Event Description

The Queerborough Archival Project aims to document the past, present, and futures of queer Scarborough, an eastern suburb in the city of Toronto. This speaker series is part of a larger research project that seeks to develop a digital archive of queer Scarborough, affirming that queer people have been – and continue to be – present in Scarborough despite the common notion that queerness only exists in the downtown core. With a lack of existing archival material and formal documentation, we are looking to use creative practice to generate new artifacts that document and affirm our community’s continued presence and resilience.

Funded by the Queer and Trans Research Lab at the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies, this speaker series seeks to both spotlight the works of local queer of colour artists and open up space for queer youth to gather, and creatively think through questions around space, memory, and queer futures/possibilities of Scarborough. Each invited artist will facilitate a series of two events - a virtual artist talk that contextualizes their artistic practice and how queerness + Scarborough informs their work, and a subsequent hands-on workshop where participants are invited to directly produce personal artistic works with guidance from the facilitator. We encourage those interested to attend both sessions of each artist.

We will kick off this speaker series with the amazing Curtia Wright whose public artworks can be seen across the city and has been featured in a variety of publications including The Globe and Mail, CBC Arts, and City News. Join us in exploring what it means to remember and build a queer Scarborough.

Speaker Bio

Curtia Wright is a multidisciplinary Fine Artist, Mural Artist and Arts Educator based in Toronto, Ontario. She received her BFA at OCAD University in the Drawing and Painting program in 2015. Her murals fuse elements of fantasy, sci-fi and surrealism with vibrant transportive colours used to animate their environments.The work she creates looks at mental health, metaphysics, and the ephemerality of dreams and memory through a sci-fi lens. She has collaborated on public art projects with Community organizations, Commercial and Private mural commissions across Canada and Internationally.

Website: https://www.curtiawright.com/