Shaira (SD) Holman, 2014 YWCA Women of Distinction Award Winner

BY ECUAD, Published Wed, June 4, 2014 1:00 pm EDTORIGINAL ARTICLE: http://www.ecuad.ca/about/news/313320

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Shaira (SD) Holman (’92) is the recipient of a 2014 YWCA Women of Distinction Award for her work as Co-founder/Artistic Director of Vancouver’s Queer Arts Festival.

The festival, now one of the fastest growing cultural festivals in Canada, was started by Holman seven years ago. She initally started Pride in Art (the name of the initial exhibition) because she felt there was nowhere else at the time for her to pursue art on identity.

The YWCA Women of Distinction Awards honours individuals and organizations whose outstanding activities and achievements contribute to the well-being and future of our community.

Holman plans to take a sabbatical year to focus on other projects.

We congratulate her on this wonderful achievement!

Published in Vancity Buzz, March 06, 2015
By Jill Slattery

For International Women’s Day, we thought we’d celebrate some local women doing great things in Vancouver and around the world. They are either owning their industry, volunteering their time for amazing causes or lending their talents to support other women in the community.

To view full article, click here

Published in Vancity Buzz, March 06, 2015
By Jill Slattery

For International Women’s Day, we thought we’d celebrate some local women doing great things in Vancouver and around the world. They are either owning their industry, volunteering their time for amazing causes or lending their talents to support other women in the community.

To view full article, click here

Published in Westender, February 26, 2015

Queer Arts Festival makes the list for Best of the City in the visual arts category.

It’s no secret that Vancouver is best place to live in the world. Heck, we know it, that’s why we live here! Vancouver has a lot going for it: there’s the majestic mountains, the ocean, the beaches, the parks, and the untamed wilderness at our doorstep.

But what makes Vancouver a truly great city is more than good looks and fortuitous geography. It’s the people who make this multicultural metropolis what it is today. It’s our friends, our families, our neighbours that make Vancouver the best place on Earth.

So for the 18th year in a row, Westender has asked you, the people of Vancouver, our readers, to tell us what makes this city so special. This year a record number of people took part in the online poll, proving once again that Vancouverites love their city, and they’re not afraid to say so.

Robert Mangelsdorf,
Editor, Westender

See more in Westender post.

Posted in OutTV January 2, 2015
By David Jones

There are so many Vancouver queers that inspire me, make me jealous, or simply make me smile.

Be they loving, passionate, tenacious, controversial, creative or political they capture my imagination and touched my heart. It’s an entirely personal and eclectic list and for some sense of symmetry it’s in alphabetical order.

Here they are My Top Ten Queers of The Year Vancouver 2014. View link HERE.

Excerpt from SD Holman and Rachael Iwaasa: These remarkable people have discovered, nurtured and featured artists across a wide range of disciplines at the Queer Arts Festival while being accomplished artists themselves.

By Robert Mangelsdorf – Published July 30, 2014

Throughout history, tyrants have banned “degenerate” artists or artworks under the argument that they posed an imminent danger to the social fabric. The theme of Queer Arts Festival is a defiant response to that.

ReGenerations, which opened July 23 and runs until Aug. 9, embraces the premise that art can be dangerous, even revolutionary. In the intimate act of sharing, both artists and audiences find meaning, transformation, and the strength to enact change.

This year’s festival brings together artists from over 20 countries navigating queer identity across the international diaspora, speaks to healing and renewal by addressing topics such as addiction, and provides solidarity for those struggling for queer rights.

The festival’s remaining highlights include:

Alien Sex

Tentacles wrestle the sexual status quo; secret identity exposes itself; and the Empire is challenged by authentic expression in a work that mixes whimsy, savage poetry, heartbreaking vulnerability and B-movie joy.

Get your alien on in this transdisciplinary evening, featuring the work-in-progress presentation of Alien Sex. Come dressed in an outfit original to your planet of origin. Prizes will be awarded to the best-dressed queer aliens.

Actor/director and Alien Sex instigator David Bloom brings together an exciting team in a multi-genre, multi-generational feast. The all-star cast features Vancouver genderqueer creators Olivia B (performance poet/tap dancer) and Floyd VB (performance poet/visual artist), propelled by the visceral and immutable life force of taiko drummer Eileen Kage, composer/dancer/video artist Sammy Chien, actor/dancer/visual and performance artist Robert Leveroos, and photo-based artist/actor SD Holman (of BUTCH: Not like the other girls).

Drawing upon energetic interpretations of the transgressive BDSM poet Linda Smukler/Samuel Ace and the divisive heterosexual playwright David Mamet, gay, lesbian, bi, queer, straight, vanilla, kinky and yet-to-be-named perspectives collide in a speculative fiction that explores the beautiful, and sometimes inexplicable territory of human sexuality.

