Queer Arts Festival
ASL interpretation has been booked for this event.
Renowned curator Jonathan D. Katz and curated artists lead audiences through Drama Queer: seducing social change.
Entry to all QAF events requires membership to the Pride in Art Society. Memberships are available for $2 online, or a $1-$5 slide scale at the door. Please allow a few extra minutes at your first event to obtain your new card.
For queer youth, the defence of our identities is wrapped into survival. Self portraiture, a.k.a. Selfies, are a grounding mechanism and an easy route to self compassion and empowerment. This workshop encourages the mixing and blending of these two genres, drawing no difference between art history and contemporary visual media. Participants will walk away with works of art that combine text + imagery printed on an antique letterpress, in addition to new skills in self reflection and letterpress printing. No experience in either is necessary.
This workshop will take place over two days, Friday June 24 and Sunday June 26, starting at 2:30PM on each day.
Free of charge. Space is limited: click HERE to register using our online form.
WePress Vancouver WePress is social enterprise community makerspace that provides access to equipment and training for DTES residents & organizations in Vancouver, BC.
The late teens and early 20s are often a time of uncertainty and self-identification. We struggle to figure out who we are, who we want to be and how we can embody that to the world.
QAF and MACHiNENOiSY create opportunities for the next generation of artists and strengthen queer and allied youth through creation processes that explore identity, gender and community, culminating in this performance at the Queer Arts Festival.
Young and Queer, Here and Now give voice to queer and allied youth within a professional arts platform and demonstrate how dance performance can be a catalyst for liberation, self-development & social change.
Entry to all QAF events requires membership to the Pride in Art Society. Memberships are available for $2 online, or a $1-$5 slide scale at the door. Please allow a few extra minutes at your first event to obtain your new card.
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Tickets $30/$15 concession
A Gossamer Bit celebrates the longstanding association between the Toronto based ensemble Contact and lesbian composer Allison Cameron. A kaleidoscopic fusion of elements as disparate as minimalism, avant-garde jazz and Charles Ives, Cameron’s music is spacious, introspective and hypnotic. Released on CD in May 2015 on the Vancouver label Redshift Records, A Gossamer Bit is an immersive exploration of Cameron’s diverse output. This concert program also features works by Ann Southam, Julius Eastman, Jerry Pergolesi, and John Cage.Members:
Nick Bobas, bass
Mary-Katherine Finch, cello
Sarah Fraser Raff, violin/viola
Wallace Halladay, saxophones
Rob MacDonald, guitars
Jerry Pergolesi, percussion
Allison Wiebe Benstead, piano/keyboards
Artistic Direction:
Jerry Pergolesi
Rob MacDonald
Entry to all QAF events requires membership to the Pride in Art Society. Memberships are available for $2 online, or a $1-$5 slide scale at the door. Please allow a few extra minutes at your first event to obtain your new card.
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ASL interpretation has been booked for this event.
Queer Noise is a program of Canadian media art which combines presentation and dialogue to explore political intention in contemporary queer work. The evening will include short film and video curated by media artist E Hearte and featuring the work of artists: Abstract Random, kimura byol-nathalie lemoine and Lamathilde, Kami Chisholm, T.L. Cowan, Thirza Cuthand, Martin Edralin, Blair Fukumura, Rémy Huberdeau, Larose S. Larose, Elisha Lim, Joseph Medaglia, Kent Monkman, Iris Moore, Scott Fitzpatrick, and Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers. The program will be followed by a roundtable discussion led by Paul Wong with Thirza Cuthand, Blair Fukumura, and E Hearte.
Community Partners: Vancouver Indigenous Media Arts Festival, Kickstart Disability Arts & Culture and VIVO Media Arts Centre
Entry to all QAF events requires membership to the Pride in Art Society. Memberships are available for $2 online, or a $1-$5 slide scale at the door. Please allow a few extra minutes at your first event to obtain your new card. Brown Paper Tickets Ticket Widget Loading… Click Here to visit the Brown Paper Tickets event page.
Tenor Frédérik Robert performs as iconic French singer Edith Piaf, accompanied by a silent film directed by Alan Corbishley. Desperate to be loved and understood, Vancouver drag queen Ed becomes obsessed with the tragic life of Edith Piaf, paints himself in her likeness, and much like Edith herself, becomes a creation of the streets. Frédérik has been honing his Piaf persona since 2008, twice performing at QAF, and we are pleased to now present the full-length show. Artist talkback to follow.
Entry to all QAF events requires membership to the Pride in Art Society. Memberships are available for $2 online, or a $1-$5 slide scale at the door. Please allow a few extra minutes at your first event to obtain your new card.
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ASL interpretation has been booked for this event.
SAD Mag presents the Queer Arts Festival’s final blowout—revel in community, effervescent refreshments, karaoke and DRAG! Glue on your glitter beards and get down to the Waldorf for glitter-licious performances by:
ROSE BUTCH
ALMA BITCHES
and GRIMM (the reigning champion of the 2016 Mr/Miss Cobalt Competition)!
