Art holds the ability to connect people despite their race, culture, gender, or sexuality. As we find ourselves in midst of a global pandemic, feeling connected is now more important than ever.
The 12th annual Queer Arts Festival (QAF) takes place from July 16 to 26, and features a curated lineup of visual art, performing arts, workshops, artist talks, panels, and media art screenings. To follow suggested social distancing guidelines, this year’s entertaining and thought-provoking festival will be easily accessible to all through an online platform.
As noted in the festival’s press release, QAF’s 2020 theme, Wicked, “reimagines identity politics, exposing the implications of homonormativity as erasure”. It will also explore the commodification of the queer experience, which is sure to spark discussion among those who attend the virtual festival.
All of the brilliant multidisciplinary events at the online festival will evoke emotion and wonder. Here are five highlights not to be missed:
Art Party! Cinq-à-Sept festival opening
The QAF kick-off is happening on Thursday, July 16 from 5 to 7 p.m. This will feature a visual art tour curated by Jonny Sopotiuk and other guest artists.
Too Spirited
At 7 p.m. on Friday, July 17, an Indigenous burlesque show that is performed by Virago Nation will dazzle viewers who tune in. The performers will explore Indigenous sexuality through humor, pop culture, and politics.
Rupture Probe: Queer Inquiries & Remediations
On Saturday, July 18 at 7 p.m., QAF attendees can stream the screenings of queer short films that rupture normative notions of gender, activism, and pleasure. This media art event is curated in partnership with VIVO Media Arts Centre.
The Darlings, Uncensored
On Friday, July 24 at 7 p.m., The Darlings will perform a genre-bending, non-binary drag show with a new performance created around the festival theme of “wickedness”. The Darlings have taken the local drag scene by storm and are comprised of talented drag performers: Continental Breakfast, PM, Rose Butch, and Maiden China.
Glitter is Forever: Pyjama Party
If you had to miss some of the previous events, you can curl up on the couch and binge-watch the entire QAF on Sunday, July 26. The closing pyjama party will start at 4 p.m. and run until late so this is the perfect opportunity to make fancy espresso martinis. Wear your favourite silk robe and expect an evening filled with surprises, special prizes, attention-grabbing performances and remarkable visual art.
The Pride in Art Society is always accepting donations that go toward the festival, programs for adults and youth, and much more. To make a donation to the community-based nonprofit, visit its CanadaHelps page.
Six virtual exhibits on this summer bring LGBTQ2 art from the gallery into your home
A photo from 1995’s ‘Wigstock’ festival in New York City. Credit: Pierre Dalpé, Courtesy Head On Festival
Even though we cannot physically celebrate together, it’s Pride Month, and many LGBTQ2 organizations around the world have taken the initiative to ensure that Pride events still happen virtually.
It hasn’t been an easy task, especially for queer and trans artists who can’t show their work in person. Many have faced unemployment, lost gigs and had to cancel events, and staying afloat has been difficult. It’s why, in this trying time, we need our queer artists more than ever—to tell our stories, give voice to our struggles and lift us up. Their work brings the glitz and the glam to Pride, and for those who are feeling down and isolated, their art is a perfect antidote.
If you can’t get out to celebrate this year, why not enjoy Pride from home while supporting LGBTQ2 artists? Here is a list of virtual queer art events and festivals from Canada and around the world that have gone virtual in honour of Pride Month.ADVERTISEMENT
In celebration of Pride, the Australian Head On Photo Festival is featuring Montreal photographer Pierre Dalpé’s exhibition, Wigstock. Wigstock was an annual Manhattan drag festival held from 1984 to 2001, founded by American queen Lady Bunny. Dalpé documented this festival during the mid-1990s when Wigstock was at its most popular. Log on for free at Head On’s website and see the wonderful photos of glamorous queens (including the iconic RuPaul herself!) in their finest, having a blast in the New York sunshine.
