Today we’d like to introduce you to Dante Ntarot.
Hi Dante, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My story, and the genesis of Dante Ntarot, is deeply rooted in a childhood marked by profound trauma. My mother, was literally possessed by the Devil via Dissociative Identity Disorder. She inflicted significant abuse, particularly because I am queer. For years, I navigated this incredibly challenging reality.
A major turning point came about ten years ago with my mother’s passing. It was then that I truly began to confront the depths of my experiences and consciously chose art as my path toward healing and understanding not just myself, but my place in a world that often felt like an Inferno. The Divine Comedy became a critical lens for me—given my mother’s struggles, I wrestled with what it meant to be her child, and Dante’s journey provided a powerful framework for exploring themes of darkness, redemption, and the search for meaning.
This led me to create ‘Dante Ntarot,’ a persona through which I could explore these complex issues. My husband, ‘Alan Gheri,’ became an integral part of this artistic and personal journey, and we introduced ‘Virgil,’ our puppet, who often acts as a guide or a comedic observer of our human follies. Together, we started weaving together the disciplines that fascinated me and felt essential to telling these stories: performance art, psychology, religion, science, and puppetry, often incorporating Latin and evocative music.
It hasn’t been a smooth road. ‘Smooth roads’ aren’t really in the Atlanta vocabulary, are they? My work is often misunderstood, its comedic elements sometimes flying over heads when juxtaposed with deep, challenging themes. Being autistic comes with its own communication hurdles, and for about a decade, I battled severe agoraphobia, essentially locking myself away. Art, quite literally, became my way out—my reason to re-engage with the world, though still very much a work in progress.
Then came another pivotal moment: May 15th, 2024, my 30th birthday. It was like a switch flipped. On that day, I truly ‘woke up’ to the distinct nature of my skills and the unique power of my craft. The years of exploration, pain, and intuitive creation began to coalesce into a much clearer vision and a newfound confidence in what I am bringing forth.
So, today, I’m here with that sharpened focus: actively creating, performing, and striving to make art that doesn’t just entertain, but makes people think, feel, question themselves, and talk about the uncomfortable truths. I call Atlanta ‘ATHell’ with a knowing love – acknowledging its shadows but also deeply committed to fostering real community connection and action here. My goal is for our work to be a catalyst, to bring audiences to that edge of laughter and tears, and to ultimately find pathways to understanding and perhaps even collective healing in this modern Inferno we navigate.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
A smooth road? Absolutely not. I often joke that ‘smooth roads’ aren’t really in the Atlanta vocabulary – it feels like half our streets are permanently paved with those giant steel ‘Shirley Plates’ just to keep us on our toes. My path, personally and artistically, has definitely felt more like navigating a street full of those than a freshly paved highway! It’s been paved with significant challenges, each shaping both me and my work.
One of the biggest ongoing struggles has been being profoundly misunderstood. My art deliberately walks a tightrope between intense, often dark, psychological and spiritual themes drawn from my life and the Divine Comedy, and a layer of what I see as essential comedy and the ‘fool’s journey.’ Many times, that complexity, that blend of the sacred and the profane, or the serious and the absurd, just doesn’t land as intended, or it goes over people’s heads.
Adding to that, I have autism and other disabilities that inherently make communication and social navigation difficult. This isn’t just a casual challenge; it fundamentally impacts how I process the world and interact with it. For a long time, these difficulties, compounded by past traumas, led to severe agoraphobia. I spent about ten years effectively locked in my house, a prisoner of my own anxieties and the weight of my experiences. That isolation was a monumental struggle in itself.
And, of course, the foundational trauma of my childhood—the abuse, navigating my mother’s literal possession and her DID, all while coming to terms with my queer identity in that environment—that’s not just a backstory; it’s an ongoing wellspring of struggle that I consciously channel into my art. It’s a process of constant wrestling and translating pain into something meaningful.
