SLUT ISLAND

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.