July 31 at 7:30-9:30 pm; $20 (all funds raised go to support the Pride in Art Society); 181 Roundhouse Mews 

I Sing The Body Electric: Walt Whitman and The Beat Generation

Just in time for Pride weekend, Erato Ensemble’s I Sing the Body Electric celebrates the queer spirit of Walt Whitman and the Beat Generation, who dared to express an individual language and lifestyle in the midst of the conservative social mores of their times, changing our culture forever.

Walt Whitman’s poetry is the basis for an emotional love story of two men – from meeting, to falling in love, to separation by war and death. Music by Kurt Weill, Charles Naginski, William George and world premieres by Lloyd Burritt and Ben Schuman. The Beat poets Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Diane Di Prima inspire new works by David Del Tredici, David Sisco, Jerome Kitzke, Steven Ebel, Anthony Ocaña, a “Beat Madrigal,” and a world premiere by Catherine Laub.

Aug. 1, 7:30-9:30 pm; $30 General Admission; $15 Youth/Seniors/Underemployed; 181 Roundhouse Mews

Queering the International 

QAF’s signature visual arts exhibition, Queering the International, features a lineup of established and emerging artists from around the globe who are immigrant, indigenous, undocumented, displaced.

Recent homophobic events in Russia, India, Uganda, and elsewhere have made it timely to highlight artists who address queer identity on an international scale, and whose work celebrates the complex human condition. 

Queering the International asks the artists, “What is queer, what is international, what is your diaspora, and what is identity?”

Brought together by the curatorial talents of Zimbabwe-born Laiwan and curatorial assistant Anne Riley, who is of Dene/Cree ancestry, it features artists from a range of nations including Brazil, Canada, the Cree Nation, Guatemala, Guyana, the Haudenosaunee Territories, Hawaii, Hong Kong, India, Iran, Russia, South Africa, Trinidad, the United States, and more, covering a breadth of viewpoints and perspectives from queers near and far.

Until Aug. 9; by donation, gallery hours 10:30am-10pm weekdays; 10:30am-4:30pm weekends; 181 Roundhouse Mews 

By Craig Takeuchi – Published on July 25 2014

Original Article: HERE

AT THE OPENING party of the Queer Arts Festival on July 23 at the Roundhouse Community Centre, Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson gave a quick recapitulation of the struggles for LGBT rights and issues that Vancouverites took part in over the past year.

In his speech to attendees, Robertson spoke about how councillor Tim Stevenson advocated for LGBT rights in Sochi and talked about the gains made locally for transgender people.

“We’ve been thrilled to have our park board commissioner Trevor Loke create the first transgender and gender variant working group at the Park Board looking at our community facilities around the city and our parks,” he said to the audience, “and [are] really proud of our city school board, which is led by Patti Bacchus, and [who] have done an enormous amount of work standing up for our kids, queer kids in our schools. It’s been a really tough, tough battle, fighting a lot of hatred and a lot of bullying, and we have persevered and we do have some really strong policies in our schools now to look after our kids going forward.”

He went on to talk about what role the arts play in facing these challenges.

“This is, I think, what really recharges us all. The arts are so crucial to inspire and motivate us, and replenish us, because it’s not easy out there. It’s a tough world at times and we’re just thrilled to be able to have the Roundhouse full of all of this beautiful art, and the activism, the passion, the important rights that we all stand for represented so well here.”

The idea of replenishment synchronized perfectly with the festival theme: ReGenerations.

The festival takes its name from the Nazi term “Degenerate Art”, which posited art by the avant-garde, and Jewish and queer people as threats to society. The festival reclaims the idea that art can be challenging as a way to transform and regenerate society.

This year’s festival highlights cross-generational collaborations between artists from numerous countries, including Australia, Brazil, the Cree Nation, Guatemala, Hong Kong, India, Iran, Mexico, the Philippines, Russia, South Africa, Trinidad, Zimbabwe, and more.

This year’s visual art exhibit, which ranges from photography and video work to installations and mixed media, emphasizes the global outlook of the festival with its title: Queering the International.

Interdiscplinary artist Laiwan, who curated the exhibit with assistant Anne Riley, told the Georgia Straight that the opening event was her first chance to take in the exhibit as a whole.

“What’s really exciting for me is to now stand back and look at how the works speak to each other because I haven’t had the opportunity to see them together in one space,” she said. “I’m hoping new  conversations come out of this, particularly to enliven Vancouver.”

Laiwan observed that many of the queer artists in the exhibition are expanding their outlook, by addressing subjects such as ecology or indigenous issues, that aren’t often connected to queerness. She noted that intersectionality is a recurring element of many of the art works.

