Tue Jul 27, 5pm
Visual Art Tour | Sun Wah 268 Keefer, Lower Ground Floor
Come together for our Visual Art Tour of our exhibition it’s not easy being green, with the curators Jeffrey McNeil-Seymour and SD Holman + guest artists.
Mon Jul 26 – throughout festival
Digital Discourse | Online
In the connective void that has been this pandemic pause, QAF takes you on a few house calls. We visit with several festival artists in their creation spaces, a digital dialogue to allow a connection from the artist in their corner of space to you and where you call your place
Participating artists:
Carrie Hawks – Jul 26, 7:30pm (ASL)
Falak Vasa – Jul 27, 7:30pm
Alvin Erasga Tolentino – Jul 29, 7:30pm
Lili Robinson – Jul 30, 7:30pm (ASL)
Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa & Evan Ducharme – Aug 1, 7:30pm (ASL)
Eva Wong & Naoko Fukumaru – Aug 3, 7:30pm
Tejal Shah – Aug 3, 8:30pm
Zachery Longboy – Aug 9, 7pm
Ho Tam – Aug 11, 7pm
Sat Jul 31 | 9 pm
Media Art Screening | SUM & Sun Wah 268 Keefer Rooftop
Curated by QAF Associate Artistic Director Fergie and Programs Coordinator Ben! Rooftop screening of edutainment for the pandemic — very queer and rather green short films.
Animation and environmentalism share a more than passing connection for many of us. From celebrated ecocentric blockbusters like Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke and Pixar’s WALL-E to popular children’s programming such as Captain Planet and The Lorax, environmental protection is a memorable recurring theme within the medium for multiple generations. As a message, environmentalism presents an approachable moral framework for education and entertainment; the earth is beautiful and sacred and those who wish it harm must be challenged because hurting the planet hurts us all. These programs told us to hold ‘eco-villains’ responsible, and fight for the planet and the little guy. They taught us that we were ‘the little guy’. Both timeless and timely, it is a vital concern to implant in the minds of future generations, and the fact this message is frequently brought to life through the medium of animation feels incidental yet brimming with significance.
Recently animation and queerness have been dancing a similar dance, repeating motions inherited from their environmentalist predecessors. Likewise brought together by radical movements—both figurative and literal—queer animation garners the attention of an accepting audience with a timely message rooted in progressivism and compassion. Viewing such lessons through the lens of queerness, our generation saw that queerness was a fight against the same cruel forces that sought to destroy the earth. That we too could thrive and flower if we removed poisonous villains from the equation. After all, queers are beautiful and sacred and those who wish us harm must be challenged because hurting queers hurts us all.
Further still, queer animation feels different, more synergistic, more compelling, more substantial. Some have argued that animation has always been queer, exhibiting a methodology compounded by the fluidity of a medium capable of unlimited orientation, by the immeasurable joy of saturated pigments in a hypercolour cornucopia, by the unmistakable touch of the human hand embodied within every frame. It expands us and imbuing animation with joyous queer futures is radical self love, a beautiful statement of queer justice. Queer animators ‘imagine, envision, and describe new ontologies and actively depict them in a way that demands participation’; animation becomes a group exercise, trusting in our ability to question and learn, apply learning, and share said learning. When we embrace the cartoonishly queer, we share in queer liberation.
Mon Aug 2 | 8 pm
Literary Readings | SUM & Sun Wah 268 Keefer Rooftop
Curated by Josie Boyce, slip into a little green something and enjoy readings by Vancouverite writers.
Queerotica is Apocalypterotica, in all the best possible ways. Survival through living your truth amidst the world wishing you wouldn’t. That’s us, singing, dancing and freeing our spirits in the ways we are able to given the apocalyptic death urge of humanity. Poetry, Performance, and spoken word at the end of the world, or is it the end of the word? It’s not easy being green, is it? Green in the punk sense, being as respectful to the stolen land (aka unceded) beneath you, and around you, the hierarchies of people here at the end of the world. But we can and we do scream queerotica at the structures around us creating our own language of performance. Queerotica need not be sexual or romantic in order to be erotic, and vice versa. Blowing minds since forever, and into never, our desires stoke hopeful fires lighting the Apocalypse of now. – Josie Boyce
This event is ASL Interpreted.
