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Sultana Bambino
Sultana Bambino is a Montreal based multidisciplinary creator based in Tio’tia:ke (Montreal). She sees the act of design and photography as a ritualistic outlet to reflect on her emotionally laborious role in her Italo-Moroccan family and immediate community. While she identifies as versatile and adaptable, she is most known for her use of pastel gradients and primary colour blocking, illustrations of hands and portraits / characters of underground queer icons.
As a visual artist who views design as an important component/tool for social change, she co-founded Slut Island with Frankie Teardrop in 2013. Her skills and knowledge compounded with her dedication to anti-oppressive community networks lead her to cultivation of the festival’s branding and aesthetic. Through her years of experience with Slut Island, she has acquired additional skills in the likes of PR and festival programming/curation with a consistent dedication to supporting community growth and mobilizing for greater social reform both within and beyond the project.
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Frankie Teardrop
Co-creator of Slut Island Festival, Frankie Teardrop runs a monthly party series (LIP) and DJing in Tio’tia:ke/Montreal since 2014. They are currently based out of the territories of xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations (Vancouver) where they work in film. Since their early involvement with Head & Hands and Faggity Ass Fridays, Frankie became quickly involved and committed to programming events and collaborations that seek to offset the lack of representation of artists who are 2SLGBTQQIA+/QTBIPOC through centering their work.
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Odile Myrtil
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Bita Mary Eslami
Bita Mary eslami is an Irani exile and a forever Montrealer. For two decades she has supported non-status and migrant families, victims of police violence, promoted child care and worked to advance the international BDS movement in solidarity with Palestinians.
Former coordinator for the Immigrant Workers Center, falling 2 classes short of a bachelors in social work – she is currently working at Head & Hands establishing a focus in programming and support for Nigerian asylum seekers and criminalised/prison involved youth.
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Elle Barbara
Elle Barbara is a Montreal-based avant-garde singer-songwriter, song selector (TS Ellise), pinup, speaker, writer, director, curator, and intervention worker whose musical output combines elements of soul, psychedelia, jazz, and underground. A lover of the odd, dark, or overlooked elements in pop music, Elle rose from artist-run spaces at the turn of the 2010s and has seen their work soar to enduring acclaim in Japan and Europe, in a career whose highlights include duets with Laetitia Sadier and R. Stevie Moore. In recent years, Barbara’s efforts have been mainly centered around trans community organizing – including contributions in Montreal’s emerging ballroom scene as the Iconic Mother of the Idiosyncratic Meta House of Barbara. The House of Barbara, in addition to throwing balls, is a collective whose transdisciplinary practice encompasses music, performance, activism & DJing. Elle’s current musical incarnation (Elle Barbara’s Black Space) boasts excellence in the likes of Markus Lake and Mitch Holtby, and aims to re-center blackness and reject anti-black tropes within the city’s music and art spaces.
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Adjani Poirier
Adjani Poirier is a multidisciplinary theatre artist who sometimes likes to experiment with sound art and radio. Her work is centred around principles of queerness, feminism and destroying white supremacy. She is thrilled to have performed, written and co-created work presented in the Montreal Fringe, Revolution They Wrote and The Yukon Riverside Arts Festival. Recent work includes the plays On Life and Living: A History of AIDS Community Care Montreal and Still Gay When I’m Not In Love. Adjani is a recent alum of Black Theatre Workshop’s Artist Mentorship Program and is currently studying playwriting at the National Theatre School of Canada.
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Elsa Mirzaei
Elsa Mirzaei is an Azeri-Iranian event producer, cultural worker and proponent of the underground. They founded and produce DIY Spring, a grassroots, imaginative music and arts festival based in Ottawa, ON and spend as much of their free time as possible biking aimlessly around Montreal.
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HUMBLE
Debuted in 2018 by Chivengi, HUMBLE aims to highlight queer black subcultural genres, such as house, techno, afro, r&b, and how they are translated within the Quebec diaspora context by booking artists of various backgrounds, from near and far. Aiming to make the connection between ballroom/jersey club culture, experimental music scenes and DIY queer party subculture, the event is designed to create safer space for party goers to attend and (re)connect with likeminded individuals of similar background in the city through music, within a more thought conscious setting.