“I think what’s really interesting is to see how different queer artists make all different work and yet they all come from a very similar place of wanting a new consciousness or a new liberation and also to push what we understand as queer.”

By Jon Keller – Published July 28 2014

Australian performer Sunny Drake’s one-man show “X” closes out a trio of performances tonight as part of this year’s Queer Arts Festival at the Roundhouse.

In the hour-long spectacle, Drake employs everything from stop-motion animation to puppetry while portraying a conversation between a young girl and her friend. The characters struggle with sexual identity, addictions, their obsession with Kylie Minogue, and their relationship with parents.

Having transitioned from a female to a male, Drake spent 18 months creating “X” as a personal tale of his transsexuality and the methods used to cope. The play is far from a downer though. Drake’s work is honest, but also whimsical and accessible. The subjects tackled are serious ones, but the performer is endearing to watch. With his happy Aussie accent, he pulls off his one-man show with dramatic skill and humour, creating a truly unique hour of LGBT performance art.

An artistic blend of this kind is rare to see, and Vancouver’s burgeoning Queer Arts Festival is the place to see it. The final performance of “X” is tonight.

Queer Arts Festival 2014 Presents “X”

When: Monday, July 28 at 7:30 p.m.

Where: Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre – 181 Roundhouse Mews, Vancouver

Queer Arts Festival 2014: ReGenerations

When: July 23 to August 9, 2014

By Natasha Barsotti – Published on July 25, 2014.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE: HERE

After writing his name in capital letters on my cheat sheet of questions, Salvador Ramirez Perez begins to explain why he changed his mind about being an anonymous interviewee, but his emotions temporarily snatch the words from his throat.

“I shouldn’t have no fear,” he eventually — tearfully — blurts out.

“I shouldn’t . . .”

Revealing his name is proof that he is part of the community, he asserts, something he felt he couldn’t fully be as a gay man in his native Mexico, where he was physically attacked several times, or later in the United States, where he made an unsuccessful bid to start a new life.

“Mexico is supposed to be okay, but it is not really okay,” says Ramirez Perez, who left his country in 1989. “There’s still a lot of people in the closet; their lives are not safe. Socially, there is a lot of pressure and a lot of stress.”

Now a member of Rainbow Refugee, Ramirez Perez, who has been in Canada for just over three years, was one of 10 participants who got together weekly in April and May to unpack their stories as queer refugees and commit them to canvas.

Now hanging in the main hall of the Roundhouse Community Centre as part of the annual Queer Arts Festival,Seeking Protection Is Not a Crime reverberates with bold colour that, upon further exploration, reveals a weaving, robust tree, scattered messages of hope and relief, memories of discrimination, maple leaves — and a riot of butterflies.

“We represented with the tree our roots and where we came from and then all the struggles we’ve been through,” says Mira Ghattas, one of the project’s four facilitators. “We represented us opening up and sharing stories and being ourselves with these butterflies.”

For Ghattas, the butterflies symbolize the participants’ geographical and emotional transformation. “These butterflies are like opening up to the new destination where we are also struggling to settle down, but at least here we are working to be who we are, to create a sense of belonging with each other.”

High-profile Montenegrin activist Zdravko Cimbaljevic also helped facilitate the project. He says monarch butterflies, which cover thousands of miles when they migrate, were the guiding motif.

“We all come from different countries and different cultures, and we all travel so long, so the butterflies were our inspiration,” he explains.

Ghattas, who left Jordan for Canada two years ago, describes the experience of “leaving everything you know” to start a new life as akin to a disaster. “When you have all these emotions, and you live more than half of your life in silence, and you can’t speak out and you can’t be yourself and live the way you want, it makes you numb,” she explains.

Ghattas says she and local artist Melanie Schambach came up with the idea for the project as a way of encouraging participants to feel comfortable in their own skin and to accommodate adversity in their lives.

“It was emotional going back over again what happened to me, not only listening to others about what they had to say about their own journeys,” recalls Cimbaljevic, who was granted asylum in Canada in November. Finding a way to express that in art is difficult — “harder than words,” he says. “How can you tell a terrible story that happened to you so others watching and observing can understand?”

When he began contemplating what he would paint on his butterfly, he says, the dominant images reflected past trauma.

“There was a bunch of people throwing rocks, lots of stones flying towards my butterfly, blood all over. That was my experience, and I needed to share it in that way. My butterfly was not that colourful; it was more dark and unaccepted.”

Cimbaljevic says the mural is a distinctive piece because it represents greater inclusion of refugees in art and in social development, where he feels they generally lack prominence. The project contributes to refugees’ social acceptance, he adds, expressing the hope that more LGBT refugees and migrants will be able to participate in the future.

Ghattas echoes Cimbaljevic’s hope. She says the mural’s presence at the festival is “huge.”

