The Shmutzik Shmates

The Shmutzik Shmates are a queer, Yiddish burlesque troupe made up of Brenda Roses (Yael Horowitz), Bikher Dik (Etai Rogers-Fett), and Kasha Varnishkes (Scotty Brown). The Shmates have from the start understood their work as a socially engaged practice of worldbuilding, or imagining Olam Ha-Ba, the world to come. Their collective was born out of benkshaft (longing) to explore the intersection of their eroticism, gender/sexuality and ancestry, both its beauty and its unhealed trauma. They longed to create space where their queer, trans, diasporic selves could also be Yiddish and spiritual and carry on their people’s legacies. We found each other through DC activist spaces for Palestine solidarity and a shared belief that powerfully tapping into our own Ashkenazic lineage as queer and trans Jewish artists could energize, fund, and ground some of our organizing work for collective liberation. Each of our three collective members brings a unique background in socially engaged artistic practice to this work: in archival curation, poetry, printmaking, facilitation, and immersive art experiences.

Bio courtesy of the artist.