Kalup Linzy is a multi-faceted performance artist based in Brooklyn with roots in rural central Florida and Southern black culture. His videos and most recent Melody Set Me Free episodes have touched on stereotypes of race, gender, sexuality, satirized soap opera and telenovela kitsch. The artist serves as writer, director, cinematographer, editor, and actor—and, in a distinctive strategy, also voices and overdubs the dialogue of multiple characters. At once comic, raunchy and poignant, Linzy’s unique narrative videos fuse dramatic intensity with melodramatic irony. Linzy has been the recipient of numerous awards including grants from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Creative Capital Foundation, Jerome Foundation, and Art Matters. His work is in the permanent collections at The Studio Museum in Harlem, Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Modern Art.