In 2003, Montreal-based artist Atif Siddiqi created Tranie Tronic, a persona inspired by sci-fi films and music from the 1980s that they say is "a little extra-terrestrial."

"It had that kind of b-movie vibe to it," Siddiqi says of the character. "I think it comes from my personal life as well, and never feeling quite at home on earth and the way things are here."

In the latest episode of Canada's a Drag, Siddiqi shares the story of Tronic, who they say represents "a series of revelations from behind a disguise."

​Atif Siddiqi grew up in Karachi, Pakistan, and says their gender variance started early in their childhood.

"The earliest photographs of me dressed up are when I was three years old and that kind of continued through my life," they say. "I did do a photo shoot dressed up as a woman in Karachi in 1992 that created a bit of a scandal there. People who knew about the photo shoot decided to inform some of the press in Pakistan, and then they started to talk about it that one of the girls in the shoot was not really a girl."

As far as performance goes, that didn't begin until Siddiqi came to Montreal.

"It was more spoken word when I started — performances at art galleries and some of the clubs here as well as different artistic cultural venues," Siddiqi explains. "And people didn't really know what to do with me and how to present me and classify me."

Siddiqi says they've always felt outside of drag culture.

"Because I do it in my personal life too there's not so much of a difference," they say. "It's not like I'm a man and then I transform into a drag queen. It's much more subtle."

With Tranie Tronic, Siddiqi says that they knew they never wanted to impersonate anyone — they wanted a persona that they had never really explored before.

"As most of my artistic work is autobiographical, my drag is a way to create a persona and express different facets of my personality," they say. "Through it, I deliver the context of my song lyrics or texts and monologues in a performance. It's an opportunity to be creative, have fun and ultimately be a contemporary storyteller in the tradition of gender variant male performers who play a woman's role onstage and screen."