The HUMBLE showcase will be broadcasted here (on the slutislandfestival.com homepage) on Friday, October 16th 2020.
Photo of Chivengi: cover of the Mitsubishi EP by Yannis Davy
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Dayna Danger
Dayna Danger (they/them pronouns) is a 2Spirit, Metis – Saulteaux – Polish visual artist, organizer and kin wrangler (or curator). Danger was raised on the North-west edge of Win-nipi, Treaty 1 territory, or so called Winnipeg. They are currently based in occupied intionni’tiohtiá:ke, or so called Montreal. Danger holds a MFA in Photography from Concordia University. Through utilizing the processes of photography, sculpture, performance and video, Danger creates works and environments that question the line between empowerment and objectification by claiming the space Ongoing works exploring BDSM and beaded leather fetish masks negotiate the complicated dynamics of sexuality, gender and power in a consensual and feminist manner. Their focus remains on Indigenous and Metis visual and erotic sovereignty. Danger has exhibited their work nationally and internationally in such venues as Art gallery of Alberta, Edmonton AB; Urban Shaman, Winnipeg, MB; Art Mur, Berlin; and the New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe and most recently at the National Gallery of Canada with Àbadakone | Continuous Fire | Feu continuel. Danger was featured on the cover of Canadian Art’s June 2018 Kinship cover. Danger has participated in residencies at the Banff Centre for the Arts and at Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art. Danger served as a board member of the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective (ACC/CCA) till 2019. Danger is an Artist in Residence through Initiatives for Indigenous Futures at AbTeC and an independent student, pursuing a indi-PhD focused on hide tanning practices from her great grandmother, Madeline, at Concordia University.
Dayna is the curator of Slut Island Festival 2020’s virtual and physical art show, We’re remembering to take care.
Website: daynadanger.comInstagram: @daynadanger
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Lindsay Nixon
Lindsay Nixon is a Toronto-based Cree-Métis-Saulteaux SSHRC doctoral scholarship recipient, a McGill University Art History Ph.D. candidate, and an assistant professor in Ryerson University’s Department of English. They previously held the position of Editor-at-Large for Canadian Art and twice served as the Arts and Literary Summit programmer for MagNet. Nixon’s first book nîtisânak (Metonymy Press, 2018) won the prestigious 2019 Dayne Ogilive Prize and a 2019 Quebec Writer’s Federation first book prize, and has been nominated for a Lambda Literary Award and an Indigenous Voices Literary Award. Nixon is the co-founder of gijiit: a curatorial collective that focuses on community-engaged Indigenous art curations, gatherings, and research dealing with themes of gender, sex, and sexuality. They are a REVEAL Indigenous Art Award recipient, and have been awarded national Magazine Awards in the Essay category for “Stories Not Told” and in the Best-Editorial Package category for “#MeToo and the Secrets Indigenous Women Keep.” For their work as lead editor for the summer 2017 issue of Canadian Art, an issue on the theme of “Kinship,” they were also nominated for a National Magazine Award in the “Best Editorial Package” category. Nixon’s writing has appeared in The Walrus, Malahat Review, Room, GUTS, esse, Teen Vogue, CV2/Prairie Fire, The New Inquiry and other publications.
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Fruition CollectiveFruition A QTBIPOC creative’s collective based in Montreal that is dedicated to providing safer, inspiring and communal spaces for marginalized queer, trans, black and indigenous youth of colour. We aim to partner with local venues supportive of our cause to put on events and workshops meant to educate and empower members of our community so they can confidently pursue the crafts they love or just have a place to come be around good people for a good time.We stand for marginalized youth finding their stride and stepping into their power. We seek to foster growth, connection and the reclamation of our time and energy in order to pour them back into ourselves. Our work is a depiction of freedom come to fruition.Fruition Collective will hold a closed QTBI healing workshop on Sunday, October 25th 2020.
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Mattie Tesfaldet
Mattie Tesfaldet (pronouns: they/them) is a computer vision and machine learning researcher, artist, and DJ based in Montréal, Canada. They are pursuing their PhD at McGill University and Mila researching generative models for visual content creation, specifically, looking for novel and interesting ways images and videos can be represented with neural networks. Outside of academia, they like to apply their research with the aim of exploring the intersection of human creativity and artificial intelligence. Particularly, developing new AI-based mediums for communication, expression, and sharing of visual imagery. Recent collaborative works include QT.bot with Lucas LaRochelle at Studio XX and artwork featured at the Human Learning exhibition with Xavier Snelgrove at Centre Culturel Canadien. You can find them on instagram @mattierialgirl.
