Words and Interview by Alexander Cheves
As I chat with Berlin-based artist Hungry, they resist, at every turn, being labelled one thing. Hungry contains multitudes. On 6 February, Hungry will perform at PUDDINGS, a new, queer house and techno party series in Berlin, at club Fitzroy. There, you’ll see Hungry’s “distorted drag” in the flesh.
Equally comfortable with their day name, Johannes Jaruraak, Hungry hails from southern Germany and now lives in Berlin, but their work takes them all over the world.
Hungry’s creative output combines many skills: makeup and costuming, photography, modelling, tailoring, burlesque, and dance. A frequent collaborator with the iconic singer Björk, Hungry became globally famous when they did Björk’s makeup for the Utopia album and worked on Cornucopia, Björk’s experimental five-year concert series.
Describing the day they got a message from Björk’s representative via Instagram, Hungry says it felt “extremely validating” after years of honing their craft at the margins of the queer art and music scenes.
Working with Björk made me feel appreciated for all the weird shit I do. A lot of the time, I’m just met with confusion. People don’t get it.
Collaborating with Björk took Hungry on a global music tour. They did Björk’s makeup for every performance. “It was a beautiful, creative hub to be in.”
Hungry has also done makeup for fashion editorials, including shoots for Vogue Italia, and was featured in a 2023 beauty editorial for Vogue Singapore.
Before we get into it, I ask about pronouns. For many drag artists, their drag persona is she/her even though they are cisgender in real life. But with Hungry/Johannes, I learn the boundary is less clear—Johannes is Hungry, Hungry is Johannes—and Hungry is a creature that exists beyond gender, so we go with they/them.
Let’s talk about your incredible makeup looks.
Hungry suspects many fans see them as just a makeup artist, and they understand why—because of Instagram.
“Instagram is documentation,” they tell me. “In the beginning, it was just a tool to show my work. Faces travel better on social media.”
Though Hungry became Insta-famous for their intricate, alien-looking, symmetrical face makeup, “My biggest passion is costuming,” they tell me.
Most of my work goes into the clothes. Makeup was always just a last-minute accessory.
Hungry doesn’t really see their career as content creation, drag, or even performance—it’s meticulous studio labour creating costumes. Hungry studied fashion design at Berlin’s Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft, then pursued a master’s degree in costume design at the Universität der Künste Berlin. Now, alongside regular drag performance gigs, they design costumes for theatre productions at Berlin’s Volksbühne—they’re currently working on an upcoming production, Warten auf Bardot, directed by fellow drag artist Meo Wulf.
What is something you think followers don’t know about you?
“I handmake almost everything,” Hungry says. “All the looks you see on Instagram are made by me. I’m in the studio every day.”
Hungry loves to work—they might even be a workaholic, they admit. When I ask if they’re a perfectionist, they answer quickly: “Yes, I am.”
“If I had a break, I’d just work on costumes,” Hungry tells me. “I like living in the looks while working on the looks.”
Hungry describes their ideal existence as a lifestyle of extreme beauty, in the spirit of artists like Faecal Matter and Juno Birch—creators whose craft is a kind of living performance art.
With such a life, Hungry is “bad at holidays.” On vacations, they say, “Why waste time not making something? I’d rather just be productive.”
It’s rare to be a working artist. Do you feel lucky?
“I’m so lucky!” Hungry says, smiling. “I’m grateful to do what I do at the pace I like to do it. That’s a luxury few artists have.”
But there is a downside:
As a working artist, there’s no security. It’s gig work. There are times when it’s dry, and when that happens, my body finally lets itself shut down. I take a lot of naps.
What is Hungry to you?
Over the course of our talk, I learn that “Hungry,” the entity, the role, the beast, is not a brand or even really a persona—it’s a craft.
“I do drag just to model my work,” Hungry says. “In fashion school, I started modelling for my classmates and for myself, just to see how my work looked when it was worn. That’s how it all started.”
In time—after internships with major fashion labels—Hungry gained deeper insight into the fashion industry, which came with some hard-earned scepticism about it.
“I don’t believe fashion design is a future anyone should aspire to,” Hungry admits.
At some point, I realised that fashion just repeats the same hot shit we already have. The stuff that makes real money in this industry plays it very safe. True innovation is not commercially viable.
So where does true artistic creation happen? “I believe creation can’t happen in commercial products anymore,” Hungry says. “True creation now only happens in storytelling.”
In your work, what does “perfection” mean?
Perfection means a look, a costume, must weather intense, up-close scrutiny—primarily from Hungry themselves, then from the client.
“In my mind, all pieces must be suitable for museum display. For all costuming, I ask myself if it’s exhibition-ready. If it can be studied up close, inside-out. If it is, it’s done.”
I mention that Hungry’s personal aesthetic as a drag artist seems designed around bugs and insects—there is an animalness in their aesthetic.
Hungry tells me this style journey started in London, where they lived briefly in 2015 and 2016.
What happened in London?
During their fashion bachelor’s degree, Hungry did an internship in London with designer Aitor Throup, who at the time was the lead designer for G-Star. Following that, they interned for three months at the London offices of Vivienne Westwood.
