Shaira (SD) Holman, 2014 YWCA Women of Distinction Award Winner

BY ECUAD, Published Wed, June 4, 2014 1:00 pm EDTORIGINAL ARTICLE: http://www.ecuad.ca/about/news/313320

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Shaira (SD) Holman (’92) is the recipient of a 2014 YWCA Women of Distinction Award for her work as Co-founder/Artistic Director of Vancouver’s Queer Arts Festival.

The festival, now one of the fastest growing cultural festivals in Canada, was started by Holman seven years ago. She initally started Pride in Art (the name of the initial exhibition) because she felt there was nowhere else at the time for her to pursue art on identity.

The YWCA Women of Distinction Awards honours individuals and organizations whose outstanding activities and achievements contribute to the well-being and future of our community.

Holman plans to take a sabbatical year to focus on other projects.

We congratulate her on this wonderful achievement!

Published in Vancity Buzz, March 06, 2015
By Jill Slattery

For International Women’s Day, we thought we’d celebrate some local women doing great things in Vancouver and around the world. They are either owning their industry, volunteering their time for amazing causes or lending their talents to support other women in the community.

To view full article, click here

Published in Vancity Buzz, March 06, 2015
By Jill Slattery

For International Women’s Day, we thought we’d celebrate some local women doing great things in Vancouver and around the world. They are either owning their industry, volunteering their time for amazing causes or lending their talents to support other women in the community.

To view full article, click here

Published in Westender, February 26, 2015

Queer Arts Festival makes the list for Best of the City in the visual arts category.

It’s no secret that Vancouver is best place to live in the world. Heck, we know it, that’s why we live here! Vancouver has a lot going for it: there’s the majestic mountains, the ocean, the beaches, the parks, and the untamed wilderness at our doorstep.

But what makes Vancouver a truly great city is more than good looks and fortuitous geography. It’s the people who make this multicultural metropolis what it is today. It’s our friends, our families, our neighbours that make Vancouver the best place on Earth.

So for the 18th year in a row, Westender has asked you, the people of Vancouver, our readers, to tell us what makes this city so special. This year a record number of people took part in the online poll, proving once again that Vancouverites love their city, and they’re not afraid to say so.

Robert Mangelsdorf,
Editor, Westender

See more in Westender post.

Posted in OutTV January 2, 2015
By David Jones

There are so many Vancouver queers that inspire me, make me jealous, or simply make me smile.

Be they loving, passionate, tenacious, controversial, creative or political they capture my imagination and touched my heart. It’s an entirely personal and eclectic list and for some sense of symmetry it’s in alphabetical order.

Here they are My Top Ten Queers of The Year Vancouver 2014. View link HERE.

Excerpt from SD Holman and Rachael Iwaasa: These remarkable people have discovered, nurtured and featured artists across a wide range of disciplines at the Queer Arts Festival while being accomplished artists themselves.

By Robert Mangelsdorf – Published July 30, 2014

Throughout history, tyrants have banned “degenerate” artists or artworks under the argument that they posed an imminent danger to the social fabric. The theme of Queer Arts Festival is a defiant response to that.

ReGenerations, which opened July 23 and runs until Aug. 9, embraces the premise that art can be dangerous, even revolutionary. In the intimate act of sharing, both artists and audiences find meaning, transformation, and the strength to enact change.

This year’s festival brings together artists from over 20 countries navigating queer identity across the international diaspora, speaks to healing and renewal by addressing topics such as addiction, and provides solidarity for those struggling for queer rights.

The festival’s remaining highlights include:

Alien Sex

Tentacles wrestle the sexual status quo; secret identity exposes itself; and the Empire is challenged by authentic expression in a work that mixes whimsy, savage poetry, heartbreaking vulnerability and B-movie joy.

Get your alien on in this transdisciplinary evening, featuring the work-in-progress presentation of Alien Sex. Come dressed in an outfit original to your planet of origin. Prizes will be awarded to the best-dressed queer aliens.

Actor/director and Alien Sex instigator David Bloom brings together an exciting team in a multi-genre, multi-generational feast. The all-star cast features Vancouver genderqueer creators Olivia B (performance poet/tap dancer) and Floyd VB (performance poet/visual artist), propelled by the visceral and immutable life force of taiko drummer Eileen Kage, composer/dancer/video artist Sammy Chien, actor/dancer/visual and performance artist Robert Leveroos, and photo-based artist/actor SD Holman (of BUTCH: Not like the other girls).

Drawing upon energetic interpretations of the transgressive BDSM poet Linda Smukler/Samuel Ace and the divisive heterosexual playwright David Mamet, gay, lesbian, bi, queer, straight, vanilla, kinky and yet-to-be-named perspectives collide in a speculative fiction that explores the beautiful, and sometimes inexplicable territory of human sexuality.

