Qouleur art exhibition
A group exhibition featuring the work of artists who self-identify as two-spirited, queer or trans people of colour, with visual artworks exploring the (personal, cultural, political) significance of hair from a queer and / or racialized perspective.
Hair is a significant part of our bodies that can be considered in many ways. Hair is a signifier of individual and group identity. The way that one chooses to groom or style their hair can be read as a public display of one’s chosen self-representation, convictions and alignments. The significance of hair as a carrier of meaning might operate within specific societal codes, for example, existing within the regiments of mainstream ideals of beauty, gender codes, class, and race identifiers. From a queer and racialized experience, however, it might also exist in reaction to those mainstream codes, perhaps operate outside of that system or position itself within an entirely different set of culturally-specific codes (ie. what is visually read as queer in one culture compared to another). An individual’s hair can render them visible or invisible. It can be groomed or grown to be emphatically “racialized” or “queer.” It can be cut in an act of defiance. It can be faked, accessorized, exaggerated. Some of us lament the loss of hair or the excess of it on our bodies while others celebrate and desire these experiences. Some of us anxiously pull our hair, some find strange hairs in our intimate spaces and wonder whose it is.
The artists exhibiting in this year's exhibition are:
For more information about this exhibition, please contact:
- Co-curators: Wai-Yant Li and Jenny Lin
- Location: RATS 9 Gallery, room 530, 372 Ste. Catherine West, Montreal, QC. Belgo Building (metro Place-des-arts). Wheelchair accessible.
- Exhibition dates: August 16-23, 2013 (1-6 pm, closed Sunday and Monday)
- Vernissage: Friday, August 16, 6:00 - 9:00 pm
- Performance in the gallery by artist Hideki Kawashima, August 16 at 7:30 pm.
A group exhibition featuring the work of artists who self-identify as two-spirited, queer or trans people of colour, with visual artworks exploring the (personal, cultural, political) significance of hair from a queer and / or racialized perspective.
Hair is a significant part of our bodies that can be considered in many ways. Hair is a signifier of individual and group identity. The way that one chooses to groom or style their hair can be read as a public display of one’s chosen self-representation, convictions and alignments. The significance of hair as a carrier of meaning might operate within specific societal codes, for example, existing within the regiments of mainstream ideals of beauty, gender codes, class, and race identifiers. From a queer and racialized experience, however, it might also exist in reaction to those mainstream codes, perhaps operate outside of that system or position itself within an entirely different set of culturally-specific codes (ie. what is visually read as queer in one culture compared to another). An individual’s hair can render them visible or invisible. It can be groomed or grown to be emphatically “racialized” or “queer.” It can be cut in an act of defiance. It can be faked, accessorized, exaggerated. Some of us lament the loss of hair or the excess of it on our bodies while others celebrate and desire these experiences. Some of us anxiously pull our hair, some find strange hairs in our intimate spaces and wonder whose it is.
The artists exhibiting in this year's exhibition are:
- Momoko Allard
- nyx zierhut & Yvette Choy
- Jérôme Havre
- Pauline Johnson
- Hideki Kawashima
- mihee-nathalie lemoine (aka kimura byol)
- Elisha Lim
- Zavé Martohardjono
- Candace Mooers
For more information about this exhibition, please contact:
Momoko Allard makes work in drawing, photography and other pictorial mediums. These days, she divides her time between art projects, academic reading, and working in arts and education administration. Her projects have been funded by le Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the National Association of Japanese Canadians Endowment Fund. Her occasional contributions can be found in the online journal No More Potlucks. She lives in Montreal and sometimes crashes in Tokyo.
(Image: Momoko Allard, "Untitled", 2013 ©)
(Image: Momoko Allard, "Untitled", 2013 ©)
Jérôme Havre is French artist based in Canada. He completed his studies at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. His work interrogates issues of identity, territory and community through the representation of nature. That is, the manner in which it is presented and yet can be more readily perceived through our cultural filters. According to him, “nature is deliberately altered in order to deceive us and keep order.” He develops in his creation reflexive spaces through immersive processes. He looks for ways to do this through presentation, creation of situations, or setting the stage with his sculptures and extending it to the public who take part “in the show.” He is inspired by the production of dioramas of natural history museums and zoos and reappropriates the method in his artistic work. He presents “a second nature” which encourages a careful reading. To design these “shelters,” Jerome Havre uses textiles, sculpture, digital prints, photographic images, murals, sound recording, and videos to create scenographic installations.
Since 2001 Jerome HAVRE has exhibited his works in Europe, Africa and North America. He is represented by the Donald Browne Gallery in Montreal.
