How do we want to hold and be held? What do we want our communities to feel like? Using queer polyvocality as a framework for world-building, Queer Futurities aims to create fissures in hegemonic ways of thinking about time, place, archive, and community. Queer Futurities engages the generative possibilities of collective knowledge and care through two parts: holding area and gathering place.
holding area features the works of Kitt Peacock, Edzi’u, Cassia Powell, Florence Yee, Arezu Salamzadeh, Margaret August, Nicole Mandryk, Romi Kim and Kendell Yan. Exploring what José Esteban Muñoz calls the “forward-dawning” potentials of queerness, holding area creates a temporary but affective space which holds collective knowledge. Through a range of mediums, including audio-visual installation, textiles, beading, performance and painting, the artists’ works explore the tenderness and nuance of both ‘holding’ and ‘queerness’ through alternative forms of care, storytelling, commemoration and place/space-making.
gathering place activates Queer Futurities’ themes of collective knowledge and care through skill-sharing and community gathering outside of the gallery space with workshops and performances. Programming will include a weaving workshop by Estraven Lupino-Smith, a “Queer Calisthenics” performance by keiko Hart, and a mutual aid workshop by the Community Fridge.
Queer Futurities: holding area, gathering place
Curated as a part of Open Space’s 2022 programming
two-part project consisting of a gallery exhibition and offsite workshop + performance series
holding area
Gallery Exhibition
Artists: Kitt Peacock, Edzi’u, Cassia Powell, Florence Yee, Arezu Salamzadeh, Margaret August, Nicole Mandryk, Romi Kim and Kendell Yan
gathering place
Offsite workshop + performance series
Estraven Lupino-Smith — Wayward Weaving
In this workshop, participants will use basketry techniques to weave with invasive plant species and other materials. The workshop will situate weaving in a communal setting as a queer embodied practice. During the workshop we will explore how these practices can be part of queering the reclamation of ancestral skills. Estraven will share how they connect with their own cultural practices, and critically engage with having a land based practice as an uninvited guest on unceded indigenous territory.
Community Fridge — Dreaming in Community: Radical Imagination to Radical Action
Tangling radical care, righteous joy, and queer futurities this collaborative workshop will use the tenets of mutual aid to realize our collective dreamscapes. Attendees will be asked to imagine what mutual aid project they might create if unhindered by our fucked up world. Pulling from the Fridge and Delivery volunteers’ experience in food redistribution, we will address the barriers between the real and the desired. Folks will leave with new knowledge and relationships that will help them to understand, start, or continue community organizing.
keiko Hart — Community Calisthenics
Join us for a participative performance of Community Calisthenics in Bastion Square, where we'll perform radio exercises lead by keiko Hart to promote health, wellbeing, and togetherness.