aza
Fashion designer, performance artist, and multidisciplinary creator Chaz Aracil, also known as AZA, creates garments that refuse to stay still. A blouse becomes a skirt, a veil becomes armor, fabric becomes ritual. Their work exists somewhere between fashion, performance, movement, and transformation, drawing from marine biology, club culture, family, and the ever-changing landscape of gender identity.
In this conversation, Chaz reflects on growing up between Texas and Rhode Island, finding liberation in Berlin's queer nightlife, the spiritual role of dance, and how AZA has become both a creative practice and a living embodiment of metamorphosis.
Where does “AZA” come from?
The letter "A" as a beginning, "Z" a temporary ending, and back to "A" a new beginning. AZA is the connection.
Can you speak about your work?
All the ingredients that make the recipe for me are reflected in my work - a two way mirror between me and my creations. Recently, blossoming, working with different elements , Chaz Aracil is the mad scientist, designer, the creator and the creation, Aza is the muse, which reflects my transness and journey. I am what I am, I am my own special creation. Aza is my own special creation. I am nurturing and watering that garden of Aza.
Transformation, movement, dance, are big elements in my fashion designs and how they transform. The process is very ritualistic. From being a blouse, to a skirt, or a headscarf, the ability to change and evolve, and metamorphosize.
I'VE ALWAYS SEEN MYSELF AS SOMETHING FLUID. I SEE GENDER AS WATER, SOMETHING THAT CAN CHANGE SHAPE AND MOVE FREELY. IT'S ABOUT EMBODYNG THIS SHAPE SHIFTING MENTALITY.
What is your relation to identity, sexuality and gender?
Gender and sexuality is a huge thing I am embracing right now, I’ve always felt intersex, I’ve never identified as a boy, I’ve seen myself as something fluid. I see gender as water, something that can change shape and move freely. It’s about embodying this shape shifting mentality. It’s present in nature - it's ironic I am in Texas, such an anti0trans place, I was born here, grew up in RI, lived in Berlin, and now I am back here. Actually, maybe it’s more that it’s aligned with where I am at in life than ironic, that I am back here. There is this energy that I am embodying and nurturing that is creating this Aza. Not creating a binary between Aza and Chaz, but one unity - like a garden of flowers, not the individual flowers, but all the flowers as one embodiment. Everything is intersecting. Very mariposa, it means something special and specific to this sense of metamorphosis. This new collection I am creating, my gender Identity, and blossoming. Its more than a girly energy, it’s this phoenix energy.
My family. The women in my family have always inspired me across the board. We all have a deep relationship to material (turquoise), there is this mother energy with my tías and mom. Music, dance, film, have also been large influences in my life. My Lita (grandma) and her garden are big inspirations. She has some magic abuela moments in her garden. Club culture is another impactful influence, such as my experience in Berlin.
Who or what are your biggest influences?
It changed my perception of gender, identity, community, and even clothes. Prior, my designs were modest - high waisted trousers and long dresses. After Berlin, where club culture is part of the day-to-day and I’d be gogo dancing for 15 hours, my pieces began to evolve. Clothes become sacred charms in a big way for me, like an armor of protection. I remember wearing a red scarf in Berghain, and I wore it as a veil, it was this sense of feeling safe in my own body and surrounded by different energies, and as I became more tranquil on the dance floor, I could transform the veil into a skirt or tie it around my waist, I could move with it and it moved with me, it was a part of me.
Reflection, two way mirrors - art becomes real life, and life becomes art, and they have a conversation between each other. Berlin helped me embrace that conversation, this symbiosis relationship of going back and forth. It’s kind of like a matrix - the home world and the matrix, the home world, and the matrix. And being in Texas, it makes me realize I am all of it. At first, I felt like I was moving. Berlin is like an ecosystem, and gender expression is so present in club culture there. Really feels like we are fish, like angel fish, catfish, oh there’s a shark over there, oh here is a tiger fish. My crew of my friends from all over there, we were all glammed up and sometimes perform and sometimes to charge ourselves.The
I was part of a performance collective that prioritizes providing a platform for POC and trans and queer identities - House of Living Colors. Which is so powerful in Berlin, we had a range of different artists, singers, dancers, comedians, and we were literally living in color. I cherish that experience. In Berlin I was able to explore sexuality there, and the House of Living Colors was so empowering. My community of other insects and fish and flowers and angels were kind able to empower our differences , especially in a whit male masked dominated.
What did you discover about your art/performance/dance when you moved to Berlin? How do you describe the queer community there?
Can you speak about your relationship to performance and dance?
Pretty much, a movie is playing in my head right now from when I was kid and I would be performing at family events. Dancing to Janet Jackson when I was 6 at her concert. There are certain icons I hope to honor in my work, I channel their energy in my work. I also feel performance and dance allows me to shape shift and channel different energies from animals or icons. And it can be multiple in one performance. It's all very ritualistics, with music and the fabric moving and touching the body. It increases my awareness, it is a very sensory experiences, it’s like this lack of senses, but another sense being heighted, and the fabric allows me to see. And allows me to channel my higher self , my Aza self. Channeling and summoning those higher powers. Music , dance, performance are all spiritual and very healing. I’d have moments where I would cry. I would get anxious about losing friends on the dance floor, but then realized, maybe this is a moment for me to be alone. This was my therapy, I couldn’t afford it, and this was my therapy. I had this super processing moment, and through dance and movement, almost like miming in a way, and allowed my body to do what it wanted to without having any restrictions. In that moment, I remember being right next to the DJ and started to cry, the strobe, the fabrics. Weights were being lifted off of me. Dance has always helped me process, I am the most free when I dance and move. Fabric is the cocoon, the wings, this shape shifting element.
You’ve collaborated with a range of artists, what do you like most about collaborating with others?
One of my favorite things to collaborate with others is like we are seeing the same movie. Like being at a drive in and we are seeing the same film, but from different perspectives with different backgrounds. Different eyes. Seeing the picture projected in front of you, relating that back to yourself then trying to understand the relation the person next to you has to the same idea. From there we can expand and transform our own interpersonal ideas and concepts and belief systems.
What’s one thing you wish you could tell your younger self?
I’m getting emotional thinking about it… but it would be to keep your honey pot sweet, which is what my mom told me last night, to believe in yourself, to not be hard on yourself. My mom said, it all starts with the heart, meaning to be kind to yourself… I always want to make others feel good instead of focussing on my own well being. But I should be that friend that I want to be to others for myself first. And also to let my past self know that those things that made me feel alien or like an outcast are actually my powers.
to contact Chaz:
