Queer Arts Festival

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.