(Image: Jérôme Havre, "Marie", 2011 ©)
Since 2001 Jerome HAVRE has exhibited his works in Europe, Africa and North America. He is represented by the Donald Browne Gallery in Montreal.
(Image: Jérôme Havre, "Marie", 2011 ©)
Pauline Johnson
Growing up, there were many times I felt like there were two different worlds I lived in. One created from history, culture and language. And two the way I was told to follow and keep yourself in society with the others. I now know that these worlds are often issues with Native Americans and our history. There would always be a distinct difference between one and the other. My grandfather often mentioned, there are two different worlds and said- "How could you live in them both?" I couldn't gather this question into an answer. So I was told to leave home and gain a new perspective. This scared me as it was forcing me out of my comfort zone. During those years I was gone, I now know the reality of these distinct worlds. However from various artworks from the past there is often the belief that Native American’s have just 'one' culture. There is not one sum of Native Americans, there are multiple cultures. Often there is the belief of the mystic Native American and false, pseudo historical Native American. Once this was a belief of mine, I was naive to think it was simple to connect these worlds without including different perspectives.
I'm quite fortunate to have gained different perspectives from multiple cultures, different sexual orientations and art practices. I found various ways to express myself through my art practise, from expressing the desire to focus on events that celebrate the history and future of Native American people and not the stereotypes.ick here to edit.
(Image: Pauline Johnson, 2013 ©)
Growing up, there were many times I felt like there were two different worlds I lived in. One created from history, culture and language. And two the way I was told to follow and keep yourself in society with the others. I now know that these worlds are often issues with Native Americans and our history. There would always be a distinct difference between one and the other. My grandfather often mentioned, there are two different worlds and said- "How could you live in them both?" I couldn't gather this question into an answer. So I was told to leave home and gain a new perspective. This scared me as it was forcing me out of my comfort zone. During those years I was gone, I now know the reality of these distinct worlds. However from various artworks from the past there is often the belief that Native American’s have just 'one' culture. There is not one sum of Native Americans, there are multiple cultures. Often there is the belief of the mystic Native American and false, pseudo historical Native American. Once this was a belief of mine, I was naive to think it was simple to connect these worlds without including different perspectives.
I'm quite fortunate to have gained different perspectives from multiple cultures, different sexual orientations and art practices. I found various ways to express myself through my art practise, from expressing the desire to focus on events that celebrate the history and future of Native American people and not the stereotypes.ick here to edit.
(Image: Pauline Johnson, 2013 ©)
Hideki Kawashima
I immigrated to Canada on the basis of a same-sex partnership in 2006. Using my personal experience as a starting point, I started to investigate the idea of self as a site of dialogue between memory and the present moment of being. In my art, I explore the relations between the temporal experience of the body and the recollection of the past, as they both have place in my individual identity. My physical existence and my memory of the past – especially my family and culture – both form multiple facets of myself rather than an individual defined only by reductive stereotypes.
My current art practice mainly focuses on three projects: performance as a physical embodiment of “here and now”, printmaking as a visual translation of the performance’s indexicality and literary text as an exploration of memory where imaginary merges into reality. I am especially interested in how the mixing of multiple disciplines – performance, visual image and written text – would enact or re-enact viewers’ perceptive experience. Central in my work is the idea of transfer in the tradition of reproductive art technology, especially of print media: I aim to transfer thoughts, memories, emotions and feelings in my art in order to elicit viewers’ involvement in perceptual as well as conceptual ways.
(Image: Hideki Kawashima, " Roll Up Roll Back " ©)
I immigrated to Canada on the basis of a same-sex partnership in 2006. Using my personal experience as a starting point, I started to investigate the idea of self as a site of dialogue between memory and the present moment of being. In my art, I explore the relations between the temporal experience of the body and the recollection of the past, as they both have place in my individual identity. My physical existence and my memory of the past – especially my family and culture – both form multiple facets of myself rather than an individual defined only by reductive stereotypes.
My current art practice mainly focuses on three projects: performance as a physical embodiment of “here and now”, printmaking as a visual translation of the performance’s indexicality and literary text as an exploration of memory where imaginary merges into reality. I am especially interested in how the mixing of multiple disciplines – performance, visual image and written text – would enact or re-enact viewers’ perceptive experience. Central in my work is the idea of transfer in the tradition of reproductive art technology, especially of print media: I aim to transfer thoughts, memories, emotions and feelings in my art in order to elicit viewers’ involvement in perceptual as well as conceptual ways.
(Image: Hideki Kawashima, " Roll Up Roll Back " ©)
mihee-nathalie lemoine (a.k.a. kimura byol) is a multimedia artist and curator, born in korea (south), raised in belgium, and immigrated to canada.