To mark Pride, San Francisco’s Queer Cultural Centre is hosting an online exhibition, Aquí Estamos / Here We Are—a collaboration between San Francisco Bay-area and Puerto Rican queer artists, curated by Juan Carlos Rodríguez Rivera. Influenced by the conditions of COVID-19 and the lockdown in Puerto Rico, these queer artists of colour respond to how our domestic space has shifted under the pressure of a pandemic. Artists Awilda Rodríguez Lora, Cristóbal Guerra, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Marcela Pardo Ariza and Pati Cruz will hold an Instagram takeover each Wednesday in June to share their work and conduct an online conversation on the Queer Cultural Centre’s Instagram. And on June 30, the artists and the curator will take part in a special roundtable discussion, Aquí Estamos Y Aquí Seguiremos / Here We Are and Here We Will Be, about reimagining domestic and safe spaces.
The annual Vancouver Queer Arts Festival is one of the top five professional queer multidisciplinary arts festivals in the world—and this year, it’s going online. Inspired by the play Wicked, this year’s festival encourages us to think about the rise in the commodification of queer culture and how queer culture is used and marketed in a way that’s easy for heteronormative audiences to understand and interact with. “What do we lose—who do we lose—if we accept induction into the dominant order, and reframe ourselves as a ‘moral minority?’” organizers ask. The festival kicks off on July 16 with artparty!, featuring a panel discussion and virtual tour of the curated art exhibition led by artist Jonny Sopotiuk and showcasing participating artists Tom Hsu, Avram Finkelstein, Diyan Achjadi and Elektra KB. The Media Arts Centre, Vivo, will be holding Media Nights on July 18 (“Rapture Probe”) and July 19 (“Return to Sodom North”) to explore the change in media used at queer art festivals. Writers Hiromi Goto and Erica Isomura will hold an intergenerational conversation on the importance of mentorship for writers of colour on July 25 (A Conversation on Queer Mentorship). And, not to be missed, the Indigenous burlesque group, Virago Nation, will be holding the virtual performance Too Spirited on July 17.ADVERTISEMENT
To attend these events, register through Eventbrite. All events are free, but participants can donate to support the festival.
Erotic horror film, ‘The Hunger,’ is among movies being screened during Queer|Art|Film. Credit: Courtesy Queer|Art|Film
Queer|Art, a website based in New York, supports queer artists who have lost the mentorship of queer artists taken by another global pandemic—the AIDS Crisis. To support LGBTQ2 artists during this difficult time, Queer|Art has created a list of resources for artists affected by COVID-19—and they are going ahead with their annual Queer|Art|Pride online summer festival. Events take place every Monday night in June through the video conferencing app Zoom. Support the festival and artists financially at the Book and Print Fair, where more than 30 artists will show their work for sale during the bi-weekly Show N’ Tell series. Plus, join a virtual tour called “This Used To Be Gay!” with art mentor Moe Angelos of New York’s East Village as well as a few Queer|Art|Film events.
Those interested can register through the Queer|Art site.
Feeling queer and creative? Fredericton, New Brunswick-based emerging artist, speaker and facilitator Al Cusack has assembled a series of eight art activity videos for the public Facebook group Queer Art @ Home. This group is open to queer individuals of all artistic skill levels with the goal of helping people connect during Pride. Videos will be released on Mondays and Thursdays this month featuring different prompts for colour and subject matter in the medium of your choice.
Cusack came up with the idea after reflecting on community and togetherness. “It’s Pride month and we have to forgo so many of our celebrations and commemorations,” he says. “I wanted to do something about this. I wanted there to be something for queer people of any age who feel alone.”ADVERTISEMENT
Cusack chose eight activities in homage to the original Pride Flag, designed by queer artist and activist Gilbert Baker. “While it might not feel like a big deal for those of us who have been out and active in the community for a long time,” Cusack explains, “it means a lot to people who are first coming out. It brings a lot of joy to see those colours.”
Watch Cusack explain how Queer Art @ Home will work in this introductory video, and get ready to share your progress and ask for constructive feedback or inspiration in the Facebook group.
