Zombie Boy turns 30: an inked celebrity's contribution to art

  Vulnerable yet scary, dreamy yet ghoulish, punk yet sweet: Richard Genest, aka Zombie Boy, who turns 30 this summer, rode a lot of contradictions on his most unlikely path to fame.
   About eight years ago a timid Genest made the impossible leap from cleaning windshields at red lights for handouts to appearing in big budget films and top music videos simply because of his ghoulish tattoos.

Rick Genest, aka Zombie Boy

   His rags-to-riches tale also provoked endless questions: if his morbid tattoos are a subversive reminder of human mortality, then what's he doing laughing and sipping champagne on red carpets around the world?
   Did Genest subvert the art world with his menacing danse macabre epidermis or was his substance gobbled up and spat out by Lady Gaga's 152 million views and his appearance in a big budget Hollywood flop?
    Before his transformation, Genest - raised in the modest Montreal bedroom suburb of Chateauguay - was living in an east side apartment with a pair of alpha male punk roommates, musician Joel Kaiser and punk promoter Alex Gilardino, or as he sometimes calls himself, Maniks.
    The two forceful and opinionated characters often butted heads over issues of punk rock ideology, and embraced an epistemology where selling was the ultimate evil.

Rick and Joel in early days

  In this duelling triumvirate, Zombie Boy was the wallflower and possessed a single unremarkable bit of Texas ink on an arm. His ambitions appeared confined to attending every attending necro, grindcore and heavy dark metal concert that came to Montreal and he was not far from the centre of action during a famous punk rock riot in 2003. Drug use? Could be, maybe.

Maniks

   Genest's inclination to art was limited to such unusable ideas as building beds perched high above the ground from which any poor somnolent soul who accidentally rolled out would be killed in their sleep.

   Genest was diagnosed with a brain tumour in his early 20s, which was removed through his mouth. The tattoos and fame followed. Lady Gaga paid him for appearing in his video by paying off off all his loitering tickets
   The three roommates found themselves living at that punk mecca known as the Fattal lofts on St. Remi in St. Henri,  an enclosed ecosphere where the punk ethos thrives, complete with a stage for live shows.
    The three pals drifted apart. Alex Crimes found himself promoting shows and gaining influence, and he even ran a club on the Main and put out a recent rap tune.
   Kaiser squabbled with Crimes and relocated to the Maritimes and fronted a country band called The Devil's Own, which appears to have disbanded.
   Zombie Boy, meanwhile, has also been seen by some in the circle as "a snob and a sellout" as one longtime ally described him.
   That view is far from universal. At a youth centre near Papineau and St. Catherine, which is home to many punk orphans, Genest is seen with awe and considered a folk hero, according to the director.
    So is Zombie Boy a gimmick? Did he subvert art? Is he a sell-out? Where will he go from here? Art feeds off such questions and the very fact we're asking them proves that he has accomplished a unique and impressive feat.