Diversity Festival: Queer Tarot 101
Description
Queer Tarot 101: Tarot, Identity, and Collective Care
Co-hosted by UNSW Community of Practice for Inclusive Research with Queer and Trans people, and people with innate variations of sex characteristics (Intersex) (CoPQTI) and the Australian Alternative Sino-Queer Collective (AASC).
How might tarot help us reflect on identity, belonging, and the communities we create? What can spirituality offer as a practice of care, reflection, and imagination?
Tarot has long been more than a tool for divination. Across many queer communities, it has become a practice of storytelling, reflection, and imagining different ways of living together. Tarot invites us to pause, notice patterns, ask meaningful questions, and explore how we relate to ourselves, one another, and the communities we build.
The session will begin with an introduction to tarot and its connections to queerness, identity, and collective care. Together, we will explore how tarot can be used as a tool for reflection, creativity, and community-building. The discussion will conclude with a live collective tarot reading, inviting participants to reflect on questions about belonging, community, care, and the futures we hope to build together.
In the second half of the workshop, participants will be invited to join a DIY crystal bracelet-making session. This hands-on activity offers an opportunity to explore the symbolism and meanings associated with different crystals, reflect on personal intentions and spirituality, and create a bracelet to take home as a personal reminder of the themes that resonated throughout the workshop. No prior knowledge of tarot or crystals is required—participants are encouraged to engage with these practices in whatever way feels meaningful to them.
Facilitator
Dr Anastasia Murney
Anatasia Murney is a researcher, educator, and artist. She is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Centre for Social Research in Health and The Vitalities Lab at the University of New South Wales. Her research crosses contemporary art theory, anarchism, feminism, and environmental humanities. Anastasia has published in journals such as Third Text, Journal of Visual Culture, and Continuum: Media and Cultural Studies as well as edited books published by Routledge and Palgrave Macmillan. She works with collective tarot reading in her creative practice and has presented performances and workshops at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Wollongong Art Gallery, Frontyard Projects, and Cementa Festival.
Sue Ji
Drawing on their lived experience as a bisexual genderqueer person, Mx. Sue Ji will reflect on their years of tarot practice and explore how tarot has mirrored and resonated with their evolving understanding of queer identity. As a PhD candidate researching the psychology of transgender and non-binary communities in China, Sue will also consider tarot through a psychological lens, exploring its potential as a narrative and reflective practice that may support identity exploration, meaning-making, mutual recognition, and belonging within queer communities.
Schedule
- 3:00 pm - 4:40 pm
Queer Tarot Seminar
Discover how tarot can be used as a tool for reflection, identity, and collective care. Join us for an engaging hybrid seminar exploring tarot, queerness, and community, followed by a live collective tarot reading on belonging, care, and imagining queer futures. No prior knowledge of tarot is required.
- 4:40 pm - 5:00 pm
Afternoon Tea
- 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Crystal Bracelet Making Workship
Unwind with a relaxed, hands-on bracelet-making workshop exploring the symbolism of crystals, personal intentions, and collective care. This community-oriented session offers a welcoming space to connect with others, reflect, create, and take home a handmade bracelet as a keepsake.
Gallery
Tickets for good, not greed Humanitix dedicates 100% of profits from booking fees to charity