Wishing that you could join a gallery tour, but in the comfort of your home? LGBTQ2 artists, curators and filmmakers from around the U.K. chose some of their favourite works of art from the Tate Britain gallery and interpreted them as queer works of art. The interpretations are varied and influenced by their lived experiences, and they explore personal connections as well as how the piece of art speaks to each of them as a queer person. This free display is curated by E-J Scott, who curated the U.K. largest collection of trans artefacts, and includes selected works spanning more than 450 years.
In addition to this display, Tate Britain has a number of LGBTQ2 online resources, including a partnership with Channel 4’s short film strand Random Acts, featuring the stories of six LGBTQ-identifying people like Ian McKellen, Kareem Reid and Jackie Kay. There is even LGBTQ content for kids: Watch YouTuber Olly Pike explore five LGBTQ art Stories at the Tate Britain, and learn about bisexual painter Gwen John and gay artist David Hockney.ADVERTISEMENT
▾
As these arts shows prove, we can still remain together in spirit, even if we’re physically far apart. Stay safe and happy Pride!
Editor’s note, Jun 23, 2020: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that RuPaul Charles was a founder of Wigstock. The story has been amended.This story is filed under Arts & Entertainment, Pride, Profile, DIY Pride
The 12th annual Queer Arts Festival (“QAF”), Vancouver’s artist-run, professional, multi-disciplinary roister of queer arts, culture and history, will take place online this year from July 16 to July 26, 2020.
Avram Finkelstein will be participating in the Queer Arts Festival, which takes place July 16-26. (photo by Alina Oswald)
A lot of it feels familiar, said New York-based artist and activist Avram Finkelstein about the current situation in the United States. The same American institutions that failed during the HIV-AIDS crisis are failing to effectively deal with the pandemic. And, when he was a teenager in the 1960s, cities were also being burned in America.
“It’s sad to think that we will be having the same struggles,” he told the Jewish Independent in a phone interview last week. “But, also, as you get older, you realize that progress is not a pendulum swing from left to right, it’s actually a spiral going forward and things do move to the right and they move to the left, but [there is] incremental change. So, part of me feels like we’re seeing the dying gasp of a world that I hope we’re leaving behind, and I see a world in the future that I want to live in. So that’s kind of helping me through this.”
Finkelstein was scheduled to come to Vancouver next month to participate in the Queer Arts Festival.
A founding member of the Silence=Death and Gran Fury collectives, as well as the political group ACT UP, he is the author of After Silence: A History of AIDS Through its Images (University of California Press, 2017). His artwork is part of the permanent collections of MoMA, the Smithsonian, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, to name but a few places, and his work has been shown around the world. He was set to unveil one of his new works in Vancouver. As it is, with the restrictions required to minimize the spread of COVID-19, he will be helping open the festival remotely, as part of a panel discussion chaired by curator Jonny Sopotiuk, which will also provide viewers with a tour of the festival’s art exhibition.
“I have a large mural that was going to be in the exhibition and now it’s going to be in a virtual space,” said Finkelstein. “I’m very excited about this piece and the fact that Jonny chose it – it’s the first time I’ve shown it…. I had a commission to do a work for the Shed, which is a new art space in New York, and, while I was waiting for the weaving tests of the final pieces – it’s a very large jacquard weaving – I decided to start drawing from the same source material as the cartoon for the weaving. I hadn’t drawn since recovering from a stroke; I had a stroke about two years ago…. I then realized that my hand isn’t my own, my body is no longer my own.”
The source material, he explained, “is a portrait of a gender-non-conforming friend who later transitioned. The work was all about corporeality as an abstraction and the ways in which we’re allowed to look at certain things, and what is public and what is private about gender and sexuality. And then, all of sudden, I realized, I’m actually talking about my own body in these drawings because my own body is not my own body anymore. I realized that I had made this sharp pivot from an abstract, theoretical idea of corporeality to this kind of war or dance, or I don’t know how to describe the physical process of having to use your entire body to hold a pencil.”
