Upcoming Programming

The National Portrait Collection (NPC) is a central part of our archival holdings at the Canadian Lesbian + Gay Archives (The ArQuives).

This will be the first archival exhibition to be installed in The ArQuives’s new home, and it focuses on the moments of tension between what has been defined as obscene and the right to offend or the right to free speech. 

The night has always been a time for those outside the mainstream to communicate themselves more freely. After all, it was by the cover of night that provided many queers the opportunity to mingle, explore their sexuality and reveal their truest selves.

The ArQuives Gallery is proud to present Sexy SmART: Women of Beauty and Substance, an exhibition of the photography series behind the Heterosexuals for Same Sex Equality’s (HSSE) 2011 Calendar.

Switch is a series of large-scale photo diptychs that present pairs of seemingly different “heterosexual couples” in a portrait studio setting.

Where is the lesbian content? Artist, Onya Hogan-Finlay, presents an explorative and humorous exhibition that unearths lesbian representation in The ArQuives.

A retrospective with a twist, Looking Back / Looking Forward looks back to the first exhibition of the cLGA national portrait collection (npc) in 1998, on the 25th anniversary of the founding of The ArQuives.

Public Sins/Private Desires, celebrates the 20th anniversary of Lynne Fernie and Aerlyn Weissman’s 1992 documentary, Forbidden Love: Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Livesand examines the contradictions, tensions and victories in the daily lives of lesbians during the period from 1950 to 1980.

Three takes on living as couples, here, there, and there.

Pushing Buttons reimagines the space of The Pin Button Project, (In Pushing Buttons, the online is brought into the physical – space and content are reimagined. The spectator becomes a witness to the historical and present roles of pin buttons.

'Libraries' is built from three installation artworks: 'Library of Depth and Gender', 'Library of a Traveling Dandy', and 'Delineate'. Each of these works is concerned with classification and normalization of the body, and of beauty in unexpected places.

Words, Wit, Wisdom and Wool is a series of textile pieces that take words of wit and words of wisdom – all from a gay male perspective – and translates them into visual documents.

Twelve young artists come together in this exhibition that surveys varied ways in which the human being is perceived, deconstructed, fantasized, documented, and expressed through visualizations of the human form.

In 1999 two men, Danny Nashman and David Linton, decided to ride their bicycles from Toronto to Montreal to raise funds for charity. At the time, theToronto People With Aids Foundation (PWA) was facing a revenue shortfall and without an immediate cash infusion it would have to diminish the services it provided to its clients.

The practice of everyday freedom is “the means by which people deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.” – Pablo Friere

An exhibit that looks at the ways in which The Body Politic, a Toronto-based gay newspaper (1971-1987), became a dominant voice in the body politics of the LGBTQ+ communities in Canada.

Gay Premises: Radical Voices in the Archives, 1973-1983 looks at the ways in which The Body Politic (TBP), a Toronto-based gay newspaper (1971-1987), became a dominant voice in the body politics of the LGBTQ+ communities in Canada.

Exhibit dates:  Tuesday, July 23, 2013 Description:  Co-facilitated with Erin Silver and Karen Stanworth Coordinated [...]

Artistic, Cultural, and Activist Responses to TAG TEAM: Gay Premises and Gay Premises: Radical Voices in the Archive, 1973-1983

Ian Phillips is a visual artist and publisher whose small literary and art press, Pas de chance, has been active for over twenty-five years. In a chance pairing, the artists’ unique bodies of work come together not only through a common interest in illustration, but also through the transformative and queer—potential of colour, shape, and form.