x3butterfly
x3butterfly Building Worlds Outside The System
On a quiet Berlin street, hours after the last track has dissolved into the night, x3butterfly walks home alone. An extended mix scores the city, humming in the background, while they retreat to their world of headphones, an improvised soundtrack that mirrors the glow of streetlights on wet pavement. It’s in these in-between moments, far from the crowd and the crush of the booth, that the Mexican-American artist reconnects with the core of who they are. “Who I am when the music stops is someone my inner child can be proud of,” they say. That self is not a fixed image, but a living thing, shaped by movement, curiosity, and the refusal to be boxed in.
To understand x3butterfly’s world, you have to follow them across continents and disciplines. Growing up in Detroit’s grit and rhythm, forged in Guanajuato’s queer underground, expanded in Berlin’s freedoms, and unraveled in New York’s intensity, their journey has been less about finding one identity than learning to inhabit many. Each city left an imprint, the raw foundation of home, the reclamation of heritage, the affirmation of gender fluidity, the confrontation with inner chaos. Along the way, they’ve navigated the jagged intersections of nightlife, activism, sex work, and survival, collecting the kind of truths that don’t fit neatly into a press bio.
In the booth, they channel all of it, ancestral echoes, political urgency, private memories, into a sound that’s as much invocation as entertainment. But offstage, x3butterfly is asking more complicated questions: How do you hold space for joy without softening your politics?
How do you remain visible without being consumed? And what does it mean to build something lasting in an industry that thrives on erasure? Their answers, like their music, are unflinching and full of soul, tender where you expect armor, sharp where you expect softness, and always in motion.
When asked who they are when the music stops, x3butterfly doesn’t hesitate to go deep. For them, identity isn’t about the curated sheen of an artist persona; it’s about the underbelly, the quiet, mundane truths that shape a person far more than any set or stage.
“This is such a valuable question because it’s the underbelly, the covert, the mundane that defines you as a person and as an artist. What you convey to the world through your art is a culmination of all your experiences, your
the love you feel, the pain that you hold… This rawness, the real essence of someone, is what makes them and their work interesting. It’s not a craftily curated avatar, but the in-betweens, the thick of it. I want to know how you treat service workers, your guilty pleasures, your freaky anecdotes, what you’re currently reading, your cultural traditions, whether you find comfort in browsing grocery stores, or if they’re overwhelming, etc. Whatever! The little details. The glorification of individuals is myopic at best; I want to uplift artists because of their ethics, kindness, contributions to their community, and the genuine symbolism they embody.”
history, your generational trauma(s),
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AUTHOR: SERGIO NIÑO PHOTOGRAPHY: VINCENT WECHSELBERGER
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