"zer" visual work was exhibited solo and in group (seoul, tokyo, kyoto, hong-kong, taipei, berlin, brussels, lille, grenoble, montreal, vancouver, los angeles, new york). zer poems, essay and critics have been published in the u.s., south korea and japan. zer videos were screened in germany, korea, japan, hong-kong, tunisia, belgium, france, canada and the u.s.
lemoine-kimura works on diasporic identity, question gender and play with words.
lemoine believes in social justice and therefore doesn't like capital letters.
(Image: mihee-nathalie lemoine (a.k.a. kimura byol) , " 100 gold hair" ©)
"zer" visual work was exhibited solo and in group (seoul, tokyo, kyoto, hong-kong, taipei, berlin, brussels, lille, grenoble, montreal, vancouver, los angeles, new york). zer poems, essay and critics have been published in the u.s., south korea and japan. zer videos were screened in germany, korea, japan, hong-kong, tunisia, belgium, france, canada and the u.s.
lemoine-kimura works on diasporic identity, question gender and play with words.
lemoine believes in social justice and therefore doesn't like capital letters.
(Image: mihee-nathalie lemoine (a.k.a. kimura byol) , " 100 gold hair" ©)
Elisha Lim takes great pleasure in creatively portraying the beauty, dignity and power of being neither straight, nor white, nor cis-gendered. They also successfully advocated for Canadian gay media to adopt the gender neutral pronoun ‘they’.
They have exhibited art and videos internationally, proudly including the debut solo of Toronto’s notorious Feminist Art Gallery. They have been art awarded grants by the Canada Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council and Quebec Arts Council, and have juried art grants in Canada and the States. They have lectured on race representation and gender neutral pronouns on panels, artist talks and United Nations conferences since 2009, and directed Montréal’s first Racialized Pride Week in 2012, for which they curated the central exhibit “2-Qtpoc” at the gallery articule. Their current film circuit short “100 Butches #9: Ruby” was controversially censored in Singapore and debuted this year at the London BFI.
Their comics include the Bitch Magazine acclaimed “Sissy Calendar”, The Illustrated Gentleman, and most notably – 100 Butches, a graphic novel of portraits and anecdotes about masculine queers, with an introduction by New York Times bestselling author Alison Bechdel.
(Image: Elisha LIm, "Foot Messenger", 2013 ©)
They have exhibited art and videos internationally, proudly including the debut solo of Toronto’s notorious Feminist Art Gallery. They have been art awarded grants by the Canada Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council and Quebec Arts Council, and have juried art grants in Canada and the States. They have lectured on race representation and gender neutral pronouns on panels, artist talks and United Nations conferences since 2009, and directed Montréal’s first Racialized Pride Week in 2012, for which they curated the central exhibit “2-Qtpoc” at the gallery articule. Their current film circuit short “100 Butches #9: Ruby” was controversially censored in Singapore and debuted this year at the London BFI.
Their comics include the Bitch Magazine acclaimed “Sissy Calendar”, The Illustrated Gentleman, and most notably – 100 Butches, a graphic novel of portraits and anecdotes about masculine queers, with an introduction by New York Times bestselling author Alison Bechdel.
(Image: Elisha LIm, "Foot Messenger", 2013 ©)
Zavé Martohardjono is a Brooklyn-based artist working in performance, movement, video, and text. His current multi-medium series, autogeography, draws on classical Indonesian mythology and performance traditions to inform loosely autobiographical contemporary queer performance. He received his B.A. from Brown University in 2006 and his M.F.A. in Media Arts Production from the City College of New York in 2009. In 2011 he participated in the EMERGENYC Program at the Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics. He has had the pleasure of performing for Lawrence Weiner, Mariangela Lopez/Accidental Movement, Ximena Garnica, Vanessa Anspaugh, devynn emory, and J. Dellecave. He has collaborated in queer and trans art collectives such as Theater Transgression, Into the Neon, and MIX NYC. His videos and performance pieces have shown in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Montréal, Berlin, London, Zurich, Amsterdam, and Jakarta.
(Image: Zavé Martohardjono , "something dangerous", 2012 ©)
(Image: Zavé Martohardjono , "something dangerous", 2012 ©)
Candace Mooers
Since 1995, I have worked in community-based alternative media. Writing zines, hosting community radio shows, and organizing all-ages punk rock concerts have all figured part of my DIY (do it yourself) ethic of creating culture, archiving counter-cultural happenings, and subverting
mainstream cultural constructs. Using resources that are readily available have always figured prominently in my work, from found home furnishings to fabric scavenged from the dumpsters behind thrift stores. In recent years, I have also begun to work in embroidery, inspired by my mother's non-stop quilting. Reconnecting with matrilineal methods that have become professionalized and/or commodified figure an important part of my feminist art practice that seeks to explore such themes as distance, alienation, gendered divisions of labour, and modes of communication in the digital age of mass information.