Despite the health, political and other challenges Finkelstein has faced, he remains hopeful.
“We’re trained to think that, if we don’t have hope, then the only thing that’s left is despair, but the truth is, hope isn’t so much the point – it’s the horizon that hope is sitting on and, so long as you can see a horizon, I think that, to me, is the same thing,” he said.
“I’m Jewish, as you know, and I think that Jews have a very different relationship to memory and to witnessing. If your people have been chased all over the globe for centuries, you take a long view. You sleep with one eye open, but you take a long view, and I think, therein, I’m eternally hopeful.”
In an interview in 2018, Finkelstein predicted that the situation in the United States would worsen before it improved.
“Which is another thing about being Jewish – you learn that there is no such thing as paranoia because it’s all real,” he said. “So, one could have seen, as plain as the nose on one’s face, where America was heading. And, in actual fact, what happened with Trump’s election was, we’ve joined the international march of global totalitarianism…. And, it’s not about to get really bad, it’s really, really bad. It’s really bad and I think that, here again, you can’t be Jewish and not think – not think your entire life, actually – in some way being prepared for, OK, what are the risks I’m willing to take if this happens? How far would I be willing to fight for other people if that happens. The shadow of Nazi Germany never escaped your consciousness.”
So how does Finkelstein conquer the fear?
“I guess I’ve replaced it with anxiety,” he said, laughing. But, he added, “I don’t know why I’m not fearful. I think that I was just raised – a day doesn’t go by that I’m not reminded of another lesson or another incident or another part of Jewish-American social history in the 20th century that my family was directly there for. I almost feel like I’m the Zelig of the left. All the stories you would tell my mother or my father, they’d be like, ‘Oh, yeah, we were there. We were there at the Robeson riots. Oh, yeah, we were there when they closed The Cradle Will Rock and everyone walked down the street’ – exactly the way it was in the last scene in Tim Robbins’ movie. When I saw it, it seemed too preposterous, I called my mother, said, ‘Could that have happened?’ And she started singing the song that Emily Watson sings in the film.
“So, I think I have such a sense of self that one could interpret it as fearlessness, but I think that it would be more accurate to say I was not given an alternative role model. I was raised to feel the suffering of others and, if other people are suffering, there’s no night’s sleep for me. So, there’s really no option – you’re either closing your eyes to something terrible or you’re doing everything you can to try and make it less terrible. And I think that that’s the Jewish condition.”
He described Jews as being like queer people. “We are everywhere,” he said. “We’re in every culture, we’re in every race, we’re in every gender, we’re in every country. We have every type of ethnic community that we surround ourselves with. An Ethiopian Jew is different from an Ashkenazi Jew, but we’re still all Jews.”
Though raised by atheists, he said, “I don’t think you’ll find anyone more Jewish than I am or than my family, but Jews are prismatic. We are many things. Consequently, I feel like I can’t speak on behalf of other Jews, I can only speak on behalf of myself.
“Likewise, I’ve always had people of colour in my family; I just always have. And, I learned very early on back in the ’60s, when the civil rights movement was fragmented between King and Stokely Carmichael and the Panthers, and everyone was choosing sides, I think that’s another example of what I’m talking about – there are many ways in which to be black. And so, I don’t feel like what I have to say about this current moment is anywhere near as important, essential, vital, critical … [as] a person of colour – what a person of colour has to say about this moment is much more important.”
The original Silence=Death poster has been adapted over the years by many people, including for use as a pin.
Finkelstein was one of the minds behind the now-iconic Silence=Death poster, which has been adapted over the years by many people. A variation of it could be seen in at least one of the recent protests. The original iteration encourages viewers to use their power and, for example, vote. In general, working towards solutions is an important part of Finkelstein’s activism.
