Art Can Be So Queer
There’s nothing quite like spending an evening surrounded by fabulous and talented queer artists to feel less-than. Between the visual artists, musicians, performers, and writers, I have never felt so inadequate, though I have the feeling my cultural diet of reality TV and gossip magazines might not help. I’ve also never felt so proud of my community.
Last Saturday, Fairy Tales hosted its first annual queer arts festival: Q The Arts here in Calgary. To be honest I didn’t really know what I was getting into when I decided to check out the event. The Fairy Tales Queer Film Fest is one of the major highlights of my year, so I imagined they’d pull out all the stops for this inaugural event.
Besides, this was the poster. You say no to that.
And they did. The event was an explosion of queer arts. It floated between an open gallery/discussion event, and staged performances from musicians, performers, and writers. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so gay in my life, and that includes walking in a pride parade in spangly gold booty-shorts. Granted, that’s a story for another time.
Q The Arts didn’t just let the audience observe the art, but participate. Which means nothing less than me running around like an over-stimulated child in an arts classroom. One display involved a canvas that encouraged participants to play with paints and markers to create a community mural/art piece. Since my artistic ability is limited to me spastically jabbing at paper with some ink-containing device, the best I could come up with was a Pacman-inspired commentary on queerness in popular culture, and the way Pacman and Ms. Pacman play with socio-cultural constructions of gender.
Oh, who am I kidding? I just can’t draw.
I also managed to smear red paint all across my hand, which refused to wash off with soap. The resultant stain was more or less like the blood of Art, which I murdered with that above atrocity.
Out, out damned spot.
That was only one of many fun activities. There was also a disembodied door where people could mark their heights and “queer age” (i.e., how long they’d been out). I neglected to take a picture of it, but it was pretty amazing. Also, I felt oddly tall when marking my height. Speaking of disembodied…
This collection of knit penises in jars made my inner-Jeffrey Dahmer very happy.
The performances leading up to the end of the night made me laugh hard enough to cry. Those tears were just from realizing I could never be that funny, but the performances were brilliant. By the time Light Fires came on to dissolve the audience into an electro-pop dance party, I’d felt pretty well introduced to our little enclave of queer arts.
Art brings people together. This kind of event gives us a chance to see our queer little world for its cultural and artistic significance. It wasn’t just a showcase of some brilliant artists, or a let’s-see-how-gay-we-can-be evening, but rather a chance for us all to engage with our cultural community.
When so much of queer culture is seen on TV, or in the dark, alcohol-stained corners of nightclubs, events like this really help to demonstrate the multifaceted nature of our community. We’re a talented bunch, though some of us (read: me) are just by proxy.
Go team. It just gives you the warm-fuzzies.
Notes