Vetor Entrevista: Ivana Wonder

— the melancholic ‘wonder’ of Brazilian drag. Getting ready to release their first solo music project, Ivana Wonder embraces melancholia and their alternative power, in her tenth year as a drag queen

Text and interview by Pedro Paulo Furlan

Photography by Lucas Cobucci

São Paulo, 2PM. Ivana Wonder, Victor Ivanon’s drag name, started doing drag in 2015, and, since then, built up a reputation as one of the most known drag queens, singers and visual artists in the underground scene. To start 2025, I sat down with Ivana at the end of January, looking to understand everything, from their persona’s creation, to their newest project: their first solo EP of self-written music.

“I think she’s always existed, in my mind, somewhere”.

Born, officially, 10 years ago, while Victor was a design major, Ivana Wonder, for themselves, was something completely innate. When I ask them about the moment when this persona was created, the artist’s first reflex is to point out: “I think she’s always existed, in my mind, somewhere”.

After a very creative childhood and a lot of talent for visual arts, Ivana went to São Paulo for university - at first, as an engineering major - and that’s when they began to have a connection to the night scene, and, of course, to the art of drag. After watching many shows all throughout São Paulo, Ivana decided to get in drag and create their own persona.

Photography by Lucas Cobucci

Made up in feminine makeup and a long haired wig, Ivana’s first time wasn’t something traditional - and it was a career shifting moment. “I started to get in drag and I started crying”, they tell: “I didn’t want to look like a woman, it was never about that for me, I wanted to be weird”.

“In the end, I painted myself blue and went out”. This unique perspective and their special eye for the alternative aesthetic, inspired by people like the clubkids, Leigh Bowery, Divine, and even Brazilian names like Danny Cowlt, is something that follows Ivana to this day.

With an encyclopedia of visual and performance inspirations, Ivana Wonder built up their drag persona - but it took some time for them to understand that they also wanted to be a musical artist. Equipped with electronic music references, from years in São Paulo’s clubber scene, and a love for melancholic 50s music, the drag queen developed a sound that is completely and undeniably their own.

“You will all stop and watch, this moment is now ours”.

After releasing “Melancholic Blue”, in the end of last year, the artist is prepping for their first solo project, after quite a few EPs with their duo, Vermelho Wonder. Sinking into an immersive and melancholic musicality, Ivana tells me that their new tracks will transport the listener into a universe of their own: “You will all stop and watch, this moment is now ours”.

Photography by Isadora Arruda

THE WONDER-FUL MUSIC

As many in Brazil, Ivana found their passion for music in church, where they spent their teen and young adult years, singing: “The youngest soloist in church, so beautiful, catholicism’s hope”, she jokes. Even with all those years of music, the artist had never thought of making music their living.

In college, Ivana Wonder got in, first, engineering, following their parents' advice, and even when they decided to quit and go down another life path, the drag queen decided to study design, never music.

“Music always happens, at any time, it’s inevitable for me”.

Through all this, their passion never abandoned them, and, as soon as they got into college, they started a band with their classmates, singing “as a boy”. “Music always happens, at any time”, the artist points out when I ask them how they kept their connection to music even while studying something else and being out of church: “It’s inevitable for me”.

It was their friends that recommended they get up in drag to sing, and that’s how Ivana was convinced to get in drag and perform at FAU, college of architecture and urbanism of USP (University of São Paulo). “I got drunk, got in drag in the university’s bathroom, and we did a whole show”, they tell me: “It felt like lightning went through me, it was electrifying, never had felt that in my life”.

That performance defined the start of their career as a singing drag queen, in 2015. After that, Ivana went by, little by little, enchanting producers and event organizers, getting more and more performances as a singer and, in that way, making their solid mark as a defining persona of São Paulo’s night scene.

And that was when, besides everything else, Ivana was invited to be a part of Vermelho Wonder, their duo with producer Márcio Vermelho, in 2016. It was in the duo that they wrote their first original lyrics.