“I think critiques are easier,” he said. “I think also we mistake public spaces, we mistake the commons, as a declarative space. I tend to think of it as an interrogative space. I think that, even in late-stage capitalism, when someone is trying to get you to put your money in a bank or go buy a soft drink, there’s something Socratic about the gesture of trying to get you to do something … you’re responding to it, you’re engaged in it, and that’s the interrogative part that I think is easy to overlook. And I think that’s where the answers are.
“I think that the way that the Silence=Death poster is structured is it’s really like a bear trap. We worked on it for nine months – the colour has certain codes and signifiers, and the triangle has another set of codes and we changed the colour of the triangle from the [concentration] camps and inverted it to obfuscate some of the questions about victimhood. And the subtext has two lines of text, one that’s declarative and one that’s interrogative, and the point size forces you into a performative interaction.”
This poster and other work with which Finkelstein has been involved include aspects that “people are very afraid to experience,” he said, “which is fallibility, mess-making and tension. And I find all of those things as generative, as kindness, support, community. They’re differently generative and … hearing so many people who are trying to figure out how to find their way in, as white people, into the conversations that are happening in America right now, is the same struggle as a young queer person trying to find their way into the AIDS crisis. I mentor a lot of young queer artists and activists and the first thing they say, their immediate impulse is, I have no right to this story, I wasn’t here, I didn’t live through it. To which my response is, immediately, you have every right to the story – it’s your story, it’s the story of the world…. Race is a white person’s problem. People of colour are paying the price for it, but the problem, the genesis of the problem, is whiteness. And we have to figure out how to talk about it…. But I think now is the time for listening.”
He said, “We have to know what our responsibilities are and this goes back to Judaism – our responsibilities as witnesses. You can’t let your discomfort change the importance of this moment or overshadow the importance of this moment.”
One of the things Finkelstein does is teach social engagement via flash collectives. “I think we’re never put into a position where people mentor our personhood,” he said. “We have people mentor us as computer programmers or healthcare providers or tax accountants or artists or writers, but … there’s something primeval which is missing in the way we’re acculturated, and the flash collective is almost shamanistic in that regard; it taps into this primal thing that is quite astonishing when you let it out.”
Understanding that he will not live forever, he said “the Silence=Death poster casts a very mighty shadow and it makes it very difficult for people to figure out how to make new work, if that’s what they think it has to be…. It became obvious to me that I could be talking about Silence=Death until the day I drop, but, one day, I am going to drop and I want other people to start making those new works and I thought this would be a way to get people to make new work.”
He described the collectives, which teach political agency, as being “like a stew of the top 10 hits of grassroots organizing in a condensed workshop that’s tailored to the individuals in the room.”
He said, “I believe that I don’t necessarily have to change the world because I know that there could be a teenager in 2050 who sees something that someone I worked with did that made them think of something else that I never would have thought of. That is the point of the work, not the how do I fix it before I’m gone, which is the dilemma of Larry Kramer [who passed away last month]. He really thought, and I think it’s really male, but it’s very men of a certain generation also – he really thought that he could fix the AIDS crisis, and it didn’t happen.”
Unfortunately, space doesn’t allow for most of what Finkelstein shared with the Independent about Kramer, who he described as “a complicated person.”
Kramer was a rhetorician, said Finkelstein. “And I’m a propagandist. We’re both rhetoricians in a way, but what was the dividing line that made Larry incapable of understanding the work that I did?… I felt like I understood his process better than he understood mine. And I started to think, well, here’s the difference between a person who articulates their rage with words and a person who articulates their rage with every tool in the toolbox…. Not to make myself sound superior, but I realized that I think of rage as sculptural; he thought of rage as rhetorical. I think of rhetoric as sculptural, I think of it as casting a shadow and activating social spaces. And I think that he was a Jewish gay man of a different generation and a lot of his rage was tied into his personal struggles. And I did not have those. I had other personal struggles, but I did not have them.”
As part of the Queer Arts Festival, Finkelstein will lead a flash collective on the question, “What does queer public space mean in a 21st-century pandemic?” He hopes the resulting work will be shown in a public space.
