Proud Deviants and Queer Multiples (Curatorial Essay)

Proud Deviants and Queer Multiples By Rebecca Casalino A thesis exhibition presented to OCAD University in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in CRITICISM AND CURATORIAL PRACTICE. rebeccacasalino.com/pdqm Index Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………….....3-4 Curatorial Essay……………………………………………………………………………...5-19 Artist and Collaborator Biographies………………………………………………………20-23 List of Works………………………………………………………………………………...24-25 2 Acknowledgements Land Acknowledgements This research was conducted in T'karonto1 on the traditional territory of the Anishinabek, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, and Mississaugas of the Credit First Nations, which is governed by the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant preceding colonial treaties on this land. I am a settler-Canadian who considers T’karonto my familial home. I was born there and both my grandfathers came to T’karonto (from Bari, Italy and Foote’s Bay, Ontario) in the 1950s seeking work and a new life. Returning to the city in my early 20s shattered the idealized image of a progressive and welcoming place as my eyes were opened to the foundation of racism and white supremacy on which T’karonto was built. Researching T’karonto’s queer history unveiled many of the harmful colonial systems put in place by British, French, and Canadian forces that continue to cause violence towards Indigenous folks and across communities racialized and marginalized by so-called “Canada”. The exhibition Proud Deviants and Queer Multiples is presented in Hamilton on Treaty 3 territory which is the land of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinabek First Nations and is also governed by the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant which pre-dates colonial treaties. As an uninvited guest on this land, I hope to learn about local histories of colonization and contribute to the current movements seeking to uphold the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant so future generations can thrive on this land. 1 a Mohawk word meaning “There are trees standing in the water” (Taiaiako'n Historical Preservation Society) 3 Personal and Professional Acknowledgements A big thank you to my primary advisor Jim Drobnick for his guidance and patience throughout the writing process and to my secondary advisor Dot Tuer for her moral and academic support. I send my thanks to my peers Alex Gregory, Lucia Wallace, Jenna Chasse, and Camille Marcoux for your support in writing this thesis. Thanks to Claudia Slogar Rick and Jessica Price Eisner for your continuous encouragement of my research and writing practice. And to all of the exhibiting artists, thank you for trusting me to display your work and for all your contributions to the queer arts community. Thank you to Jacquie Shaw and Adrienne Wu for attending protests, marches and gatherings with me in Toronto throughout this period of learning. Thank you both for your patience in educating me on whiteness and cis-ness, and for your trust and friendship. I am endlessly grateful to Justice Stacey who welcomed me to Hamilton and offered her home as an exhibition space in my time of need. Thank you to both Justice and Nat Stacey for your kindness and generosity in helping me install this exhibition in your home. Thank you to William and Phyllis Waters, Charles Patcher and the Delany family for supporting my education in the arts through your bursaries and scholarships. Thank you to OCAD University for funding my studies through the Dean’s Scholarship. 4 Curatorial Essay Proud Deviants and Queer Multiples Curated by Rebecca Casalino The queer subject within straight culture hence deviates and is made socially deviant. — Ahmed, Sara.2 Queer multiples are works made by queer artists; their work, whether it is explicitly queer in subject or not, serves to disseminate queer art and knowledge. These multiples act as touchstones for peer groups, political actions, and the ever-changing vocabulary of queer aesthetics. The ability to buy, trade and collect multiples allows them to be shared using social, and commercial networks to connect artists and art lovers across communities. My personal collection of contemporary queer multiples, presented in Proud Deviants and Queer Multiples, allows me to invest directly in queer artists’ practices, as a fellow artist and as a curator. Collecting also gives me the opportunity to sit with the work longer as it occupies my home or is worn on my body, my understanding of the work changes and grows. Feminist scholar Sara Ahmed writes that “[r]rather than thinking about the question of inheritance in terms of nature versus nurture, or biology versus culture, we would be thinking in terms of contingency or contact (touch); things are shaped by their proximity to other things, whereby this proximity itself is inherited in the sense that it is the condition of our arrival into the world”.3 Young queers inherit the political and Ahmed, Sara. “Introduction: Find Your Way.” Queer Phenomenology: Orients, Objects, Others. Duke University Press, London: 2006. 