Queer is an umbrella term for people who are not heterosexual or are not cisgender. Originally meaning 'strange' or 'peculiar', queer came to be used pejoratively against those with same-sex desires or relationships in the late 19th century. Beginning in the late 1980s, queer activists, such as the members of Queer Nation, began to reclaim the word as a deliberately provocative and politically radical alternative to the more assimilationist branches of the LGBT community.
Midsumma Festival is a celebration of LGBTQIA+ arts and cultures held annually for 22 days over January and February in Melbourne, Australia. The festival began as a one-week celebration of LGBTQIA+ pride in 1989. The festival has since expanded to a three-week event that attracts over 240,000 people each year.
LGBT art in Singapore, or queer art in Singapore, broadly refers to modern and contemporary visual art practices that draw on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender+ imagery and themes, addressing topics such as LGBT rights, history and culture in Singapore. Such queer art practices are often by Singaporean or Singapore-based visual artists and curators who identify as LGBT+ or queer.
The Vancouver Pride Parade and Festival is an annual LGBT Pride event, held each year in Vancouver, British Columbia, to celebrate lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and their allies. It is run by the Vancouver Pride Society (VPS), a not-for-profit, volunteer-run organization that seeks to "produce inclusive, celebratory events, and advocacy for LGBTQAI2S+". Vancouver's Pride Parade is the largest parade of any kind in Western Canada.
The Pride of Indy Bands is a performing musical ensemble in Indianapolis of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and other LGBT-friendly musicians. Founded in March 2005, The Pride of Indy Band and Color Guard is currently the only LGBT instrumental and pageantry ensemble in Indiana, and is a member of the Lesbian and Gay Band Association. The organization conducts its activities in a supportive, accepting and affirming atmosphere, and includes experienced and amateur musicians. The band also assists adult members who do not have access to instruments by helping them rent or borrow instruments through local organizations.
The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art (LLMA), formerly the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, is a visual art museum in SoHo, Lower Manhattan, New York City. It mainly collects, preserves and exhibits visual arts created by LGBTQ artists or art about LGBTQ+ themes, issues, and people. The museum, operated by the Leslie-Lohman Gay Art Foundation, offers exhibitions year-round in numerous locations and owns more than 22,000 objects, including, paintings, drawings, photography, prints and sculpture. It has been recognized as one of the oldest arts groups engaged in the collection and preservation of gay art. The foundation was awarded Museum status by the New York State Board of Regents in 2011 and was formally accredited as a museum in 2016. The museum is a member of the American Alliance of Museums and operates pursuant to their guidelines. As of 2019, the LLMA was the only museum in the world dedicated to artwork documenting the LGBTQ experience.
Kiss and Tell is a Vancouver, British Columbia based performance and artist collective whose work is concerned with lesbian sexuality. In 1990, collective members Persimmon Blackbridge, Lizard Jones and Susan Stewart used the intense debates within the queer community around sexual practice in the early 1990s to create the photographic exhibition Drawing the Line. Their photographs depicted a continuum of lesbian sexual practice ranging from kissing to whipping, bondage, and voyeurism. The project encouraged gallery viewers to comment on what they saw and how it made them feel by writing directly on the walls around the prints; allowing the viewer to "draw the line" and examine their ideas and beliefs about different sexual behaviors. “Drawing the Line” was made in response to the “porn wars” of the late 80’s-the feminist debate of if female sexual imagery was more oppressive to women, or if it was empowering to women. Kiss and Tell’s work explicitly embraced depictions of female sexuality, and encouraged the conversation between anti-porn feminists and sex positive feminists. The art was controversial, even more so as it was released in the era of the Red Hot Video Store bombings. The collective displayed their work to point out the double standard in which artists exploring politics and sexuality are “cause for alarm” and yet adult films and magazines that are much more explicit are of no concern. This show was about desensitizing the view of queer sex and relationships. It intended to make lesbian relationships just as visible as straight relationships. Through the intimate exploration of queer bodies, The Kiss and Tell collective gave space for lesbians to perform and share their experiences. The show traveled widely in Canada and the United States in the 1990s, as well as showing in Australia and the Netherlands. In the summer of 2015 Kiss and Tell had redisplayed and revisited their exhibition “Drawing the Line.” This was featured at the Vancouver Queer Arts Festival in celebration of the work’s 25th anniversary, and was the first time in 13 years that it had been displayed.