Hosted by the infamous Shanda Leer, this is a queer party you’re not gonna wanna miss!
Tickets are available HERE.
Accessibility Info:
The party is being held in the Tabu Room, with the west side patio entrance. Entrance is double doors (exact width pending) with 6 stairs going down into the Tabu room where bathrooms are accessed. There are an additional 6 stairs to get down to the dance floor. If you have any concerns or questions, please contact hello@sadmag.ca
Queewritica: Erotic writing on libido’s continuum. No matter the genre, no matter your level of experience on or off the page, if you’re writing about sex, we want you to come. Be your boner micro or macro or no bone at all, Queewritica can take it. From dried up to dripping wet, all levels of moistness are wanted.
Write libido’s continuum with us at the Roundhouse Board Room on the first Tuesday of every month.
This event is ASL interpreted and free of charge.
Queewritica provides creative writing space for adults of all genders, orientations and relationship paradigms found under the queer umbrella. As such, members will be expected to interact respectfully and constructively to writings about sexuality and relationship types that may differ from their own experiences and preferences.
Queewritica puts on readings quarterly, with all proceeds being donated to Pride in Art Society. Participation is optional.
Queewritica meets at the Roundhouse on the first Tuesday evening of every month at 7:30pm. Check the chalkboard at the front desk when you arrive for the room.
ASL Interpretation is provided by volunteers from the Douglas College program of sign language interpretation. The venue fully wheelchair accessible. Please help us keep QAF events scent-reduced and refrain from wearing scented products while attending Queewritica.
For a full accessibility audit of the space, visit Radical Access Mapping Project.
Monica Meneghetti is a multilingual language professional and writer with a penchant for cross-disciplinary collaboration. Monica’s poetry and creative nonfiction have appeared in literary journals and musical scores, as well on stage and online. She has also taught and mentored both youth and adults, offering custom-designed workshops. As an editor, she has a special interest in enabling marginalised voices to be heard. She holds a BA in French & Linguistics, and an MFA in Creative Writing from University of British Columbia.
ASL interpretation has been booked for this even.
Please arrive early, as the event will begin promptly at 7:00pm with no intermission.
This new work by acclaimed Australian composer Lyle Chan, is a visceral musical portrait of the peak of the epidemic. Between 1991-1996, Chan and fellow activists couriered AIDS treatments from the US that were unavailable in Australia, fiercely lobbied federal government to approve experimental treatments more quickly, and collaborated with drug companies to design clinical trials of promising new treatments. During those years, Chan writes, “I’d given up music to be an activist. But a composer is always a composer. I still sketched a lot of music. The music were my diaries, a way of writing down feelings. As a composer I think of music as the sound that feelings make.” Performed by the Acacia String Quartet and narrated by Chan himself, the 90-minute work is a tour-de-force of emotionally powerful music, containing portraits of famous activist friends now dead, and unusual effects like the use of police whistles to recall street demonstrations by ACT UP, the direct action protest group of which Chan was a core member. Artist talkback to follow.
Entry to all QAF events requires membership to the Pride in Art Society. Memberships are available for $2 online, or a $1-$5 slide scale at the door. Please allow a few extra minutes at your first event to obtain your new card. Brown Paper Tickets Ticket Widget Loading… Click Here to visit the Brown Paper Tickets event page.
A queer edition of the week-long program exploring the collaborative fusion of poetry and music.
Hear the songs premiered at SongLaunch on Sat Jun 25 at 2pm.
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ASL interpretation has been booked for this event.
Join us for the Queer Arts Festival’s Art Party!, one of Vancouver’s hottest pride season events. This spectacular gala event features, ravishing refreshments, amazing artwork and queer conviviality.
Art Party! celebrates the opening night of QAF’s curated exhibition, Drama Queer: seducing social change, curated by Jonathan D. Katz, the Pride in Art Community Show, and the extravagant kick off for incredible exhibitions, performances, and outreach initiatives that make up Queer Arts Festival.
Our opening night galas have become one of Vancouver’s best attended visual arts events, making this a party you don’t want to miss!
Entry to all QAF events requires membership to the Pride in Art Society. Memberships are available for $2 online, or a $1-$5 slide scale at the door. Please allow a few extra minutes at your first event to obtain your new card.
From the roots of the queer arts Festival, this open visual art show exhibits artists from our communities and honours our founder Robbie Hong. Artists: Katherine Atkins Kate Braun Jackson Photographix Jeff Gibson Kelly Haydon Donal Hebner Trish Holowcznek Dzee Louise Noemi Molitor Nisha Platzer Rosamond Norbury SD Holman Plus! an Excerpt from Photovoice: THE TRANS, TWO-SPIRIT & GENDER NONCONFORMING COMMUNITY SAFETY & WELL-BEING PHOTOVOICE PROJECT Project Coordinator Cindy Holmes Artists: Daniel Bon Fabian Abby Hipolito Elizabeth ‘Raven’ James Wade Janzen Sandy Lambert Chase Willier Nirkwuscin Cherese Reemaul Velvet Steele Ann Travers Stefan de Villiers About PhotoVoice Project CoordinatorCindy Holmes is a Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Postdoctoral Fellow at Simon Fraser University with over 35 years of experience in community-based health and social work. She is a white queer cisgender femme who was raised on the traditional territory of the Attawandaron people in Guelph Ontario, and is currently a visitor on the traditional and unceded territories of the Musquem, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh people in the city known as Vancouver BC. Cindy is also a proud parent of a gender creative teenager and a partner of a gender non-conforming/masculine woman.