21. 3 Ahmed, Sara. “The Orient and Other Others.” Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Duke University Press: 2006. 124. 2 5 social climates of their elders and are responsible for learning about their communities’ lineages. Queers learn this not through biological familial knowledge transfer but by drawing their queer community close. This occurs through space making, community building and knowledge sharing which comes through proximity to other queer bodies or objects. Queer history is inherited through material based knowledge within multiples, artists objects and ephemera found in public archives and personal collections. The accessibility of multiples brings queer objects into proximity, which in turn brings queer artists and queer community in-line with audiences. For me personally, multiples connect me to new communities through markets and fairs, and allow me to maintain these lines of connection through trading and gifting amongst fellow artists and collectors. I present these connections and my community with this exhibition. Artists who create multiples shatter the illusion of the singular, genius creator and expensive art objects in favour of smaller, more affordable, and easily recreated multiples. This mode of making ranges in media including but not exclusive to wearables, prints, zines, and comics. Besides these items, my thesis exhibition, Proud Deviants and Queer Multiples, also features t-shirts, earrings, patches, and pins, as well as artists' objects created in multiples such as ceramics and postcards. My research, and this exhibition, work to inform and engage with queer people about the importance of sustained queer resistance through the presentation of queer multiples within the framework of Toronto’s history. Deviant Multiples Multiples allow art objects to enter personal spheres that create the opportunity to truly absorb artists’ aesthetics, and knowledge conveyed. The ability to share, trade, and sell multiples within community allows queer people to carry queer art through their daily lives. These lines of exchange create the opportunity for more connections to form as evidences when Ahmed writes: 6 “[w]e follow the line that is followed by others: the repetition of the act of following makes the line disappear from view as the point from which ‘we’ emerge”.4 By gathering Toronto’s queer history I am able to see patterns in artistic practice that continue form lines of community and as Ahmed states a ‘we’ begins to form. My research points to sustained deviating practices established by previous queer generations as lines followed by contemporary artists. Protest is one of these lines, as queers continue to strive for local and international rights and freedoms which fosters queer aesthetics marked by disarming language, flashy wearables and the celebration of queer deviancy. Multiple making can be traced as a line maintained by the practices of publishing newspapers, magazines, and zines through queer collectives or artist-run spaces. In the art world to be queer is still niche as “queer exhibitions are quite rare...and in many nations they are still contentious” as outlined in the writing of queer curators Jonathan Katz and Änne Söll.5 Presenting queer multiples within the exhibition Proud Deviants and Queer Multiples allows for the historic and aesthetic context to be present for audiences and deviates from the heteropatriarchal norms of classic white cube exhibitions. The othering of queer works into its own homogenous category limits the range of works included; often excluding low-brow or DIY works in favour of more ‘polished’ presentable pieces. American queer activist and academic Jonathan Katz argues that “[c]overt censorship, namely the restrictive palette through which nearly every large museum in the US adjudicates artwork, interpretive texts, and ideas, is the real enemy”,6 which deems what is aesthetically, socially and politically acceptable or unacceptable. Multiple making becomes doubly deviant when practiced by queers as they apply Ahmed, Sara. “Introduction: Find Your Way.” Queer Phenomonology: Orients, Objects, Others. Duke University Press, London: 2006. 