PORTALS

Queer Arts Festival

PORTALS: June 6 – 28, 2025

Festival Theme: Portals

Portals are gateways to transformation—liminal spaces of transition, possibility, and change. For the 2025 Queer Arts Festival, Portals explores queer and trans experiences of crossing thresholds, stepping into new identities, and imagining futures beyond imposed boundaries. Presented in partnership with Centre A, this year’s curated visual exhibition also examines diasporic journeys, highlighting the intersections of queerness, migration, and belonging. In a time of rising anti-trans and anti-queer rhetoric, Portals is a call to reimagine the world, celebrating art’s power to forge new paths, challenge oppression, and open doors to liberation. Step through—what’s on the other side?

Festival Listings

Portals Art Party image

ArtParty! 2025

ArtParty! | June 21 | 5-8pm | Centre A | Step through the portal and into the party! Join us on June 21 from 5–8pm at Centre A for the 2025 QAF ArtParty, launching our signature exhibition Portals—a powerful exploration of migration, identity, and transformation, curated by Diane Hau Yu Wong and…
Varied Editions Banner

Varied Editions

VARIED EDITIONS — Curated by Edward Fu-Chen Juan & Cheryl Hamilton | Jun 6 – 28 | Tues – Sat, 12 – 6 | On Main Gallery | Free | Now in its third year, Varied Editions celebrates the diversity of printmaking practices within queer communities. Borrowing its name from…
Night Owl Banner

Night Owl

Night Owl: Erica Roozendaal, accordion | Sunday, June 8 @ 7pm | SUM gallery | Pay-What-You-Wish | We’re thrilled to present the QAF debut of Dutch accordionist Erica Roozendaal. Visiting us from the Hague, Roozendaal shares an intimate program at SUM gallery that includes music by the iconic Pauline Olivieros,…
QAF Community Art Show Banner

QAF Community Art Show

QAF Community Art Show | June 14 – 28 | Tues – Sat, 12 – 6 | SUM gallery |OPENING RECEPTION: June 14, 5 – 8pm | Free | It’s no exaggeration to say the QAF Community Art Show is the backbone of our festival. It was the original event,…
Portals Curated Visual Art Exhibition banner art.

QAF Curated Visual Art Exhibition: Portals

Curated Visual Art Exhibition: PORTALS — Curated by Mark Takeshi McGregor & Diane Hau Yu Wong | June 21 – August 23 | Wed – Sat, 12 – 6 | Centre A: Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art | Free | Our QAF 2025 theme is fully realized in this special…
Queer Clothing Swap banner

Queer Clothing Swap

Queer Clothing Swap | June 22, 2 – 4pm | Sun Wah Centre, 4th Floor | Free | Looking to spice up your summer wardrobe? Look no further: We’re bringing back our super popular Queer Clothing Swap! Bring your clean, gently worn, unscented clothes over to the Sun Wah Centre…
Long Live Kings Banner

Long Live Kings

Long Live Kings — Directed by Romi Kim | June 22, 1pm | SUM gallery | Free | Long Live Kings is a multi-episode series that puts a much needed spotlight on the vibrant Drag King scene on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples (aka Vancouver)….
Presenting a Trio of Events in Partnership with Vancouver International Jazz Festival
Bruno Hubert Trio With Brad Turner Banner

Bruno Hubert Trio with Brad Turner

Bruno Hubert Trio with Brad Turner | Granville Island Jazz | June 25, 2pm | Performance Works | Pay-What-You-Wish Bruno Hubert is one of Canada’s most expressive jazz pianists, with a deep sense of swing and melody that evokes Erroll Garner, Herbie Hancock, and Bill Evans—while always remaining unmistakably Bruno!…
Raagaverse Banner

Raagaverse featuring Cassius Khan

Raagaverse featuring Cassius Khan | Granville Island Jazz | June 26, 8:30pm | Ocean Artworks | $15 at the door 2025 JUNO nominees for Jazz Album of the Year (Group), creative Indo-Jazz fusion band Raagaverse pays homage to two historical and culturally-significant genres: classical Hindustani music and jazz. Led by vocalist…
Allie Lynn King, Nate McBride and Kenton Loewen banner

Allie Lynn King, Nate McBride, and Kenton Loewen

Allie Lynn King, Nate McBride, and Kenton Loewen | Granville Island Jazz | June 28, 5pm | Revue Stage | Pay-What-You-Wish Anchored in improvisation, Vancouver guitarist Allie Lynn King blends the roots of blues and jazz with the heaviness of doom metal and the abrasion of noise. Bassist Nate McBride…

Queer Arts Festival 2025: PORTALS

Plans are well underway for Queer Arts Festival 2025: PORTALS. The full festival line-up will be announced very soon, but in the meantime, we’re excited to share one of our guest artists: accordionist and visual artist Erica Roozendaal (Netherlands), who will present her one-person show, NACHTUIL / Night Owl, in partnership with Vancouver Intercultural Orchestra.

NACHTUIL / Night Owl

Daan is thirty years old, six years old, ten, fifteen… All at the same time.

Daan lives in an ordinary village. In an ordinary house with a father and a mother. She goes to public school, enjoys  going to gym and music lessons. And her favorite activity is making beautiful things with her imagination; music, drawings or stories.

All sorts of things happen that she can’t explain. For example, she feels all kinds of things she doesn’t want to feel, very strange, but these feelings sometimes come out of the blue. As if someone else enters her body and takes over control! At times she gets the blame for things that happen, that she has nothing to do with. And sleeping… seems impossible, because at night she hears all kinds of voices that just never shut up. Only when she dares to really listen to what she actually hears in the night does she find out why she just won’t sleep and why so many unexplainable things happen.

Night owl is a beautiful and moving performance for ages ten and up that subtly addresses the theme of incest and growing up in an unsafe environment. Erica Roozendaal—performer, visual artist, and accordionist—wrote the script and performs the monologue in a restrained, captivating manner while alternating with playing the accordion.

Catalogue Carousel

Share