July 31 at 7:30-9:30 pm; $20 (all funds raised go to support the Pride in Art Society); 181 Roundhouse Mews 

I Sing The Body Electric: Walt Whitman and The Beat Generation

Just in time for Pride weekend, Erato Ensemble’s I Sing the Body Electric celebrates the queer spirit of Walt Whitman and the Beat Generation, who dared to express an individual language and lifestyle in the midst of the conservative social mores of their times, changing our culture forever.

Walt Whitman’s poetry is the basis for an emotional love story of two men – from meeting, to falling in love, to separation by war and death. Music by Kurt Weill, Charles Naginski, William George and world premieres by Lloyd Burritt and Ben Schuman. The Beat poets Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Diane Di Prima inspire new works by David Del Tredici, David Sisco, Jerome Kitzke, Steven Ebel, Anthony Ocaña, a “Beat Madrigal,” and a world premiere by Catherine Laub.

Aug. 1, 7:30-9:30 pm; $30 General Admission; $15 Youth/Seniors/Underemployed; 181 Roundhouse Mews

Queering the International 

QAF’s signature visual arts exhibition, Queering the International, features a lineup of established and emerging artists from around the globe who are immigrant, indigenous, undocumented, displaced.

Recent homophobic events in Russia, India, Uganda, and elsewhere have made it timely to highlight artists who address queer identity on an international scale, and whose work celebrates the complex human condition. 

Queering the International asks the artists, “What is queer, what is international, what is your diaspora, and what is identity?”

Brought together by the curatorial talents of Zimbabwe-born Laiwan and curatorial assistant Anne Riley, who is of Dene/Cree ancestry, it features artists from a range of nations including Brazil, Canada, the Cree Nation, Guatemala, Guyana, the Haudenosaunee Territories, Hawaii, Hong Kong, India, Iran, Russia, South Africa, Trinidad, the United States, and more, covering a breadth of viewpoints and perspectives from queers near and far.

Until Aug. 9; by donation, gallery hours 10:30am-10pm weekdays; 10:30am-4:30pm weekends; 181 Roundhouse Mews 

By Craig Takeuchi – Published on July 25 2014

Original Article: HERE

AT THE OPENING party of the Queer Arts Festival on July 23 at the Roundhouse Community Centre, Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson gave a quick recapitulation of the struggles for LGBT rights and issues that Vancouverites took part in over the past year.

In his speech to attendees, Robertson spoke about how councillor Tim Stevenson advocated for LGBT rights in Sochi and talked about the gains made locally for transgender people.

“We’ve been thrilled to have our park board commissioner Trevor Loke create the first transgender and gender variant working group at the Park Board looking at our community facilities around the city and our parks,” he said to the audience, “and [are] really proud of our city school board, which is led by Patti Bacchus, and [who] have done an enormous amount of work standing up for our kids, queer kids in our schools. It’s been a really tough, tough battle, fighting a lot of hatred and a lot of bullying, and we have persevered and we do have some really strong policies in our schools now to look after our kids going forward.”

He went on to talk about what role the arts play in facing these challenges.

“This is, I think, what really recharges us all. The arts are so crucial to inspire and motivate us, and replenish us, because it’s not easy out there. It’s a tough world at times and we’re just thrilled to be able to have the Roundhouse full of all of this beautiful art, and the activism, the passion, the important rights that we all stand for represented so well here.”

The idea of replenishment synchronized perfectly with the festival theme: ReGenerations.

The festival takes its name from the Nazi term “Degenerate Art”, which posited art by the avant-garde, and Jewish and queer people as threats to society. The festival reclaims the idea that art can be challenging as a way to transform and regenerate society.

This year’s festival highlights cross-generational collaborations between artists from numerous countries, including Australia, Brazil, the Cree Nation, Guatemala, Hong Kong, India, Iran, Mexico, the Philippines, Russia, South Africa, Trinidad, Zimbabwe, and more.

This year’s visual art exhibit, which ranges from photography and video work to installations and mixed media, emphasizes the global outlook of the festival with its title: Queering the International.

Interdiscplinary artist Laiwan, who curated the exhibit with assistant Anne Riley, told the Georgia Straight that the opening event was her first chance to take in the exhibit as a whole.

“What’s really exciting for me is to now stand back and look at how the works speak to each other because I haven’t had the opportunity to see them together in one space,” she said. “I’m hoping new  conversations come out of this, particularly to enliven Vancouver.”

Laiwan observed that many of the queer artists in the exhibition are expanding their outlook, by addressing subjects such as ecology or indigenous issues, that aren’t often connected to queerness. She noted that intersectionality is a recurring element of many of the art works.

“I think what’s really interesting is to see how different queer artists make all different work and yet they all come from a very similar place of wanting a new consciousness or a new liberation and also to push what we understand as queer.”