15. 5 Katz, Jonathan and Änne Söll. “Editorial: Queer Exhbitions/Queer Curating.” On Curating. Issue 37, May 2018. 2. 6 Katz, Jonathan D. “Queer Curating and Covert Censorship.” On Curating. Issue 37, May 2018. 33. 4 7 histories, knowledge and aesthetics that would otherwise be formally censored or casually dismissed. Queer bodies and knowledge are offensive to the heteronormative colonial traditions of Canada and have been historically censored or contained through police and state action. Multiples offer a DIY, low-brow, low-cost aesthetic that is inherently queer, as it deviates from established social and aesthetic norms, and is an accessible technique for thriving within a hetero-dominated space. This practice can be found in Toronto in the 1990s employed by artists Xanthra Phillipa MacKay7 and Mirha-Soleil Ross8 who produced the zine gendertrash. MacKay opens the first issue in 1993 with her poem welcome: welcome gender queers to the world of gender trash our gender world where we can give voice to our concerns in/around/about gender9 She highlights the importance of a genderqueer publication made by and for genderqueer voices. Proud Deviants and Queer Multiples engages with queer people and invested allies about the importance of sustained queer resistance through the presentation of queer multiples within the framework of Toronto’s history. “Artist: Xanthra MacKay.” Vtape. Last Accessed January 30th, 2021. https://www.vtape.org/artist?ai=798 “Mirha-Soleil Ross.” Media Queer. Last Accessed March 19th, 2021. http://www.mediaqueer.ca/artist/mirha-soleil-ross 9 Xanthra Phillipa. “welcome.” gendertrash from hell. genderpress. 1993, issue 1, vol 1. 3-5. 7 8 8 Queer Multiples In Proud Deviants and Queer Multiples, I have chosen multiples that promote or present deviancy, reference Toronto’s queer history or employ queer aesthetics to convey knowledge. Queer Jewish American writer Susan Sontag writes about camp saying, “[b]ehind the ‘straight’ public sense in which something can be taken, one has found a private zany experience of a thing”10 [emphasis added]. This coded visual, verbal and aesthetic language is how I understand queer knowledge to be transferred within public space. I know that these objects can be ridiculous or absurd, but that is their intended function, to draw attention and cause a scene. The power lies in other queers and allies spotting your attire, or artwork and the possibility of an exchange of understanding that follows. Entering queer spaces flamboyance is often encouraged, through outfits, promotional materials and decor. Queer men are allowed to embrace femininity and celebrate camp culture through gaudy shades of pink, over-the-top fashion statements, and Broadway karaoke tunes. Cary Leibowitz and Nothing Else Press’s Librarian Fashion Show postcard invites viewers to a series of monthly fashion shows the last Wednesday of every month of 2015 in a wobbly casual font in all caps. This work is presented alongside Jonah Strub’s Kinky Birds (2020) earrings referencing the artist’s love of Broadway in a wearable pair of sculptures. These works are aesthetically connected through their pink, ‘handmade’ presentation and as objects connected to feminine performance like fashion shows and Kinky Boots. Leibowitz’s work has highly influenced the emerging generation of queer Jewish men, including Strub, who uses humour and bright colour in their practices. Sontag, Susan. “Notes on ‘Camp’.” Sontag: Essays of the 1960s & 70s. Ed. David Rieff. The Library of America, New York: 2013. 264. 10 9 Humour is key within queer aesthetics, and self-deprecating humour comes with its own queer positionality. Walter Scott’s print Everything is an art space in Berlin (2018) is presented on a low wooden platform. The comic panel silkscreen by Scott from his book Wendy (2014) features a quaint cafe where two artists meet up, the title of the piece is the final punchline of their exchange which dismisses art spaces in Berlin but also jabs at the position of a “Canadian” artist. Displayed on the same platform are three of Philip Ocampo’s postcards I wish you were here (2021), an updated iteration of Souvenir Sculpture Berlin (2017), which plays with the idea of Berlin as a chic destination for rich queers looking to party. Ocampo uses over-the-top imagery, such as a disco ball standing in for the sun, to poke fun at Canadian queers jet-setting lifestyle showcased through their public personas even in the age of COVID19. These artworks use dry humour to let viewers in on the joke of the pretentious Berlin-Toronto art connection. The colonial binary framework of the centre-periphery