“When you go really, really close to it, you can see true colours — of rejection, true colours of acceptance, sad, happy,” Cimbaljevic says. “It’s not only art; it’s actually how that person feels doing it.”© Copyright (c) Xtra! Vancouver

Noëlie Vannier // Culture, Festivals // Volume 15, Édition 2 – 8 juillet au 26 août 2014

Quoi de plus banal que de voir un couple homosexuel se tenir par la main à Vancouver. Sans stigmatisation, une multitude de façons de vivre sa sexualité existe bel et bien dans cette ville. A partir du 23 juillet et pour trois semaines, le festival Queer Arts Festival s’offre le droit de montrer et de célébrer les arts et les cultures queers, entre héritage et regards tournés vers demain !

Pour cette 5e édition, le Queer Arts Festival honore des artistes, confirmés ou débutants, âgés de 18 à 80 ans, venant de 27 pays (Australie, Russie, Iran, Canada, États-Unis…) et rassemblés sous le thème des « RéGénérations », ou comment se réinventer tout en transmettant son héritage. Pour Rachel Iwaasa, directrice artistique de la section théâtre, cet événement est l’occasion « de montrer la diversité des communautés queer et de sensibiliser sur leur apport dans la culture grand public. La culture est un moyen efficace de sortir de la marginalisation. » Le programme pertinent du festival vient questionner les limites de la société à travers des performances scéniques (danse, théâtre, chant, littérature), des expositions, des films ou encore des ateliers.

Définir la communauté queer est pour ainsi dire impossible tant elle se révèle diverse : bisexuels, homosexuels, transsexuels, intersexuels, troisième genre, groupes en-dehors des normes sexuelles. Si tous s’identifient sous l’appellation queer, il n’en demeure pas moins qu’ils n’ont pas les mêmes combats. L’importance d’être reconnu comme artiste queer leur permet de défendre un patrimoine. Pour 2014, l’intergénérationnel fait émerger de nouvelles perspectives, notamment artistiques.

L’héritage de la culture queer

Cette année les différentes générations sont mises à contribution. Objectif : travailler ensemble pour générer et régénérer le courant artistique queer, mais pas seulement, car derrière l’art se trouve l’engagement ! Des ponts ouvrant à la discussion. D’après Rachel,
« ce ne sont pas les plus âgés qui enseignent aux plus jeunes, tous apportent quelque chose. L’héritage est immense, 80% de la culture provient de la culture queer : Shakespeare, de Vinci ! C’est une contribution à ne pas négliger dans la culture grand public d’aujourd’hui ! »

Sur place, on retrouvera Olivia B, une jeune artiste vancouvéroise de 21 ans qui mélange le chant, la danse et le théâtre. Elle se dit « inspirée » par le contact avec des artistes issus du monde entier, de divers milieux et de diverses générations. Sa seconde participation lui donne ainsi l’occasion de soutenir un festival jeune tout en développant son art : « J’espère que je participe à l’ouverture d’esprit des gens, je fais de mon mieux pour faire progresser les choses. »

Une vision de l’international

Un des temps fort de cette édition sera l’exposition visuelle Queering the International, portée par l’artiste interdisciplinaire de renom Laiwan, qui a su regrouper des artistes de 21 pays pour sensibiliser et alerter sur la condition queer dans le monde. Aborder l’identité queer d’un point de vue international procure une autre dimension au festival. Plus que les communautés queers, ce sont des questionnements d’humanité qui se posent.

Les travaux proposés sont différents du fait qu’ils répondent à des problématiques différentes, ce qui multiplie les visions. Ainsi, l’artiste indien Tejal Shah travaille sur les stéréotypes, ou encore l’artiste sud-africaine Zanele Muholi qui explore la condition lesbienne et les violences subies. A travers ces collaborations, ce sont des plateformes artistiques qui naissent. Comme le souligne Laiwan : « Il s’agit de savoir comment construire le futur en s’appuyant sur le passé. Le passé est une base de travail pour comprendre quelles peuvent être les possibilités de demain. »

La dimension politique peut faire émerger de nouveaux artistes par nécessité de défendre des causes. Laiwan pense que pour Vancouver, « le temps est venu d’ouvrir les yeux : regarder la condition queer ici et voir ce qui ce passe à l’étranger, les gens sont prêts pour le changement ! ». Et quoi de mieux que l’art justement pour éduquer ? « C’est un moyen plus gai et accessible à tous qui suscite la curiosité, et donc attire les regards. C’est un beau moyen de le faire, avec empathie et poésie ! »

Queer Arts Festival :
ReGenerations. Dare to be challenged. Risk being changed.
Du 23 juillet au 9 août
The Roundhouse Community Arts & Recreation Centre