Jonathan D. Katz, curator of QAF’s visual art exhibition Drama Queer: Seducing social change, leads a tour of the exhibition for street-involved queer youth.
A meal will be provided onsite after the tour by Directions Youth Services. Need help getting to the Roundhouse? Contact BYRC for transit tickets.
Free of charge. No Registration required.
This event is reserved for youth ages 15-24. If you are no longer a youth, please respect this space and attend the Curator Panel instead on June 22 at 7pm
Click HERE for more youth events.
ASL interpretation has been booked for this event.
A soirée of erotic literary readings to tantalize and titillate. This year’s edition of Queerotica is curated by Dagger Editions, Caitlin Press’s new imprint dedicated to writing by queer women (those who identify as queer women, including trans women, or include this in their personal history).
Nacho Rodriguez is a former journalist and the author of two self-published collections of poetry Hidden/A Escondidas and Distant Object of Desire as well as a collection of short stories White Lies. Born in Caracas, Venezuela, he now lives in Victoria, BC.
Sara Graefe is a Vancouver playwright and screenwriter who also writes hot little stories to make her partner wet. Sara has published erotica in Hot & Bothered IV and With A Rough Tongue: Femmes Write Porn. Her other queer-themed writing has appeared in anthologies such as A Family By Any Other Name: Exploring Queer Relationships, Outspoken: A Canadian Collection of Lesbian Scenes and Monologues, and Boobs: Women Explore What it Means to Have Breasts.
Jane Byers lives with her wife and two children in Nelson, British Columbia. She writes about human resilience in the context of raising children, lesbian and gay issues, and sexuality. Her poems, essays and short fiction have been published in a variety of books and literary magazines in Canada, the US and the UK, including Grain, Rattle, Descant, the Antigonish Review, the Canadian Journal of Hockey Literature, Our Times, Poetry in Transit and Best Canadian Poetry 2014. Her second book of poetry, Acquired Community is both a collection of narrative poems about seminal moments in North American lesbian and gay history, and a series of first-person poems comparing the narrator’s coming out experience within the larger context of the gay liberation movement.
Hasan Namir was born in Iraq in 1987 and came to Canada at a young age. He graduated from Simon Fraser University with a BA in English. Hasan considers himself to be a very sexual being and his work focuses on sexuality. He loves to write stories that are rich in sexual nature. His first novel, God in Pink, was published by Arsenal Pulp Press in fall 2015.
Lucas Crawford is the author of Sideshow Concessions (Invisible Publishing, 2015), which won the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. Lucas is also the author of a book of scholarship entitled Transgender Architectonics (Routledge 2016). Lucas has taught Gender Studies at SFU for the past three years and is looking forward to beginning a new adventure as Assistant Professor of English at the University of New Brunswick this fall. Lucas is both thrilled and honoured to give one last Vancouver reading here at such a great festival. Lucas is originally from rural Nova Scotia.
Monica Meneghetti is a multilingual language professional and writer with a penchant for cross-disciplinary collaboration. Monica’s poetry and creative nonfiction have appeared in literary journals and musical scores, as well on stage and online. She’s taught and mentored both youth and adults, offering custom-designed workshops at Fernie Writer’s Conference, Camp fYrefly, and independently. Monica has been publishing since 1989, but began exploring sexuality in her writing in 2010. She is a contributor to Plenitude magazine and her memoir More then a Mouthful will be published by Dagger Editions in 2017.
Generously sponsored by Kathleen Speakman and Lesiie Uyeda
Entry to all QAF events requires membership to the Pride in Art Society. Memberships are available for $2 online, or a $1-$5 slide scale at the door. Please allow a few extra minutes at your first event to obtain your new card.
Salon with artists and Daily Xtra’s Robin Perelle. Bring your open minds and hearts to reflect on the curated exhibition.
After years of swinging in and out of fashion, the art world’s appreciation of art for social change may once again be on upswing. But queer artists have always known that art is a lubricant to change the world.
In the past, queer artists have been blocked, blacklisted or simply gone unrecognized for their social-change-focused creations. Now, the rest of the art world may be catching up. But where does that leave our community? Is there room and recognition for queer artists for social change in Vancouver’s art world today? Or do our artists still have to leave this conservative city to express themselves?
What needs to change in Vancouver to support — and even celebrate — edgy queer art for social change?