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Emma Coldwell
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Stacy Lee
Stacy Lee is a Jamaican-born lens-based artist based in Montreal, Quebec. Lee has obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Film Theory and Mass Communications from York University in addition to an AEC in Commercial Photography from Dawson College. Her clients include Macleans, Just for Laughs, Canadian Art, McGill University, Canadian Festival of Spoken Word, Pop Montreal, Stereogum, Vice Magazine & Catie Magazine. In her personal work, Lee investigates themes of race and body politics.
Website: staceyleephoto.ca
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Jason Voltaire
Jason Voltaire is an interdisciplinary artist based in Montreal. Always in search of new methods to craft video, Voltaire’s work touches upon motion graphics design as well a 3D graphics and programming. He is heavily interested in breathing an auratic essence into his workflow all the while keeping it concise. He often refers back to the past but re-contextualises it to have his say within contemporary conversations.
Vimeo: jasonvoltaire
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Canada Council for the Arts
Slut Island Festival is made possible thanks to the continued support of The Canada Council for the Arts.
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Elena Stoodley
Elena Stoodley, when she is not sound teching or planning the revolution, excels in blue-eyed neo-soul music played on a loop pedal with a negro spiritual approach.
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Sage Nokomis Wright
Sage is creative who comes from an Ojibwe-Anishinaabe and settler family, she is made of up the waters that raised her, from coast to coast.
She is a producer who’s work has been featured in Chromatic Festival, Festival Trans-Ameriques, Nuit Blanche, and Clash Magazine UK.
Sage honours the gifts, offerings and teachings that womxn before her have offered and is motivated to honour and support her kin. Now, and always.
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Noka Palm Trees
Noka Palm Trees is a freelance Multidisciplinary Artist, Poet and Fashion Marketer. Their work is rooted in Afrofuturism, Jamaican pinnacles and everything discolicious funktastic. In their downtime, they enjoy rediscovering their culture through cooking and baking Jamaican cuisine.
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James Diamond
James Diamond is an experimental and multidisciplinary artist based in Montreal. His past film/video works, including the award winning Man from Venus, Outline, and Mars Womb Man have screened internationally for over a decade.
As an outsider artist, he had the honour of presenting his first film retrospective in Toronto at the age of 35 at Toronto’s Rhubarb Performance Arts Festival. His films continue to be screened internationally in gritty underground festivals and more established venues alike, such as the National Film Board of Canada. His paintings have been curated extensively across North America/Turtle Island.
While his work transcends categorization, it is often described as experimental, political, and autobiographical. Through video, theatre, music and painting, he exposes and entwines intimate accounts of analyzing and cultivating genders and sexualities, experiences of mental illness and poverty, as well as being an artist striving and thriving within a post-colonial society.
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Magassy Mbow
Magassay Mbow is a multi disciplinary artist, author and curator.
Caricaturist, Author and illustrator of the web series and blog “AtTheNunnery” (2010).
Started (2003) and continuing producing songs on FL Studios. At first used for fun on the computer, then turned into something more personal and professional. Most recently concluded 2017 solo EP “Immanence”.
Former contributor, cartoonist and music editor at Aile Reve Webmag (now AfroPeppy).
Founding member of girl-group Strange Froots, under NoBad Sound Studio. Co-founder of Lux Magna festival.
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Magella Skerritt
Magella is a vocalist of the black classical music tradition, a DJ, and a kick-ass survivor. She’s a Montreal based artist with an afro-futuristic vision and style. It’s her goal to create and cultivate safe spaces for POC and LGBTQA+ communities and to raise awareness of important socio-political issues. She’s a man-eating force of nature, ready to rip the still-beating heart out of the Patriarchy and crush it beneath her heel. Her ability to wield all the elements, from fire and earth to water and air, is the reason why she is the Avatar. She is the chosen one, and only she can save us from the fire nation.
In her spare time, she reads books.