is presented as a subject to be meme-ed and disseminated to dissolve constructed hierarchies from the fluid queer perspective. Resistance against colonial frameworks is in queer culture’s best interest as transphobia and homophobia are imported European values, enforced on this land by state violence.11 Queer protest art, created by settler and Indigenous artists, works to untangle queer optics from the nationalistic neoliberal frameworks.12 FASTWÜRMS’ Pentagram Patch (2018) and Chief Lady Bird and Temper Tantrum’s Landback (2020) patch are installed alongside a printed copy of the map documenting the Toronto Purchase as a marker of the colonial origins of heteronormative policies.13 FASTWÜRMS’ as well as Chief Lady Bird and Temper Tantrum’s patches both deal @TIFF_NET. “‘Progress is a really weird word for Indigenous people because progress is very colonial… homophobia and transphobia was a concept forced upon us. So I don't think so much about moving forward as finding things from history that were lost and bringing them back.’ —@leZbusrider.” Twitter. November 12th. 2019. Last Accessed January 30th 2021. https://twitter.com/TIFF_NET/status/1194433925411753984 12 Harney, Elizabeth and Ruth B. Phillips. “Introduction: Inside Modernity.” Mapping Modernisms. Duke University Press, 2019. 4. 13 Zhelka, Eric. “Toronto Purchase / Treaty 13 1805 & 2010.” Toronto Island History. January 20th, 2020. Last Accessed January 30th, 2021. https://tihp.torontoisland.org/toronto-purchase-treaty-13-1805-2010/Introduction 11 10 with this colonial past and the impacts on contemporary settlers and Indigenous folks as a modern pressing issue. Queer spaces are integrated into the framework of Toronto, as people seek and declare public space to gather and create. Claudia Slogar Rick and Jessica Price Eisner’s Rock Pin (2018) was created collaboratively with picnic-goers at Hanlan’s Point and is paired with a printed scan of an image from Guerrilla magazine from 1971 of a gay picnic at the same beach organized by the Toronto Gay Action and the Community Homophile Association. 14 This connection between queers gathering at Hanlan’s Point in the early 1970s and art-making in the late 2010s provides an intergenerational context of space making for queer people in Toronto.15 Cross-disciplinary collaboration within the queer community fosters new modes of making and connects queers across mediums. Hanging within the gallery is Fernando-Francisco Granados and Fan Wu’s semi-transparent print SUCKING THROUGH THE AGES (2019) commissioned by the artist-run space Hearth. Hearth is run by four emerging curators, including Philip Ocampo, whose work is also included in Proud Deviants and Queer Multiples. SUCKING THROUGH THE AGES is part of Hearth’s City Water broadside series “that changes with the seasons, featuring artist-writer pairs in collaboration”16 in a community building cross-disciplinary approach. SUCKING THROUGH THE AGES hangs from the ceiling allowing light from the gallery window to pass through, emphasizing its material ethereal quality. The artwork presents as poetic, while allowing space for queer desire and sexuality as viewers read Wu’s poetry. Mohyeddin, Samira and Erica Lenti. “Reflections on Pride’s Political History.” Torontoist. June 28th 2015. Last Accessed January 30th 2021. https://torontoist.com/2015/06/reflections-on-prides-political-history/ 15 Smith, Sarah E.K. “Biography.” General Idea: Life and Work. Art Canada Institute, Toronto: 2016. 51. PDF. 16 “Multiples.” Hearth. Last Accessed 30th 2021. http://hearthgarage.com/pages/cityw.html 14 11 Ceramics made in multiples present the opportunity for blurring preconceived notions of high and low art. Arezu Salamzadeh’s Pink Glazed Ceramic Drumstick Necklace (2017) presents a smooth bubble gum pink glazed art object hung from a long gold chain to be worn as a campy accessory. Sontag writes about camp as “a relish for the exaggeration of sexual characteristics and personality mannerisms,”17 which is highlighted by Salamzadeh’s not-so-subtle reference to her love of food in the creation of this wearable. Liza Konovalov employs pop-culture and hybrid creatures to queer her ceramics practice as presented with the work Untitled Björk Swan Dress (2020). She uses the language of kitsch, camp and queer maximalism to create “gleeful overabundance”18 for viewers of her work. The archives of Canadian art are filled with elite white men.19 By presenting racialized and feminine bodies, artists can actively disrupt the canon and carve out new space for community. Racquel Rowe enacts and documents queer deviancy through her bodily practice. For her Body Scans (Postcard) (2019), Rowe presents her butt pressed against the glass of a photocopier. Her skin merges with the dark background to create a beautiful Baroque-esque composition as deep shadows are created by the scanner’s shallow depth of field. This postcard was installed by Rowe as a takeaway during her open studio at the University of Guelph in 2019 and refers to her larger performance practice where she often performs nude. Queer protest and pride can also come in the form of emotional softness and vulnerability. As shown in Sheri Odsen Nault’s on-going project Melancholy Queers Club, they create t-shirts for people to wear on their bodies moving through the world declaring their queerness and melancholia. Hazel Meyer utilizes the same loose illustrative Sontag, Susan. “Notes on Camp.” Sontag: Essays of the 1960s & 70s. 262. Print. “Biography.” Big Stinky Lizard LLC. Last Accessed January 29th, 2021. https://www.bigstinkylizard.llc/about 19 Bowen, Deanna and Maya Wilson-Sanchez. “A Centenary of Influence.” Canadian Art: Influence. Spring 2020. Vol 37, No 1. 70. Print. 17 18 12 semi-autobiographical approach in her work No Theory No Cry (2018), which utilizes colloquial language to explore the inaccessibility of theory and the emotional aspects of being deviant within the institutional context. This type of melancholic humour draws from queer aesthetics of low-brow and text-based media. Queer tattoo artists have been fundamental to my understanding of community building and the possibilities of exchange created by visual art. Sai Meloche is a self-taught artist practicing in poetry, digital collage, photography and tattooing. Her imagery draws from 1990s pop-culture and queer skater girl aesthetics. For Proud Deviants and Queer Multiples I commissioned a flash sheet of her work to cite her as a mentor within the Toronto queer community. Material, oral, and community histories have been key to researching Toronto’s queer history. Sarah Liss writes about the work of de-homogenizing the public image of queer people in her community history of queer artist and activist Will Munro. The range of queer identities sometimes becomes distilled — in the media and within the subculture itself — to an inane dichotomy between ‘good gays,’ who strive for socially permissible forms of equity, and ‘bad gays,’ who cling to the bacchanian practices left over from the disco era. The reality, which Will knew, is that there are way more than two, or even fifty, shades of gay.20 The rejection of fixed binaries, and the resulting fluditiy, is the essence of queer aesthetics which seeks to defy definition through shifting meanings and positionality. The word queer itself works to expand definitions and terminology surrounding sexuality and gender. The exhibition Proud Deviants and Queer Multiples presents a range of multiples created by queer artists from across the spectrum to underscore the multifaceted nature of queerness and queer aesthetics. 20 Liss, Sarah. Army of Lovers. Coach House Books, Toronto. 2013. 9. 13 Proud Queers Queer artist-run spaces like Art Metropole, founded by the gay artists' collective General Idea, are community hubs for queer artists and allies to gather, grow and challenge establish norms together. Art Metropole describes itself as “a not-for-profit organisation with a focus on the production, dissemination and contextualization of artist-initiated publication in any media, especially those formats and practices predisposed to sharing and circulation”21 [emphasis added], which continues to sell the work of queer artists. I purchased Hazel Meyer’s No Theory No Cry Poster (2018) at Art Metropole’s table at Edition/2 and Walter Scott’s Wendy’s Revenge (2016) at their former location within Toronto’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA). During the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, I picked up Philip Ocampo’s Souvenir Sculpture Berlin (2017) from outside Art Metropole’s office while wearing a mask. In these uncertain times, queer people have been unmoored from bars, pubs, libraries and coffee shops with even Art Metropole lacking a physical space at this moment. Queer people have lost so much in the on-going AIDS and COVID19 pandemics as a marginalized and hyper-medicalized communities that span the globe. Living in the archives of my queer peers and elders during this time of isolation has brought me closer to my community in new ways, even in this time of distance. I am forever grateful to the members of General Idea for creating Art Metropole and collecting the work of their friends, so I can share in their sorrow, passions and desires. My collection of multiples