Sat Aug 7 | 8 pm
Dance and Music Performance | Mountain View Cemetery
*NEW* ONLINE | Tue Aug 10 | 24 hours
When Japanese folk tradition meets punk, audience members are invited to commune with the ancestors via Obon dance, song, sensu (fan) cheerleading, fue, shamisen and kick-ass taiko.
Please note: Due to the use of incense, this event cannot be considered scent-reduced.
Onibana Taiko 鬼束太鼓 are three Nikkei veterans of Vancouver’s taiko community, whose performances draw from Japanese traditional arts, festival drumming, and folk music and dance, all with a touch of feminist queer punk aesthetics. Onibana is a type of flower that grows in the grave sites of Japan. Through taiko, the group seeks to transform shadowy elements into beauty, bridging the divide so as to commune with our ancestors with song, dance, shamisen, flute, and kick-ass taiko.
Alvin Erasga Tolentino is a Filipino Canadian choreographer and dance artist, and the founding Artistic Director of Vancouver’s Co.ERASGA. His dance creations are driven from the need to intricately illustrate the human experience of light and dark and the infinitely complex relationship between nature and humanity. His choreography challenges the exploration of hybridity to reveal the private and public territory, identity, gender and the issues within the traditional and contemporary cross-cultural dialogue.
Fri Aug 13 | 7 – 10pm
Closing Party | SUM & Sun Wah 268 Keefer Rooftop
Join us for the festival closing with DJ O Show and your last chance to see all the art @ QAF 2021with us at the Sun Wah Centre, from the basement, to the SUM gallery, to the rooftop (take it all in!! the art, the views!!).
This event is ASL Interpreted.
Sat Jul 24 – Fri Aug 13
Community Art Showcase | Online
The digital culmination of the Kindred Spirits digital artist residency run by and for 2Spirit and Indigiqueer artists. Guided by Faculty members Dayna Danger, DJ O Show, Raven Davis and Art Auntie Shane Sable, this digital exhibition focuses on re-storying 2Spirit identities and futures through community connection and self-portraiture beyond colonial constructs.
Participated artists TBA.
Sat July 24 – Fri Aug 13, daily from 12 – 6pm
Visual Art | SUM & Sun Wah 268 Keefer, 4th Floor
The exhibition is open to the public and free to view in the SUM gallery (4th floor) of the Sun Wah Centre for the duration of the festival, open Tue – Sat from 12 – 6pm.
Each year, the Pride in Art Community Show honours Pride in Art founder, activist, and Two-Spirit artist Robbie Hong’s legacy with an open community exhibition.
Paris, 1863: A group of artists whose works had been rejected by the selection committee of the official Salon protested so vigorously the Emperor Napoleon III, ‘wishing to let the public judge the legitimacy of these complaints’, ordered a special exhibition. The resulting exhibition, the Salon des Refusés revolutionized how European art was viewed and consumed.
Vancouver, 1998: The Pride In Art Society forms as a collective of queer visual artists mounting an annual community art exhibition. PiA works to celebrate the rich heritage of queer artists and art.
Vancouver, 2021: At this year’s Pride in Art Community Show, we’re celebrating our continued and stubbornly vibrant survival. As part of QAF 2021 Dispersed: it’s not easy being green, we’re throwing what was once refused up on our walls. A Salon des Refusés, works that were not ‘right’ in other exhibitions- too loud, too quiet, too queer, too normative, too much, too little. All those works that we were told couldn’t fit, we’re reclaiming as gold.
Featured Artists:
Joyelle Goldbard
Romain Berger
Brian Ball
Edward Bader
Jason Russell Young
El Chenier
Josie Boyce
Ilena Lee
James Lauder
Olivier Salvas
Alex Murphy
Rose Anza-Burgess
Lesha Koop
Holly Steele
&
MORE!
Wed Jul 28 | 7:30 pm
Workshop | SUM gallery or Online
Falak Vasa leads us in a pillow-making workshop, based off of their own series of pillows created during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic offering small comforts that are controllable.
This event is ASL Interpreted.
Artist Statement
This workshop is about comforts. What makes you comfortable when everything feels harsh? What parts of your body are calling for care? Which sections of the walls in your home are softest?
Through the pandemic, I have been making pillows for parts of my home and my body that have required some extra tender love and care. Imagining home as an extension of the body, I have been making pillows the shape of my forehead, pillows for my toe, pillows for walls that are a little too hard, pillows with embroidered affirmations.