Soundcloud: magella_nic
Instagram: magellanic_
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Jordan Martin
In addition to being Marta Helm, Nitram Nadroj, & Derrick, Jordan Martin is a musician, poet/rock-critic & artist. Their (plural pronouns) music can be found on their bandcamp & their art can be found on their website. Most recently, their book/tape “S.O.S: Some Oscillations Suck! Collected Poetic Rock Criticism with Translations in Morse Code” is out on C.E.E. Press & Label & can be found at here.
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Diana Baescu
Rooted within DIY Zine, radio, and rave culture, Diana is a non-binary multidisciplinary community builder that emphasizes the dancefloor as a focal point for the creation and strengthening of LGBTQ2SA+ support networks.
Devoting themselves to the resurgence of Montreal’s queer after hours spaces, Diana holds their learnt experiences of collaborative publishing and radio as a driving factor to their curatorial style.
Curation embedded in the bringing together of different visions, experiences and struggles, Diana combines punk, techno and noise with their radical belief of community as a means for survival.“Communities are not built on the accomplishments and experiences of any single individual, they are complex support systems we build with and for one another when every other support system disregards our struggles and existence.”
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JG
JG is a non-binary visual artiste who is based in Montreal. They make work about the androgyn sense of floral embodiment, and spend a lot of time trying to tune in deeply to what is happening around them. Their artwork is typically print based or displayed as sets of painted wood cut-out pieces.
Please feel free to touch base with them, or find your way to a cute opening at NDQ, August 11 (5PM-7PM) as their paintings and posters will be displayed for a time.
Photo by Ariana Molly
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Kristin Li
Kristin Li was born in Chengdu, China, and currently works in Toronto and Montreal. As an emerging filmmaker and multimedia artist, Kristin creates experimental narratives, animations, documentaries, and installations that explore contemporary formations of power. These projects recontextualize familiar stories, practices, and institutions to reveal the ways that they constrain us in spite of our intentions, and the hidden sites of possibility that we can nonetheless exploit.
Kristin’s work has been shown globally, including screenings at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (Germany), National Contemporary Art Museum Bucharest (Romania), Cinémathèque quebécoise (Canada), MIX NYC (USA), Videoformes International Digital Arts Festival (France), and Galerie Leonard & Bina Ellen (Canada).
Website: kristinli.ca
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Jessica Valmé
Jessica Valmé a.k.a. SIKA VALMÉ, is a versatile hustler, queer Caribbean multidimensional artist, entrepreneur, project manager and French language coach, with the expertise of a diaspora. Sika operates with a cross-disciplinary mindset as she’s conceived, produced and parted in a variety of solo and collaborative projects blending authenticity and consciousness in original inspired music, illustration and performance art. For also having played roles in art management and community organizing, Sika is dedicated to develop her skills and efforts pushing boundaries and promoting hybrid-niche perspectives where queerness can lead meaningful expressions.
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Marcela Huerta
Marcela Huerta is the author of Tropico, a collection of poetry and creative nonfiction published by Metatron Press in 2017. She has worked at the Museum of Anthropology, Working Format, and Free Agency Creative as a Graphic Designer, and at Drawn & Quarterly as an Assistant Editor. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in vallum, Leste, Bad Nudes, Montreal Review of Books, spy kids magazine, and Lemon Hound. You can find her online:
Twitter: marsmella
Instagram: @marsmella
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Never Apart
Never Apart is a non-profit organization in Montréal, Québec, Canada, determined to bring about social change and spiritual awareness through cultural programming with global reach and impact.
NVA, the music division of Montreal-based nonprofit organization Never Apart, seeks to create high concept experiences utilizing the city’s array of exciting event spaces. Bridging the gap between the DIY and experimental scenes the city has become famous for, NVA aims to pull cutting edge programming from a diverse musical repertoire with a focus on inclusive, community driven events.
Leticia Trandafir is the Music Director for NVA and has been working closely with Slut Island and Intersessions to present the DJ workshop and Panel discussion on Saturday, July 28th at Never Apart.
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Metonymy Press
Metonymy Press is based in Tio’tia:ke (Montreal), unceded Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) territory. We publish literary fiction and nonfiction by emerging writers. We try to reduce barriers to publishing for authors whose perspectives are underrepresented in order to produce quality materials relevant to queer, feminist, and social justice communities. We really want to keep gay book lovers satisfied.