allows me to absorb knowledge otherwise undocumented by mainstream Canadian arts channels. The historical and social value of these artworks is obvious to community members like myself who are directly invested in their creation and distribution, but to outsiders such works are more likely to be dismissed or even censored. Searching Toronto’s history for queer multiples and their makers unearthed a continuous cycle of state 21 “About.” Art Metropole. Last Accessed February 28th 2021. https://artmetropole.com/about 14 violence and queer making within community. In the creation of this exhibitions queer timeline I considered Two-Spirit film-maker Thirza Cuthand’s words: Progress is a really weird word for Indigenous people because progress is very colonial...homophobia and transphobia was a concept forced upon us. So I don’t think so much about moving forward as finding things from our history that were lost and bringing them back.22 The emphasis on recovering an erased past in Cuthand’s comments resonates as I retrace the stories of Toronto I was told as a child; leading me to the murder of Emanuel Jaques.23 My father is a first-generation Italian immigrant raised in Oshawa (an hour east of Toronto) who heard about the murder of Emanual, a Portuguese shoe-shining boy about his age with the same name, and the outpouring of protest from the Portuguese and European immigrant communities against the Toronto’s queer communtiy and sex workers. This deeply affected his understanding of Toronto and he continued to tell the story to myself and my siblings and point to the spot where Emanuel had shined shoes whenever we visited Yonge and Dundas Square. During my time in Toronto as a young adult, I learned more about Emanuel’s death and the connection to the Bathhouse Raids of 1981, as well as the fallout for the queer community and sex workers downtown.24 The recurrence of institutional and state violence directed towards queer folks can be traced to moments of panic within mainstream Canada, from the RCMP’s role in the Red @TIFF_NET. “‘Progress is a really weird word for Indigenous people because progress is very colonial... homophobia and transphobia was a concept forced upon us. So I don't think so much about moving forward as finding things from history that were lost and bringing them back.’ —@leZbusrider.” Twitter. November 12th. 2019. Last Accessed January 30th 2021. https://twitter.com/TIFF_NET/status/1194433925411753984 23 Fraser, Laura. “Murder of Emanuel Jaques changed the face of Yonge St and Toronto.” CBC News: Toronto. June 22nd, 2017. Last Accessed February 19th, 2021. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/emanuel-jaques-yonge-street-sex-work-1.4172511 24 Ross, Daniel. “When Sex Dominated Yonge St.” Spacing: The City Hall Issue. Fall 2014. 26-27. 22 15 Scare25 to the continued vilification of trans women.26 It is through the continued creation of queer artists and the uncensored sharing of knowledge and art that I learn new stories about my community's past and deviant strategies to sustain our lives. “Queer Canadian History Timeline - Pre-Colonization to Present.” Canadian Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity. 2018. 3. 26 “Meghan Murphy: Canadian feminist’s trans talk sparks uproar.” BBC. October 30th 2019. Last Accessed February 25th 2021. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50214341 25 16 Bibliography “About.” Art Metropole. Last Accessed December 30th, 2020. https://artmetropole.com/about. Ahmed, Sara. Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Duke University Press: 2006. Print. “‘An Onkwehonwe in Kanada; Listen, all of you’ Toronto is Tkaronto – it’s a Mohawk word.” posted by @redindiangirl Monday October 3rd 2011. Taiaiako’n Historical Preservation Society. September 19th, 2012. Last Accessed March 7th, 2021. https://taiaiakon.wordpress.com/2012/09/19/an-onkwehonwe-in-kanada-listen-all-of-youtoronto-is-tkaronto-its-a-mohawk-word/. “Artist: Xanthra MacKay.” Vtape. Last Accessed January 30th, 2021. https://www.vtape.org/artist?ai=798. “Biography.” Big Stinky Lizard LLC. Last Accessed January 29th, 2021. https://www.bigstinkylizard.llc/about. Bowen, Deanna and Maya Wilson-Sanchez. “A Centenary of Influence.” Influence. Canadian Art. Spring 2020. Vol 37, No 1. 70. Print. Crossman, Brenda. “Censor, Resist, Repeat: A History of Censorship of Gay and Lesbian Sexual Representation in Canada.” Duke Journal of Gender Law and Policy. Vol 21:45. 2013. PDF. Fraser, Laura. “Murder of Emanuel Jaques changed the face of Yonge St and Toronto.” CBC News: Toronto. June 22nd, 2017. Last Accessed February 19th, 2021. