Glasgow-based artist and performer Sgàire Wood has earned acclaim throughout the city for her commanding looks, legendary drag performances and signature doll-eye make-up, at nights like Ponyboy and beyond. Her work uses cosmetics, accessories and performance to create something entirely fantastical – be that towering wigs, exaggerated facial prosthetics, or glittering full-face ensembles.

Inspired by the constructed nature of identity, Wood’s exaggerated, hyperreal features push drag make-up into a realm of surreal artifice. “There’s something liberating about realising how meaningless so much of what we value is,” she explains. “I hope my work helps people deconstruct those received notions and experience a sense of transcendence.”

Here, we speak with Sgàire about her inspirations, the origins of her signature look, and her desire to have the snatched waist of a greyhound.

Can you talk us through your signature doll-eye make-up?

Sgàire Wood: A lot of my work is concerned with the layers of meaning behind everyday images and visual performances of identity, so make-up is really interesting in that respect, especially the phenomenon of using cosmetics and accessories to enhance or replace natural anatomy with something different or more desirable. 

The big features were just born from pushing glamour and drag make-up further and further from the real world into the realm of hyperreality, I guess. I was experimenting with how far my face would allow me to go towards creating an artificial simulacrum, with some loose vestigial origin in reality. I don’t feel much ownership over it as a look or a concept, but if people are inspired by what I’ve created and want to reimagine it, that’s always cool to see.

What are you trying to communicate through your work?  

Sgàire Wood: That not everything is, or has to be, the way it seems, for better or worse. Conscious deconstruction of received notions of identity or how the world works has been an eye-opening byproduct of the whole transgender experience for me, and it’s something I’m committed to now more generally.  

There is something very liberating about realising how meaningless a lot of the things we attach value to are, and I’d like it if my work could pave even a little bit of the way towards that sort of transcendence for people. 

What’s your earliest beauty-related memory?  

Sgàire Wood: I think my first encounter with a wig was pretty formative, as was stealing my mum’s makeup to give my troll dolls makeovers.

Can you tell us about your recent billboard campaign for JACK ARTS Scotland, part of BUILDHOLLYWOOD? 

Sgàire Wood: I wanted to use the opportunity to pay homage to Angelyne’s famous billboards from the 80s, using this huge public advertising format to broadcast yourself and your beauty and not really sell anything. The final images depict this Victorian pin-up, an anachronistic beauty who embodies the contradiction between artifice and ‘natural-ness.’ A lot of effort has gone into looking so effortless, and the whole set is a manufactured simulation of something organic and relaxed. The aim, I guess, was to prompt a more general inquisitiveness into the authenticity of all the constructed images we see in art and advertising by laying that conceit so bare.  

The images were shot at a PONYBOY event in Glasgow in September by my friend and photographer Spit Turner. I was really inspired by the work of the photographer Irina Ionesco, portraits of Victorian women showing off their floor-length hair, and glamour shots of women posing with taxidermy heads of tigers and leopards. 

What’s been your career highlight so far?  

Sgàire Wood: Working with Tim Walker!  

Describe your beauty aesthetic in three words.  

Sgàire Wood: Evil! Stupid! Ugly!  

Which fictional character do you most relate to and why? 

Sgàire Wood: Frankenstein’s monster. Who can’t identify with feeling rejected and vowing revenge against your creator?  

Who is your beauty icon?

Sgàire Wood: Carol Kane in The Mafu Cage. I have spent my life coveting her dark circles. 

What is your current obsession?  

Sgàire Wood: I’ve been watching and thinking a lot about New French Extremity cinema. Those films are like a really upsetting endurance task, but they’re some of my favourites. I’m fine though, don’t worry.  

What does beauty mean to you?  

Sgàire Wood: Everything. It makes life worth living.  

When do you feel most beautiful? 

Sgàire Wood: When I’m receiving compliments! 

You have to replace part of your body with that of an animal or a mythological creature. What do you go for and why? 

Sgàire Wood: The snatched waist of a greyhound. For obvious reasons.  

If you could have a new sense on top of your existing ones, what would it be? 

Sgàire Wood: Probably the ability to know when disaster is about to strike, like how cats know when storms are coming. Or to know when people fancy me.