But the personal drag aesthetic began with Sink the Pink, a U.K.-based LGBTQ+ collective, which took Hungry “under their wing.”
“They became my London drag family,” Hungry says. Through Sink the Pink, Hungry started performing in London drag shows and theatrical productions and got a steady Wednesday night gig at The Box, a long-running Soho cabaret nightclub known for its burlesque shows and performances.
“They just wanted me to look crazy,” Hungry says. That was the brief. “There wasn’t a direct prompt,” Hungry says. “They just said I have to look outrageous.”
What did you do at The Box?
“It was like go-go dancing, but not quite.”
At this time, Hungry started posting their looks seriously on Instagram.
“I literally brought a tripod and camera backstage with me on nights that I worked. I wanted to showcase the looks I did in drag, and Instagram was a way to document my nights out.”
Instagram allowed nightlife—a brief, blurry experience often uncaptured (many clubs, after all, strictly enforce a no-phones or no-photography rule)—to last past the night.
“On Instagram, my nightlife self could last a little longer.”
Did you try more traditional makeup looks first?
Not really, Hungry says.
There was no point in trying to be a pretty girl because there are so many pretty girls in London. So I became a monster.
Hungry tells me that early club kid aesthetics were an inspirational blueprint. In London at the time, the club kid aesthetic still felt very alive—and the looks were improvised, playful, and wild.
After the internship, Hungry moved back to Berlin. Though London was brief, it changed everything.
London was transformative, but that’s also the age I was. It was a coming-of-age time, and at that age, everything changes your life.
How did the return to Berlin feel?
Berlin always felt like home, and after school and their adventure in London, Berlin was where it all came together.
“I had more space to ask myself what I would do with all this energy,” Hungry says. “And the first time I went out in Berlin was probably the first time I actually put Hungry together in a way that is similar to what it is now.”
Returning to Berlin, Hungry completed their master’s degree and started working full-time. That’s when they started seriously exploring the city’s nightlife. “I went hard,” they say.
The pattern was: pregame, drugs, club, more drugs, and then the afterparty.
I honestly don’t remember much from that time. It was a lot of drugs. I remember the comedowns and sitting in a train station freezing because I was in a slutty club look.
After some years, it became too much: “At some point, I realised this is not good for me physically. I was thinner than I am now. I was a frail little human being.”
They had many friends, but after they stopped clubbing so much, they realised most of the friends were just club connections. “The social connections were not really social,” Hungry says. “They were fleeting and limited.”
As Hungry settled into a more professional, grown-up life—and got steady work, steady gigs—they grew more selective with their people, and a smaller, closer friend circle emerged, and these bonds lasted. They still keep this warm friend circle. “Life got cuter for sure.”
Travelling for work helped, too. Hungry tells me they move around for work a lot, enough to maintain friendships with people across the world. “With some of my favourite people, I only get to see them every couple of years.”
Hungry loves this travel-based career—partly because it helps them appreciate Berlin for what it gives.
Social media was key to your success. How do you feel about it now?
“I got lucky,” Hungry says. “Instagram was easily understandable then. It had one use and one function—it was clear what you had to do to be seen.” It even felt calculable: “I knew if I posted something, I would gain this much traction, this many followers.”
Then it changed. “As soon as Zuckerberg came into Instagram, it tried to be too many different platforms.” Now it feels like a mess: “It’s a messaging platform and video platform. All creatives are having to reconfigure their social media.” Hungry feels lucky they built their professional connections before “shit on Instagram hit the fan.”
What’s your relationship to Berlin like now?
At one point, the city’s nightlife started feeling stale.
For a few years, Berlin just seemed like a hard techno rave scene. Forced coolness.
“You had to look very specific. You had to wear the right pants, the right tank top.” It took itself too seriously.
What it missed, Hungry felt, was authentic, queer silliness. Thankfully, Hungry feels some of that silliness is coming back, particularly with parties like Lunchbox Candy. (Sadly, just days after this interview, Lunchbox Candy announced that the legendary queer party series had ended after four years.)
Hungry and their friends still go clubbing sometimes, but “We’re the grannies now,” they joke. And going out in Berlin now involves more shows, more art galleries.
Hungry doesn’t claim to have a huge Berlin fan base—they estimate that most of their fans and followers are not in or from Berlin.
And that’s a thing about Berlin, Hungry muses—there’s no celebrity culture here. Berlin doesn’t worship its creatives, even when they’re well known elsewhere.
In Berlin, I’m nobody. This city is just family.
How does a Hungry look start?
“Often it’s a material I find,” Hungry says. “Like a vintage dress I discover in a shop and cut up.” And lately, more often than not: “It starts with the shoe.”
The walls of Hungry’s spacious, chic apartment in Berlin are covered in shelves displaying an incredible, avant-garde shoe collection, with designs that err to the extreme.
The most expensive pair are some Alexander McQueen “hoof” boots. A favourite: a Dsquared2 chunky sneaker high heel that looks like a dad sneaker, women’s high-heeled shoe, and beachy ’80s sandal, all melted together.