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/emanuel-jaques-yonge-street-sex-work-1.41725 11. 17 George, Keller. “The Haudenosaunee Creation Story.” Oneida Indian Nation. Last Accessed March 19th, 2021. https://www.oneidaindiannation.com/the-haudenosaunee-creation-story/. Harney, Elizabeth and Ruth B. Phillips. “Introduction: Inside Modernity.” Mapping Modernisms. Duke University Press, 2019. 1-29. PDF. Liss, Sarah. Army of Lovers. Coach House Books, Toronto. 2013. Print. “Meghan Murphy: Canadian feminist’s trans talk sparks uproar.” BBC. October 30th 2019. Last Accessed February 25th 2021. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50214341. “Mirha-Soleil Ross.” Media Queer. Last Accessed March 19th, 2021. http://www.mediaqueer.ca/artist/mirha-soleil-ross. Mohyeddin, Samira and Erica Lenti. “Reflections on Pride’s Political History.” Torontoist. June 28th, 2015. Last Accessed January 30th, 2021. https://torontoist.com/2015/06/reflections-on-prides-political-history/. “Multiples.” Hearth. Last Accessed January 30th, 2021. http://hearthgarage.com/pages/cityw.html. Ross, Daniel. “When Sex Dominated Yonge St.” Spacing: The City Hall Issue. Fall 2014. 24-27. PDF. Smith, Sarah E.K. General Idea: Life and Work. Art Canada Institute, Toronto: 2016. PDF. Sontag, Susan. “Notes on ‘Camp’.” Sontag: Essays of the 1960s & 70s. Ed. David Rieff. The Library of America, New York: 2013. 259-274. Print. @TIFF_NET. “‘Progress is a really weird word for Indigenous people because progress is very colonial... homophobia and transphobia was a concept forced upon us. So I don't think so 18 much about moving forward as finding things from history that were lost and bringing them back.’ —@leZbusrider.” Twitter. November 12th. 2019. Last Accessed January 30th, 2021. https://twitter.com/TIFF_NET/status/1194433925411753984. Xanthra Phillipa. “welcome.” gender trash from hell. genderpress. 1993, issue 1, vol 1. 3-5. PDF. Zhelka, Eric. “Toronto Purchase / Treaty 13 1805 & 2010.” Toronto Island History. January 20th, 2020. Last Accessed January 30th, 2021. https://tihp.torontoisland.org/toronto-purchase-treaty-13-1805-2010/Introduction. 19 Exhibiting Artists’ Biographies Jessica Price Eisner is a Toronto-based artist and musician. Her practice uses found objects and imagery to create witty, often melancholic works across disciplines. She often collaborates with her partner Claudia Slogar Rick to create interdisciplinary works including multiples, sculpture, and installation. FASTWÜRMS was formed in 1979 and is the cultural project, trademark, and shared authorship of Kim Kozzi and Dai Skuse. Their artwork is characterized by a determined DIY sensibility, Witch Nation identity politics, and a keen allegiance towards working class, queer alliance, and artist collaborations. They are represented by Paul Petro Contemporary and work as a teaching duo at the University of Guelph instructing studio art. Francisco-Fernando Granados is a Guatemalan-born Toronto-based artist. Granados’s work draws from his traditional training as well as well as experiences in in queer, refugee, and artist-run contexts to create drawings, installations, performances, and digital artworks. In his practice incorporates readymade objects and artists' books. Liza Konovalov is an emerging Toronto-based multidisciplinary artist working with ceramics, collage, sculpture, assemblage and found objects. She is aesthetically driven by kitsch and camp maximalist practices as a rejection of the white cube. Liza creates ceramics, prints and collages in multiples. Chief Lady Bird is a visual artist from Mnjikaning Rama First Nation, previously based in Toronto. Through her art practice, she looks to traditional and historical pasts to help her navigate her Anishinaabe identity and advocate for Indigenous representation as an integral aspect of Canada’s national identity. Chief Lady Bird creates prints using digital painting, photography and methods of collage. 20 Cary Leibowitz, also known as CandyAss, is an artist working in painting, sculpture, installation and multiples. Leibowitz uses mundane objects like teddy bears, frisbees, and postcards combined with witty text, Jewish cultural references, and self-deprecating gay humour to invite viewers to laugh with him. Hazel Meyer is an artist living in Vancouver, on the unceded territory of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, whose work recovers the queer aesthetics, politics, and bodies often effaced within histories of infrastructure, athletics and illness. Sai Meloche has been a practicing tattoo artist since 2017. She has been a guest tattooer at Tapestry Collective’s former studio and is currently an