Out On Screen is an LGBT-oriented arts organization based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It began as a small, community-based film festival in 1988 and was registered as a BC society in 1989, in anticipation of the 1990 Gay Games. Since then, Out On Screen has evolved to become a professional arts organization with two key program initiatives: the Vancouver Queer Film Festival, the annual queer film festival in Vancouver, and Out In Schools, a province-wide educational program aimed primarily at high school students, but with program delivery across the education system, that employs film and video to address homophobia, transphobia, and bullying.
Pride Week 1973 was a national LGBT rights event in Canada, which was held in August 1973. The event, which took place from August 19 to 26, was marked by LGBT-themed programming in several Canadian cities, including Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Saskatoon and Winnipeg. Programming included an art festival, a dance, picnic, a screening of a documentary and a rally for gay rights that occurred in all the participating cities.
Michael Venus is a Canadian artist, actor and producer.
GFEST - Gaywise FESTival is an LGBT annual cross-arts festival in London, England. It is a platform for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer artists, organizations and venues to promote LGBT and queer arts.
The Australian Queer Archives (AQuA) is a community-based non-profit organisation committed to the collection, preservation and celebration of material reflecting the lives and experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex LGBTI Australians. It is located in Melbourne. The Archives was established as an initiative of the 4th National Homosexual Conference, Sydney, August 1978, drawing on the previous work of founding President Graham Carbery. Since its establishment the collection has grown to over 200,000 items, constituting the largest and most significant collection of material relating to LGBT Australians and the largest collection of LGBT material in Australia, and the most prominent research centre for gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans and intersex history in Australia.
"Paul Wong is a Canadian multimedia artist. An artist, curator, and organizer of public interventions since the mid-1970s, Wong is known for his engagement with issues of race, sex, and death. His work varies from conceptual performances to narratives, meshing video, photography, installation, and performance with Chinese-Canadian cultural perspectives".
Zanele Muholi is a South African artist and visual activist working in photography, video, and installation. Muholi's work focuses on race, gender and sexuality with a body of work that dates back to the early 2000s, documenting and celebrating the lives of South Africa's Black lesbian, gay, transgender, and intersex communities. Muholi is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, explaining that "I'm just human".
The Cinematheque, founded in 1972, is a Canadian charity and non-profit film institute, media education centre, and film exhibitor based in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Qmunity, formerly known as the Centre, is an LGBT community centre located on Bute Street in the Davie Village neighbourhood of the West End of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Vancouver's LGBT community is centered on Davie Village. Historically, LGBT people have also gathered in the Chinatown and Gastown neighborhoods. Former establishments include Dino's Turkish Baths, a gay bathhouse on Hastings, and the city's first drag bar, BJ's, on Pender Street.
Mark Takeshi McGregor is a Canadian flutist, educator, producer, curator, and visual artist.
Queer art, also known as LGBT+ art or queer aesthetics, broadly refers to modern and contemporary visual art practices that draw on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and various non-heterosexual, non-cisgender imagery and issues. While by definition there can be no singular "queer art", contemporary artists who identify their practices as queer often call upon "utopian and dystopian alternatives to the ordinary, adopt outlaw stances, embrace criminality and opacity, and forge unprecedented kinships and relationships." Queer art is also occasionally very much about sex and the embracing of unauthorised desires.
Joey Terrill is a Los Angeles based queer Chicano artist. Terrill uses inspiration from cartoons, magazines, 1950s and 1960s art movements, and comics to produce his work.