(Image: Candace Mooers, "Miscarriage", 2013 ©)
Since 1995, I have worked in community-based alternative media. Writing zines, hosting community radio shows, and organizing all-ages punk rock concerts have all figured part of my DIY (do it yourself) ethic of creating culture, archiving counter-cultural happenings, and subverting
mainstream cultural constructs. Using resources that are readily available have always figured prominently in my work, from found home furnishings to fabric scavenged from the dumpsters behind thrift stores. In recent years, I have also begun to work in embroidery, inspired by my mother's non-stop quilting. Reconnecting with matrilineal methods that have become professionalized and/or commodified figure an important part of my feminist art practice that seeks to explore such themes as distance, alienation, gendered divisions of labour, and modes of communication in the digital age of mass information.
(Image: Candace Mooers, "Miscarriage", 2013 ©)
nyx zierhut & Yvette Choy
nyx zierhut is a hybrid. a trans/genre trans/genderqueer poet and performance artist of many colors, ze was born in brooklyn, new york and raised in rural massachusetts. ze has performed and presented work in new york city, montreal, san francisco, boston, chicago, colorado, vermont, western massachusetts, and the czech republic, among others. nyx recently received hir master of fine arts degree from goddard college.
"i perform visceral aesthetic and political interventions, rooted in a queer of color transfeminist embodiment and critique. my recent work has centered in transgenre text and performance, at play with transgression, desire, and difference. i'm interested in creative, counterhegemonic strategies for survival, resistance, and resilience. i also really love to dance".
Yvette Choy is an artist and storyteller whose works address ideas and realities of in-between-ness and the struggles and joys of inhabiting spaces among different identities including race, class and gender. Often involved with collaboration and community, their practice invokes questioning, rawness and humanity.
Yvette’s works have been exhibited internationally at festivals including Outfest (LA), Frameline (SF), Inside/Out (Toronto), CAAM Fest (SF), Visual Communications (LA), MIX (NY), Bildwechsel (Hamburg), Groupe Intervention Video (Montreal) and the National Queer Arts Festival (San Francisco). Their works have also been presented at venues including the Buriel Clay Theater at the African American Art & Culture Complex (SF), Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory (SF), CounterPULSE (SF), The Garage (SF), and WOW Theater (NY.) Yvette’s latest works include, I Thought I Found You But, commissioned by Queer Rebels Productions for SPIRIT: A Century of Queer Asian Activism (SF) and, Part-Time Lover, commissioned by New Sound Karaoke for their Pornaoke experience (NY.) Yvette is from Brooklyn, NY. They hold a BFA from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts Department of Film & Television.
(Image: nyx zierhut & Yvette Choy , “Here Over There”, 2013 ©)
nyx zierhut is a hybrid. a trans/genre trans/genderqueer poet and performance artist of many colors, ze was born in brooklyn, new york and raised in rural massachusetts. ze has performed and presented work in new york city, montreal, san francisco, boston, chicago, colorado, vermont, western massachusetts, and the czech republic, among others. nyx recently received hir master of fine arts degree from goddard college.
"i perform visceral aesthetic and political interventions, rooted in a queer of color transfeminist embodiment and critique. my recent work has centered in transgenre text and performance, at play with transgression, desire, and difference. i'm interested in creative, counterhegemonic strategies for survival, resistance, and resilience. i also really love to dance".
Yvette Choy is an artist and storyteller whose works address ideas and realities of in-between-ness and the struggles and joys of inhabiting spaces among different identities including race, class and gender. Often involved with collaboration and community, their practice invokes questioning, rawness and humanity.
Yvette’s works have been exhibited internationally at festivals including Outfest (LA), Frameline (SF), Inside/Out (Toronto), CAAM Fest (SF), Visual Communications (LA), MIX (NY), Bildwechsel (Hamburg), Groupe Intervention Video (Montreal) and the National Queer Arts Festival (San Francisco). Their works have also been presented at venues including the Buriel Clay Theater at the African American Art & Culture Complex (SF), Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory (SF), CounterPULSE (SF), The Garage (SF), and WOW Theater (NY.) Yvette’s latest works include, I Thought I Found You But, commissioned by Queer Rebels Productions for SPIRIT: A Century of Queer Asian Activism (SF) and, Part-Time Lover, commissioned by New Sound Karaoke for their Pornaoke experience (NY.) Yvette is from Brooklyn, NY. They hold a BFA from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts Department of Film & Television.
(Image: nyx zierhut & Yvette Choy , “Here Over There”, 2013 ©)