Across media, including sculpture, painting, performance, film, and fashion, Keith Lafuente builds colorful worlds that feature characters navigating desire, power, and belonging via adornment and embodiment.
Keith plays with Filipino-ness like a fabric that can be cut, sewn, unpicked, and reworked, pulling apart threads of idealized nostalgia for the past, domination by colonial regimes, and culturally ingrained values of service and adaptation. With a camp sensibility, Keith weaves in his own queer, diasporic experiences from growing up in the United States–critically reimagining both Filipino-ness and Americanness.
Keith is a current artist in residence at SoMad. His short film Binibining Iniibig premiered in 2024. His work has been included in exhibitions at, among others, Jack Hanley Gallery, New York; New Release, New York; Pracownia Portretu, Poland; PULLPROOF, Pittsburgh; and the Institute of Contemporary Art, San José, California. His designs and drag have been featured in publications including The Cut, Cultured, Harper’s Bazaar Hong Kong, and Gayletter. Keith holds a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University.
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