For more information about the festival, visit queerartsfestival.com. The next issue of the JI will feature an interview with QAF artistic director and Jewish community member SD Holman.
Submissions are NOW OPEN for the 2025 QAF Community Art Show!
Submissions are OPEN for our QAF Community Exhibition, held at SUM gallery this summer!
We’re inviting artists in our local Queer communities to contribute works that explore our 2025 festival theme, “Portals” – though all submitted works will be considered. We are delighted to be hosting the exhibition at QAF headquarters SUM gallery in the Sun Wah Building in Chinatown, from June 13 – June 28, 2025.
Portals are gateways to transformation— liminal spaces of transition, possibility, and change. ‘Portals’ explores queer and trans experiences of crossing thresholds, stepping into new identities, and imagining futures beyond imposed boundaries. Step through—what’s on the other side? 🏃➡️🌀
We are considering 2-D visual works, sculpture, digital art, and interdisciplinary works for submission.
Submission deadline: April 30, 2025.
Submissions are accepted via email at submissions@queerartsfestival.com
Submission Checklist:
Submissions for the QAF Community Art Show must include:
Artist name and preferred email address for contacting.
Digital images of artworks (individual files, jpgs, or links to a website or upload are best.)
Artwork information for each piece (title, medium, year, dimensions, and price if applicable).
Additional information that is helpful but not required:
Artist biography.
Artist statement.
Resume/cv.
Headshot.
Links/social media.
All works must be installation-ready (ie, framed, hanging brackets, wires, etc). QAF will be onsite for installation, but whenever possible Artist’s are encouraged to help!
Hiromi Goto and Erica Isomura explore the nuances of intergenerational mentorship as queer POC writers.
Hiromi Goto, an emigrant from Japan, gratefully resides on the Unceded Musqueam, Skwxwú7mesh, and Tsleil Waututh Territories. She’s the author of many books. Her first graphic novel, Shadow Life, with artist Ann Xu, is pending with First Second Books. Hiromi is currently being guided by land-based learning and at work on a second graphic novel.
Erica Isomura (@ericahiroko) is an emerging writer and community organizer living on unceded Musqueam, Skwxwú7mesh and Tsleil Waututh homelands. In 2019, Erica’s work won Briarpatch Magazine’s Writing In The Margins contest, selected by Alicia Elliott. She is coping with the pandemic by drawing quarantine comics and creating poetic installations in her living room window.
Queer life is a reality of ongoing survival. From government and societal oppression, to family rejection and social isolation our memories and experiences have been defined and shaped by the structures that are designed to contain us.
Our identities and experiences are mediated. Living is a constant battle against and with these systems of containment.
Wicked brings together a multigenerational group of artists living and producing work across Canada and the United States as they explore the body, community, and architecture of homonormativity.
In 2020 we’re learning to live through a new form of containment during a global health pandemic. Our long fight for recognition and the foundations of community infrastructures that we created to sustain us are being fundamentally questioned.
We’re now asked to rethink how we build individual and collective responses to queer and trans trauma and erasure?
With new connections and intimacy now mediated by requirements to shelter in place, artists critically examine our communities’ oppression and expose implications of complicity in the homonormative systems created to contain us.
Visual Artists
Avram Finkelstein Christopher Lacroix Dayna Danger Elektra KB Flash Collective Joseph Liatela Kama La Mackerel KUNST Love Intersections Micheal Morris Shauna Dempsey + Lori Millan Tom Hsu Xandra Ibarra
Avram Finkelstein, Silver War Storm, 2019
Christopher Lacroix, Left arm back, strong core, crank forward, 2019
| Queer Arts Festival 2020: WICKED | Jul 16 – 26, 2o2o |
“Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.”