independent tattooer. Her artistic practice involves poetry, collage, photography, digital painting and tattoo. Meloche is influenced by American traditional and blackwork style imagery in her contemporary tattoo and drawing practices. Philip Leonard Ocampo is a queer Filipino artist and arts facilitator based in T’karonto, Canada. Ocampo’s multidisciplinary practice primarily involves sculpture, installation, and public programming. He is currently the Programming Coordinator at Xpace Cultural Centre and is one of the founding co-directors of the artist-run space Hearth which commissions multiples in the form of prints, publications and posters. Sheri Osden Nault is an artist, activist, and writer based in T’karonto. They are Nehiyaw and Red River Michif of the Charette and Belanger families, with Saulteaux and Assiniboine ancestry. Their work in sculpture, community projects, performance, Indigenous tattoo revival, zines, and writing is grounded in Indigenous, queer, and feminist world views. 21 Claudia Slogar Rick is an emerging interdisciplinary artist based in Toronto and a founding member of the DIY artist-run project the plumb. Their practice involves drawing, sculpture, performance and the internet using the aesthetics of necessity and efficiency. Rick frequently uses found or thrifted materials to create multiples and sculptures with their partner Jessica Price Eisner. Racquel Rowe is a Black, queer, femme interdisciplinary artist from the island of Barbados living in Canada. The notion of compulsory visibility and subverting dominant ideologies, is essential to Rowe's practice. As a Black artist engaging in critical conversations around race, culture and gender, has furthered her own ability to understand and break away from colonial representations. Arezu Salamzadeh is a Mississauga-based artist. Their work spans from performance and installation to video, bookmaking, painting, and more. Her work touches on themes of hospitality, cultural identity, love, and loneliness through a language of entertainment, humour, and play. Walter Scott is a Kahnawake-born contemporary artist, currently based in Montreal and Toronto. Scott’s interdisciplinary practice includes drawing, writing, video, performance, and sculpture. Through his work, Scott explores contemporary questions of representation, cultural production, popular culture, and narrative construction. Jonah Strub is a painter, sculptor, performance artist, and ceramicist based out of Toronto. His artwork employs the aesthetics of camp, kitsch, musical theatre, Yiddish humour, and drag. Strub creates wearable art in the form of oversized campy earrings. Fan Wu is a poet and writer born in Baoding, China currently based in Toronto. His practice moves between activating language’s capacities and exploring language’s beyond. His practice 22 includes hosting critical reading and creative writing workshops at Toronto art centres including Art Metropole and Mercer Union. Artistic Collaborators Nothing Else Press is co-founded by artists Dave Dyment and Roula Partheniou, formerly based in Toronto, now living and working in Sackville. The Nothing Else Press publishes artists' books, multiples and editions. Nothing Else Press produced the exhibited postcard with Cary Leibowitz’s work on the front. Temper Tantrum is a queer feminist curated multi-vendor online marketplace with a creative temper, throwing tantrums along the way and always looking to evolve. Temper Tantrum’s Caitlynn Fairbarns and Carly Whitmore produced Chief Lady Bird’s exhibited iron-on patch. 23 List of Works Rock Pin (2018) Jessica Price Eisner and Claudia Slogar Rick grey rock, silver pin and clasp Pentagram Patch (2018) FASTWÜRMS embroidered patch on denim SUCKING THROUGH THE AGES (2020) Francisco-Fernando Granados and Fan Wu colour digital print on translucent material Untitled Björk Swan Dress (2020) Liza Konovalov glazed ceramic Librarian Fashion Show Cary Leibowitz and Nothing Else Press colour printed postcard Landback (2020) Chief Lady Bird and Temper Tantrum embroidered iron on patch No Theory, No Cry (2018) Hazel Meyer silkscreen on paper Flash Sheet (2021) Sai Meloche colour inkjet on cardstock I wish you were here (2021) Philip Ocampo coloured printed postcard, reproduction of painting Melancholy Queers Club (2020) Sheri Osden Nault small cotton t-shirt Body Scans (Postcard) (2019) Racquel Rowe photocolour printed postcard 24 Pink Glazed Ceramic Drumstick Necklace (2017) Arezu Salamzadeh glazed ceramic, gold chain and clasp Everything is an art space in Berlin (2018) Walter Scott silkscreen on paper Kinky Birds (2020) Jonah Strub painted clay, earring findings 25