Photography by Gabriela Schmidt

“I had never stopped to write a song, I had always sung, been a singer. When me and Márcio met up for the first time, no one knew what we should really do, he left me in the living room of his apartment alone, said it was to make me more comfortable, and I stayed there with the track playing in loop - and there was where I started writing”, they tell.

With songs rooted in electronic music, a very different sound from their solo music, Vermelho Wonder took up more and more space in the scene. Ivana remembers one of the duo’s performance at ODD, one of São Paulo’s more traditional parties, at 11AM - “an awful hour” - and they tell me that the audience, even then, was enchanted by what the two were creating, entering into a trance with them.

Photography by Gabriela Schmidt

Besides their presence in electronic music, Ivana was always in love with the melancholia and drama of 50s Brazilian music, “I’ve always loved to listen to those songs with my grandmas, to listen to the older singers, I’ve always been dramatic and melancholic”. And when, in 2018, they were invited to work in a solo project, it was this path that they decided to follow - releasing a cover of “De Cigarro em Cigarro”, originally sung by Nora Ney and released in 1953.

“It never lets me stay in my comfort zone, I’m always moving”.

Embracing both projects, Ivana found themselves in this double music career, showing two sides of their personality, and a wide range in their abilities as a performer and artist, as they themselves say: “It never lets me stay in my comfort zone, I’m always moving”.

THE WONDER-FUL FUTURE

With Covid-19, Ivana turned to writing and learning more about creating music, learning to write melodies and to play the piano. But, with the financial impact of being an artist during the pandemic, they were forced to pause their career during a couple of years - which led to their second release coming six years after their debut with “De Cigarro em Cigarro”.

Ivana Wonder came back, as a solo artist, with their biggest hit so far “Melancholic Blue”, in 2024, but they tell me that this track almost didn’t come out. According to them, it was their husband that convinced them that this song should be their comeback.

Photography by Isadora Arruda

After some financial hardships, the drag queen, living in Argentina, was almost giving up on their career as a musical artist, but, a friend donated them some money “so I never give up on my dreams” - and that was the moment when “Lucas, my husband, said: ‘You’re gonna get this money and release ‘Melancholic Blue’’”. 

“I knew it was my time to bet, and I bet all I had on this”.

Accepting the challenge, Ivana reworked the song with producer Fabio Pinczowski and wrote a whole new version in Portuguese. “I knew it was my time to bet, and I bet all I had on this”, she says, and it really worked out - after a couple of months, the track went viral on TikTok, resulting in over 500 thousand streams.

This success couldn’t come at a better time, as the artist is now getting ready to release their debut EP, that will come with four more tracks besides “Melancholic Blue”. “It must come out at the end of the first semester, so I don’t lose my TikTok fans, that are crazy for new songs”, they joke.

“I feel like melancholia is coming back, do you feel that too?”.

Photography by Isadora Arruda

“I feel like people want to hear more sad music”, Ivana Wonder explains when I ask them the inspiration behind their first EP. Telling me that they’ve been receiving a lot of comments from people that identify with “Melancholic Blue”’s lyrics, the artist points out the importance that this feeling has for her: “I feel like melancholia is coming back, do you feel that too? We all get sad, melancholic, angry, so singing about stuff like that makes a lot of sense to me”.

This community feeling that Ivana feels surrounds their music is something really important to them, that recognizes the same sensation in their birthing place as an artist: the underground. Pointing out that there was “where people have embraced me, welcomed me, and been available to hear what I wanna say”, the drag queen tells me that this opening and availability is what they look in people that listen to their music.

Telling me about an experience they had with Vermelho Wonder (that’s also producing their first album!) out of the underground scene, the artist says that the whole audience turned their backs on the duo and left, going to another stage as soon as they came in, which only highlighted the differences: “They didn’t even give me the kindness of seeing what I can do”.

Understanding themselves as an alternative artist, the drag queen sees the underground as their birthing place, but they keep their eyes in bigger and bigger audiences, devoting themselves to expanding the pallet of those that meet them and proving, once and for all, the importance of “embracing the weirdos”.