“It’s a design sin,” Hungry says. “I had to have it.”
The collection started with a heel-less Alexander McQueen white leather sandal, and for a long time, Hungry thought the collection would strictly be heel-less shoes—shoes with an elevated heel but no direct structure underneath, where all the weight had to be balanced on the ball of the foot.
“Many of them are not even wearable, at least not easily,” Hungry says, pointing to a knee-high, laser-printed shoe that looks like black fire—the wearable embodiment of a tribal tattoo. Hungry shows me an Instagram video from 2022 in which they shuffle along the sidewalk wearing the shoes. The look they created to match them looks like icy dragon wings and frozen tentacles.
What would you do if Hungry hadn’t worked out?
“If I wasn’t Hungry, I’d probably be a shoemaker or cobbler. I’d definitely do something with my hands.”
In the studio, Hungry juggles “two or three looks at one time.”
Is each look Hungry or its own character?
“Really, they’re characters.” Every look is Hungry in costume. Even before one is finished, Hungry gives it a “stupid” studio name.
They explain: In the studio, each “character” has a working title, and often it sticks. Right now, they’re working on a “giant red beast.” But since they’ve integrated feathers, “Now we’re calling it the chicken. And I know it will always be the chicken.”
Not every character is meant for a stage—some makeup looks, they say, can only exist for the camera.
“Sometimes I create a great makeup look and think, fuck, I can’t perform in this because it will fall apart as soon as I move my face too much.”
Their clothes equally tend to be physically restrictive.
When I perform in drag, it’s not really about movement or dancing. It’s about movement in spite of what I’m wearing.
How do you feel about drag now?
I ask if Hungry feels inspired by the current climate of drag. They’re deadpan: “No.”
Then they laugh—they know how that sounds. “What I mean is, drag is a different animal.”
“I do see drag performances that I think are well done.” But the word “drag”—the category itself—feels like it’s been stretched too thin.
There are times when I’m genuinely annoyed at seeing so much drag. Drag is everywhere. It’s mainstream.
What people picture when they hear “drag” isn’t really what Hungry does, and the problem, they say, is the label itself.
Hungry talks about a time when drag was “over here,” being a club kid was “over there,” and then there were just people who liked to dress wild, and that was something else. The mainstreaming of drag, thanks in part to shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race, resulted in a flattening, a grouping together of all these types under one ill-fitting descriptor.
Some people are just weirdoes. Now, mainstream culture calls them drag queens because people don’t have any other context for them, no box to put them in.
And, of course, capitalism plays its part.
“If drag can be commercially viable or result in global fame, everyone wants to be in on that label,” they tell me. Drag started “engulfing” things that, in the past, wouldn’t have been called drag—in particular, club kid aesthetics.
“Club kids weren’t really doing drag,” Hungry says. “At least, not as a rule. They were creating characters. Wearable performances.”
Do you think drag is art?
“I’m not sure,” Hungry admits. “A lot of drag is not disruptive. So what makes it art?”
I ask if Hungry is disruptive. “If I am, it’s incidental. In the beginning, I didn’t create to disrupt, but as my work got an audience, some reactions made me realise I was challenging norms.”
At the end of the day, I just want to make my fantasy world. My work feels like art, but not always like drag. It’s about figuring out what my body can be within the restrictive boundaries of what I create.
Outside work—in the world—what fires your passion?
“Oh, it’s all so hopeless!” they say with a laugh, a twinge of frustration and sadness in their voice.
But if they had to broadcast a message—something worth repeating even if it sounds trite, overdone—it would be one of self-love, self-trust.
With everything going on in the world, I guess that ‘be yourself’ bullshit needs to be pushed again, because it’s still the most radical thing you can do. It’s still how you break the system.
Hungry’s practical advice for young creators is not about branding or networking—it’s physical.
“Make something with your hands,” Hungry says—something physical and tactile, that exists in the real world, even if it’s not your primary art. “Humans should make things.”
Take it back to the caveman brain, where you draw on the walls or make figurines. Make the thing. Bring it into existence.
Acknowledging that all creators still must learn sales and business—the money side of the job—they say an artist should never forget what art “should” be in an ideal world: creating purely for the joy of creation, not just to be “part of the machine.”
If I lived in a community of ten people, a little hunter-gatherer village, and they just let me carve my little sculptures and everyone liked them, I’d be much happier than this global tech world we live in now.
Does art still matter?
Teetering a little into philosophy, we discuss the ultimate artist’s dilemma—the real tension between nihilism and creation. If nothing matters, why make anything? Art is, in its way, a wager on meaning—making it requires some belief that it matters. Creating something new is the opposite of giving up on the world.
“I don’t know where I fall on the ‘nothing matters’ thing. I’ve either never believed it, or I always have.” Hungry shrugs. “I’m okay with art being pointless.”
Maybe art is pointless. That’s okay. That’s beautiful. I’m trying to keep alive the necessity of making pointless, stupid art.
Follow Hungry on Instagram and catch their next performance in Berlin at PUDDINGS on 6 February.
Words and interview: Alexander Cheves
Images: All photos by Mara Menzel except where otherwise noted