Oscar Wilde
This past decade has seen the mainstreaming of gay; sexual difference wins approval so long as it is palatable, marketable, and doesn’t stray too far from bourgeois notions of taste and morality. Our 2020 theme Wicked reimagines identity politics, exposing the implications of homonormativity as erasure. The commodification of queer experience is inextricably linked to the pathologization of the queer body, where medical and sociological interventions adjudicate which anatomies and passions are accepted as authentic. What do we lose—who do we lose—if we accept induction into the dominant order, and reframe ourselves as a “moral minority”?
There’s no place like home for the Wicked Witch of the West, green by devilment and through her magical aberrance. QAF 2020 forsakes the yellow brick road that leads only to a man behind a curtain gentrifying our desires. Instead, for 11 days of visual art, performance, theatre, music, dance and literary events, we invite you to revel in the quintessentially queer traditions of scandal and excess.
Highlights include Jonny Sopotiuk’s visual arts curation; choreographer Noam Gagnon’s raucously vulnerable Swan Song, This Crazy Show; Indigenous Burlesque with Virago Nation’s Too Spirited; and the latest offering from non-binary drag collective The Darlings.
Solo piano recital by Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa of works by queer & trans composers, including Rodney Sharman, Ann Southam & Mary Jane Paquette
Celebrated contemporary piano virtuoso Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa performs a solo recital of queer and trans composers. The programme centres around the work of composer Rodney Sharman, as Rachel prepares to record his complete solo piano works. It will feature world premieres by Sharman and Mary Jane Paquette, paired with works by Ann Southam.
The concert takes its name from Rodney’s notorious music theatre piece The Garden, in which a man visits a gay sex club for the first time and finds his life transformed by a single, perfect kiss. Theatre direction by David Bloom.
Reception to follow.
Pyatt Hall is on the second floor of the VSO School of Music, accessible by elevator, with wheelchair accessible seating and bathrooms.
About the artist
Hailed in the press as a “keyboard virtuoso and avant-garde muse” (Georgia Straight) with the “emotional intensity” to take a piece “from notes on a page to a stunning work of art” (Victoria Times Colonist), Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa is recognized among Canada’s foremost contemporary music pianists. Check this website >
We often think of revolution in relation to ways of knowing, but we rarely think about revolution in relation to our colonial habits of being—how our habits are dependent on, maintained and enabled by colonization. A revolution of being is not about what we say, how we look, how we perform, or how we trade in the different economies of colonial modernity. A revolution of being invites us to change our desires, our hopes, how we hope, how we sense, how we love, and above all, regenerate and recalibrate our relationships with each other, with the land, with time, with form and with space. In this recalibration of being, time and revolution are not linear.
Feb 1 – Apr 18, 2020 | Opening Reception: Feb 1, 4-6 pm
Yellow Peril; The Celestial Elements is a visual art exhibit inspired by the Chinese Five Elemental forces, seized by the urgent tensions between Queer Chinese diasporic identities. A collection of multichannel installations, visual and sculptural activations provoke a cosmic encounter of our living past and present as we ‘race’ towards a healing future. These elemental activations attempt to collapse the linear temporality to dislodge an emotional, spiritual, cosmological, and metaphysical enunciation of our Queer ‘Chineseness’. Rather than focus on the trauma that queer people of colour face, this project is fundamentally an invitation to an exuberant celebration of queerness that is unabashedly Chinese.
We invite you to celebrate with us. Featuring artists Jen Sungshine, Kendell Yan, Kai Cheng Thom, Jay Cabalu, and David Ng.
What: An annual artist-run multi-disciplinary summer arts festival at the Roundhouse in Vancouver, BC. QAF produces, presents and exhibits with a curatorial vision favouring challenging, thought-provoking work that pushes boundaries and initiates dialogue. Each year, the festival theme ties together a curated visual art exhibition, performing arts series, workshops, artist talks, panels, and media art screenings.
When: Monday, June 17 to Friday, June 28, 2018 Time: Various times Where: The Roundhouse – 181 Roundhouse Mews, Vancouver; Sum gallery – 268 Keefer St, Vancouver Tickets:Online
