Queer opulence, Japanese diaspora and gender fluid sculpture. Join Chanel Matsunami Govreau for a presentation of her work at East Window as part of Performance Art Week, with guest Teague McDaniel.
Chanel Matsunami Govreau (they/she) is a multidisciplinary artist working across soft sculpture, textile installation, and performance. Their practice fuses fantasy with queer opulence to create speculative rituals that explore harm reduction, bodily endurance, and gender fluidity. Chanel’s textile work, screen-printed, sewn, and sculpted into installations and modular wearables, draws from Japanese folklore, video game imagery, and cartoon armor. As a lecturer and facilitator, they’ve presented workshops on interracial solidarity, queer Asian diasporic experience, and folkloric fantasy. They’ve worked with arts organizations such as the Black School, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, and The House of Ninja. They have given artist talks and workshops at universities and colleges including Duke University, Durham NC; Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, MA; Courtauld Institute of Art, London, UK; and Parsons School of Design, New York, NY. They are also the co-founder of Unblended, a workshop and photo-interview series about intersectional solidarity in Black and Asian friendships. In 2022, they were an inaugural recipient of the Bandung Residency for Black and Asian Solidarity and has since served as a mentor for this program. Chanel has exhibited at the Untitled Art, Miami, FL; Lichtundfire, New York, NY; La Mama Galleria, New York, NY; Pace University Art Gallery, New York, NY; Pao Arts Center, Boston, MA; Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience, Seattle, WA; SOMArts Cultural Center, San Francisco, CA; FiveMyles, Brooklyn, NY; Chashama, New York, NY; FLXST Gallery, Chicago, IL; and Holding House, Detroit, MI. Their work has appeared in publications such as the New York Times, Bitch Magazine, the Amp, Observer, and Juxtapoz. Matsunami Govreau received their BFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison where they studied performance, printmaking and Asian American Studies.
https://www.chanelmatsunami.art/
Teague McDaniel (they/them) is the founder of CII, a practicing artist, and professor at a local university in Denver, Colorado.
“In my work, I provide space to collectively envision a post-gender binary society through artwork. As a whole, my practice sits at the intersection of social practice, installation, printmaking, and sculpture. I am a genderfulid trans person and my art allows me to cathartically deconstruct social gender dysphoria. I invite you to engage in a curious dialogue and somatic reconing around the potential for freedom past the binary along with me.”
—Teague McDaniel
Photographs © 2026 East Window