In this workshop, we will explore these questions of comfort, softness, and more, through writing prompts and conversation. You are also welcome to bring any embroidery materials you’d like to make a pillow of your own during the workshop.
homes are bodies
and pillows
pimples;
homes are bodies
and fissures
fissures;
suture, stitch, stuff
suture, stitch, stuff
suture, stitch, stuff
Thu Aug 5 & Fri Aug 6 | 7pm
Workshop | Online
“Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”~ JBS Haldane in his 1927 essay, Possible Worlds
In this two-part interactive workshop we will explore the fine line between what we conventionally consider as illusions (such as a mirage) and that which we consider as ‘reality’. How real is reality? How real are our feelings & emotions?
If all existence is illusion-like as expounded by various eastern philosophical systems – something that we can infer through reasoning & have an embodied experience of – what impact can this potentially have on our emotional world, our behaviour, our actions and ethics?
The nondual wisdom of interdependence & the practices available to develop a sense of unconditional friendliness towards all beings (and things) couldn’t be more relevant than now when we are undergoing tectonic shifts in life as we know it. At the heart of these changes, what is at stake are our relationships & our affect. How can we relate & how would we relate if the boundaries between self & other dissolve? How does this impact our work as artists as we touch ‘others’ through every sensory and mental means available to us? What innate kinship do queers share with nonduality as a mode of life?
TEJAL SHAH, currently lives in Himachal Pradesh, India
Tejal’s practice consistently challenges the legible by occupying liminal spaces between fact, fiction and poetry. Working across diverse media such as video, photography, performance, installation and educational projects, Shah positions themself at the intersection of queer ecology, feminism and nondual Buddhist philosophy. Exploring the notions of “trans-”—with regard to gender and sexuality, but also to national or cultural identity—Shah’s work inhabits the position of the in-between as a means to destabilise the complacency of status quos. Theirs is an invitation to examine the relationship between power and knowledge, learned social and political behaviour, and the construction of norms.
Phase 1 of Mass Reincarnation of Wish Fragments 願片大量転生 (Ganhen Tairyou Tensei)
Workshop | Wed Aug 4, 6pm | SUM gallery & Online
With Artists: Naoko Fukumaru and Eva Wong
An ancient Japanese folk tale promises that anyone who folds 1000 paper cranes will have their wish answered by the gods. In this project, these wishes are instead carried by the wings of butterflies, a symbol with many intricate meanings. In chaos theory, the flapping of a butterfly’s wings is said to be able to cause storms on the other side of the world, a statement that one individual is capable of bringing about great change. In biology, the butterfly hatching process symbolizes rebirth, a new life, coming out, and the transformation into something beautiful, common themes in 2SLGBTQ+ culture and especially the transgender experience.
During phase one, Naoko Fukumaru and Eva Wong host a workshop where participants learn to create origami and are shown how to utilize the ink bleeding process to create a butterfly with their own unique patterns and colors. The end goal is to collect 1000 butterflies before moving on to the next phase. This workshop is open to anyone who wants to participate, and where they can submit their own pieces of Origami to be included as part of the installation at SUM galley in the fall. This workshop can either be attended virtually, or in-person at SUM gallery. Space in-gallery is limited.
Naoko Fukumaru and Eva Wong bring together a wide array of diverse interrelated artistic practices in a collaborative process that highlights each of their extensive skill sets to create a work that objects into a unified expression of transformation. Naoko professionally trained in the conservation techniques of both Japanese and European traditions to restore precious objects d’art while exposing the actual procedure of restoration as in the traditional art of which highlights the repair with gold known as Kintsugi. While highlighting the techniques as creative embellishments to expose the experience of metamorphosis into a new work of art. Eva brings her extensive knowledge of origami and gaming development to turn richly painted papers with geometric shapes and astrological symbols into butterflies and flowers. Eva and Naoko come together in an original installation that reveals the transformation process as a dynamic innovative art form, using old roots to bring forth new leaves. Their work has a profound emotionally healing, intensely felt ability of turning complicated ruptures into more enduring experiences of emerging beauty.
Future programming in the works.
Visual art Curator: Jonny Sopotiuk
July 16 – July 26, 2020
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.
2020 Events
