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 Mark Takeshi McGregor. Celebrate with art, community, and irresistible beats by guest DJ OShow, as we celebrate QTBIPOC resilience and creativity. Come early, stay late, pay-what-you-wish. All are welcome in this gateway to new possibilities!
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
Presenting a Trio of Events in Partnership with Vancouver International Jazz Festival
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.
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.
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!
