The Bi Arts Festival today announced an exciting lineup of artists, authors and performers for the second annual festival, September 18-23, 2018, Toronto.
Toronto's second annual Bi Arts Festival is the world's largest celebration of bisexual voices in art and culture and runs from September 18th to 23rd, 2018. The festival welcomes a diverse roster of artists to Toronto, including Vancouver playwright Katie Sly, Kingston's former Poet Laureate Eric Folsom, Cleveland poet-performer Eris Eady, Ojibway multi-disciplinary artist, filmmaker and stand-up comic JL Whitecrow, textile artist Yahn Nemirovsky, and spoken word artist and author Mugabi Byenkya, amongst others.
"Not only does the festival exist to showcase work by bisexual, pansexual, and other fluid artists," says festival founder Catherine Jones, "but we look for work that takes risks and that is challenging. Certainly, some of the work we present is playful but some of it is also deeply personal and at times quite uncomfortable." She adds, "as a community we are starved for authentic representations of bisexuality, because although bisexuals make up the largest slice of the pie that is the LGBTQ+ community, our stories are often invisible. We exist in an in-between space and that makes people nervous. Bisexuals are not considered queer enough for LGBTQ+ spaces but in society at large, coming out as bisexual usually means reactions ranging from disbelief, to titillation, to a deep mistrust."
The festival kicks off Tuesday, September 18th with the launch of Issue 2 of our zine CRUSH, and runs through Sunday, September 23rd with six days of vibrant and original programming. The festival presents visual art, craft, storytelling, performance, theatre, video, dance and film with over 90 participating artists and performers.
The full calendar of events is available by clicking here and a list of artists is available here.
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