Arlene Textaqueen

Arlene TextaQueen (born 1975) is an Australian artist. They primarily work on paper with felt-tip marker pens commonly referred to as textas in Australia. They received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Western Australia (Perth) in 1995 and a Certificate in Interactive Multimedia from Metro Screen (Sydney) in 1998. TextaQueen lives in New York City and Carlton, Victoria, and as of December 2018 works on Boon wurrung and Wurundjeri country.

TextaQueen exhibited TextaNudes, undressed portraits of women, queer, and trans performers, to positive reviews at Sullivan and Strumpf Fine Art in Sydney in March 2011. Elizabeth Robinson of ArtWrite notes that TextaQueen "has found a way to take the texta out of kindergarten and into contemporary fine art". Their work also appears in the National Gallery of Australia.

TextaQueen's 2014 show Coconut Legacy "used tigers, coconuts and Allen's chocolate chico babies to map the conflict between white supremacy and their Goan-Indian heritage". Their survey exhibition "Between You and Me" was on display at Benalla Art Gallery and Tweed Regional Gallery in 2017 and 2018.

As of December 2017 TextaQueen was "creating a series of works about diversity, tokenism, and the experiences of ‘minority artists’ in the institutional arts complex". They also hold drawing workshops for children and adults.

They had a creative fellowship at the State Library of Victoria in which they drew on their own lived experiences, interviewed artists, and used the Library's political posters collection to produce a poster series addressing contemporary experiences of culturally diverse and otherwise marginalised artists.

Their work has been highlighted in She Persists: Perspectives on Women in Art & Design published by the National Gallery of Victoria.