So no, definitely not a smooth road, more like a test track for Atlanta’s road repair ambitions. But I’ve learned that the roughest roads, the ones patched with countless ‘Shirleys,’ often lead to the most profound discoveries. Each of these struggles has forced me to dig deeper, to find unconventional ways to communicate, and ultimately, has fueled the very essence of Dante Ntarot. My art isn’t just about these struggles; it’s born from them and is my primary tool for navigating and healing from them
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
What I do and specialize in: I’m a multifaceted artist specializing in creating immersive and often intense experiences that blend performance art, psychology, religion, science, and puppetry. The Divine Comedy serves as our foundational text and map, but we drag it kicking and screaming into the contemporary, often chaotic, reality of our lives. We use heavy symbology, storytelling, carefully chosen music, and even Latin to build these performances. My aim is to create work that isn’t passively consumed but actively engaged with.
What I’m known for (or perhaps, what I strive to be known for): I believe I’m becoming known for a very raw, unfiltered approach to art that tackles deeply personal trauma, the journey of healing, and sharp societal observations – especially here in our ‘ATHell.’ It’s the unique fusion of these diverse disciplines and the dynamic between me, Alan, and Virgil. Ultimately, I want to be known for art that makes you laugh one moment and feel a punch to the gut the next, art that makes you think, sparks conversations, and encourages people to question the world and their place within it.
What I’m most proud of: Honestly, I’m most proud of the sheer act of creation itself in the face of everything. For years, due to agoraphobia stemming from past traumas and the challenges of being autistic, I was effectively housebound. To now be externalizing these complex internal worlds, to be building performances and connecting with an audience, feels like a monumental victory. Every time I step into my role as Dante Ntarot, every time Virgil says something unexpectedly profound or hilariously simple, and especially since truly ‘waking up’ to my craft on my 30th birthday last year, I feel an immense sense of pride in that journey from silence and isolation to expression. If my work can make even one person feel seen in their own struggles, or spark one critical thought that leads to positive action, that’s what makes me incredibly proud.
What sets me apart: I believe several things make our work unique.
Firstly, it’s the unconventional alchemy of our ingredients: taking performance art, the analytical lens of psychology, the historical weight of religion, the inquiry of science, and the disarming nature of puppetry, and forcing them to dance together.
Secondly, it’s the deeply autobiographical and unfiltered core. My personal history—my mother’s literal possession and DID, the abuse I endured as a queer person, my own neurodivergence—isn’t just subtext; it’s the raw material, the lifeblood of the art. We’re not shying away from the inferno within or without.
The Dante/Alan/Virgil dynamic itself is distinct. We embody different facets of the journey – the seeker, the companion, the guide who might also be a fool.
And finally, it’s our explicit goal: We’re not just aiming to entertain; we are on a mission to provoke, to challenge, to provide a mirror to the ‘ATHell’ we sometimes inhabit, and to explore pathways to redemption and tangible community improvement. It’s about starting conversations that matter, sometimes uncomfortable ones, and inspiring people to look deeper and act.
Are there any important lessons you’ve learned that you can share with us?
Hah! Well, my first instinct, and I’m only half-joking, is that humans can be pretty bafflingly dumb sometimes!
But on a more serious note, the most profound lesson I’ve learned along this very intense journey is that we are truly navigating scary and unprecedented times. It feels like foundational educational values are being eroded, society is increasingly polarized with everyone turned against each other, and there’s a pervasive, dangerous rigidity in how people think and engage with the world.
So, the most important lesson stemming from that observation is the critical, desperate need for more psychological flexibility in society. By that, I mean the ability to hold multiple perspectives, to question our own beliefs and biases, to adapt to a rapidly changing and often frightening world without shattering, and to engage with complexity rather than retreating into simplistic, dogmatic thinking. We need to be able to sit with discomfort, to challenge our own ‘infernos,’ and to be open to transformation – both individually and collectively. Without that mental and emotional agility, I fear we just dig ourselves deeper into the divisions and misunderstandings that plague us. My art, in many ways, is an attempt to cultivate that very flexibility in those who experience it.
Pricing:
- $6.66 -15 minutes (fees not included)
Contact Info:
- Website: https://sogothco.com
- Instagram: @damienzhelms, @dante.ntarot, @virgil_the_puppet, @sogothco
Image Credits
Dante Ntarot, Alan Gheri
