Queer Arts Festival 2017 ExploresTwo-Spirit Art with "UnSettled"

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UnSettled

The Queer Arts Festival 2017 (QAF), Vancouver’s annual artist-run, multi-disciplinary showcase of queer arts, culture and history, takes place this year from June 17-29 at the Roundhouse Arts Centre in Vancouver, BC. The 2017 visual art exhibition UnSettled “…addresses power, representation, sexuality, language, body, tradition, memory, colonial narratives and knowledge sharing within a contemporary art context,” says SD Holman, the festival’s Artistic Director.

According to Curator Adrian Stimson (Blackfoot): “With UnSettled, I explore the art and being of Two-Spirit artists, and in turn, they expose the issues of historical extermination of Two-Spirit people, the lack of alternative aboriginal sexuality and gender in contemporary Western culture/media, the Two-Spirit movement and future as a part of the reclamation of Two-Spirit identity and practice.” 

The term “Two-Spirit” is used by many Indigenous people to describe their gender, sexual and spiritual identity—often inclusive of all LGBTQ+—in reclaiming and restoring traditional Indigenous concepts suppressed by colonial heteronormativity.

Adrian Stimson holds a BFA from the Alberta College of Art and Design and an MFA at the University of Saskatchewan (2005). As an artist, his interdisciplinary work includes painting, installation and performance and is testimony to the treatment of Indigenous peoples in Canada. Much of his work explores the bison as a metaphorical presence in First Nations histories, while his installation work is rooted in the legacy of residential schools. As his performance persona Buffalo Boy, Stimson acts out various identities, shifting between shaman, gay cowboy, powwow dancer and priest. Stimson’s work has been exhibited at the Mendel Art Gallery, La Centrale Galerie Powerhouse, the Art Gallery of Alberta, the Glenbow Museum and Musée du quai Branly. In 2003, he received the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal, in 2005 the Alberta Centennial Medal in recognition of his activisim and in 2009 the Blackfoot Visual Arts Award. Most recently, the British Museum in London purchased two paintings by Stimson: Event Three, featuring a bison juxtaposed with soaring modern grain elevators, and Event Two, showing a mother and baby bison frolicking in the snow with an oil derrick in the background.

UnSettled features more than 20 Indigenous artists from across Canada [biographies here], including Ahasiw Maskegon-Iskwew, Alyyana Maracle, Barry Ace, Beric Manywounds, Cease Wyss, Dayna Danger, George Littlechild, Jessie Short, John Powell, Michelle Sylliboy, Mike MacDonald, Raven John, Richard Emery Duck Chief, Richard Helkkila-Sawan, Robert Houle, Rosalie Favell, Thirza Cuthand, Ursula Johnson, Vanessa Dion Fletcher and Wanda Nanibush, among others.

In addition to the curated visual arts exhibition, QAF features a performing arts series, and workshops for adults and youth.. By producing, presenting and exhibiting contemporary work, the festival’s programming has received wide acclaim as “concise, brilliant and moving” (Georgia Straight), “easily one of the best art exhibitions of the year” (Vancouver Sun), and “on the forefront of aesthetic and cultural dialogue today” (Xtra).

Tickets are available online at queerartsfestival.com/buy-tickets/ and at the Roundhouse during the festival. A festival 4-show flex-pass is $69.

The Pride in Art Society produces the Queer Arts Festival, harnessing the visceral power of the arts to inspire recognition, respect and visibility of people who transgress gender and sexual norms. Through the intimate act of sharing as artists and audiences, we bring diverse communities together to support artistic risk-taking, incite creative collaboration and experimentation and celebrate the rich historic heritage of queer artists and art.

Source: Queer Arts Festival