Queer Arts Festival kicks off with exhibitions “On the Edge”, June 5 to 27

Community Art Show captures a cross-section of experience, while Varied Editions plays with multiple prints of the same image

Images by Preston Buffalo in Varied Editions

The Queer Arts Festival runs at the SUM Gallery and other venues from June 5 to 30

THE QUEER ARTS Festival will span concerts, screenings, storytelling nights, and a wild array of other events in June. Still, its traditional heart—and kickoff—is in its form-pushing visual-art exhibitions.

Everything at this year’s event centres around the theme of On the Edge—framing “the precipice as both danger and possibility”, the fest’s artistic statement states: “Around the world, queer and trans communities are being pushed to the brink: rights stripped away, identities erased, futures uncertain. Yet edges are also where transformation begins, where risk and reinvention thrive.”

Those ideas will resonate as QAF launches with its annual ArtParty! Festival Opening Night, June 5 at SUM Gallery’s Sun Wah Centre headquarters, for the first look at the QAF Community Art Show, complete with free ice cream, cash bar, tarot readings, and DJ OShow spinning tunes.

This year’s exhibit features diverse takes on the 2SLGBTQIA+ experience, across a range of media, with Cedar Sargent, Dana Ayotte, Maya U Schueller Elmes, Sophia Greene, Eldie Forget, JC Fung, Justin Ducharme, and many more taking part. The show runs to June 27, and honours the legacy of Pride in Art founder and artist Robbie Hong.

Right next door, on the same dates, find Varied Editions at On Main Gallery, a show that takes its name from the printmaking technique in which artists alter individual prints within an edition to create a series of related yet distinct works. Curated by Cheryl Hamilton and Edward Fu-Chen Juan, the exhibition features their work alongside that of Paul Wong, Zoë Grace-Ann Laycock, Jeff Hallbauer, Ash Boan, Taryn Walker, and the late Preston Buffalo. Onsite, look for three community workshops: papermaking on June 7, silkscreening on June 13, and zine making on June 14. The show is presented in partnership with Malaspina Printmakers.

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Janet Smith

Janet Smith is founding partner and editorial director of Stir. She is an award-winning arts journalist who has spent more than two decades immersed in Vancouver’s dance, screen, design, theatre, music, opera, and gallery scenes. She sits on the Vancouver Film Critics’ Circle.

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