2022 National Queer Arts Festival

Mark your calendars for QCC's 25th Anniversary, 2022 National Queer Arts Festival beginning June 9th to June 23rd, 2022 with a lineup of amazing events and workshops across the Bay in-person and virtually worldwide! This year's theme, Our Destiny...honors our past, the present, and all the abundant possibilities for our community in the future. The National Queer Arts Festival centers Queer, Trans, Gender Nonconforming, Intersex, Two-spirit, Black, Indigenous, People of Color (QTI2SBIPOC artists) and honors their artistry, experiences, and lives. More details and links to purchase tickets at: https://queerculturalcenter.org/national-queer-arts-festival/ Covid-19 Protocols and Accessibility: To honor community care and wellness, this year is our very first hybrid festival with in-person and virtual gatherings. Our aim is to produce a festival where each of you can participate in a manner that feels safe and good to you. Our in-person events range from small workshops to large concerts. At all our events, proof of vaccination and masking is required. In addition, we have masks and hand-sanitizer on-hand and are providing testing for our artists and team. Request ASL interpretation for in-person events a week before the event. Please send request to [email protected] 2022 NQAF Events: 6/9 - Vaz A Ver/ You Will See, Visual Arts Exhibition & NQAF Opening Night! 6:00pm in person at SOMArts. A prediction, a prophecy, a promise, a threat. Move through this portal and bathe in divine visions for our collective queer, trans, and two-spirit post future now. Visual Arts Show Curated by Inés Ixierda & Xtal Azul. Opening night includes performances, dance, music and ceremony. 6/10 - Queer Convos with Comedic Creators: Adelina Anthony & D'Lo in Conversation. 8:00pm virtual event. Join us for a lively virtual evening with D’Lo and Adelina Anthony, in conversation with Sharon Bridgforth where they talk about collaborating throughout iterations of self, mediums, and life over time. 6/10 and 6/11 - 4th Annual Queer Afro Latin Dance Festival. Enjoy 2 nights of performances from top queer & ally, domestic and international dancers that are bringing spectacular shows. Polish your dance skills, by learning from world renowned queer instructors. 10 genres of music to enjoy including: vogue, hip hop, bachata, salsa, merengue, zouk, jazz, heels, & contemporary. Get your dance on to local and international DJ’s at the pool parties and night socials. 6/11 - Femme Rage: A Day of QTBIPOC Femme Centered Rage, Release, and Revival. 1:00pm to 4:00pm (multiple entrance times) in person at Glass Ceiling. Femme Rage is a QTBIPOC Femme centered rage room where Femmes, across the gender spectrum, are given a safer space to express their anger and frustration of living and dealing with a white supremacist capitalist heteropatriarchal reality. Join us in smashing the patriarchy and releasing what no longer serves us in this unique and cathartic experience. Artist: Aïma Paule aka Aïma the Dreamer. 6/11 - Queers of the Fatosphere + BEARPAD. 6:00pm in person at American Bookbinders Museum. Queers of the Fatosphere + BEARPAD Art Installation! Join Baruch Porras Hernandez, Rawiyah Tariq, Kevin Seaman and the art of the big sexy BEARPAD as they explore the awesomeness of being a fat queer sexual being and all of the power of being a fat queerdo weirdo. This show starts out with queer bear punk amazing visual art, then feeds you spoken word, storytelling, comedy, and super sexy fat queer performances. 6/11 - Resting Between the Waveforms. 1:15pm to 3:15pm in person at The Little Roxie. Resting Between the Waveforms is an experimental electronic vocal cello sound bath, offering a moment of restful togetherness, a sonic love poem and reminder of our destined path towards future ancestorhood. Artists: Peekaboo, GG Torres. 6/12 - Making an Impression, Leaving Our Mark: A Printmaking Workshop. 1:00pm in person at Medicine for Nightmares. Collage is a means to construct worlds and identities, and to talk back to dominant visual culture. In this spirit, attendees will be creating prints from self-constructed plates (collagraphs), made from collaged materials. Presented in partnership with Small Press Traffic. Artist: Tatiana Luboviski-Acosta. 6/12 - Our Legacy: a QCC Retrospective Conversation. 2:00pm in person at SomArts. Join us in celebrating NQAF's 25th Anniversary with a look at memorabilia and a conversation about the activism, origins and legacy of QCC with QCC's founders Pam Peniston, Jeff Jones & Lenore Chinn! 6/13 - How to Work with Astrology & other Practices to Sustain Your Art. 6:00pm in person. In this interactive workshop, we'll explore how to integrate astrology and/or other nature-based or esoteric tools to sustain your artistic practice year after year. Artist: Florencia Manóvil. 6/14 - AIDS DIVA: The Legend of Connie Norman (2021). 6:30pm in person at The Roxie. AIDS DIVA: The Legend of Connie Norman is a documentary film on the self-appointed “AIDS DIVA” and masterful spokesperson for ACT UP /Los Angeles in the late 80s and early 90’s Los Angeles. Connie described herself as “ex-drag queen, ex-hooker, ex-IV drug user, ex-high risk youth and current post-operative transsexual woman who is HIV positive” and simply “a human being seeking my humanity.” Artist: Dante. 6/14 - Forged. 7:00pm virtual event. Stellium presents Forged, an online literary arts event celebrating queer and trans Black and POC writers, featuring our inaugural Cusp Prize winners and lit mag contributors. Nefertiti Asanti (@electricfl0wer) is a poet from the Bronx, author of fist of wind and prose poetry editor of Stellium (@stelliumlit). They reside in Oakland, CA. 6/15 - MASCellaneous: How We Roll. 6:00pm in person at Oasis SF. Join Diamond Wave & Tavis Gaming Collective for an interactive evening queering table-top roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons. The event will include a panel, performances and facilitated game play (limited spots available). Artists: Tavis Gaming Collective, Jae Rouse-Iñiguez, Nick Ishimaru, Kai Kai B. Michaels, and Holly Graphic. 6/15 - Living Altars: Disabled QTBIPOC Writers Transforming Pandemic Grief. 7:00pm virtual event. In year three of the pandemic, come witness legendary disabled QTBIPOC writers- living and dead- share work about grief, survival and the futures we’re dreaming despite everything. Artists: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Meliza Bañales aka Missy Fuego, Stefani Echeverría-Fenn, Juba Kalamka, Naima Lowe, Lucia Leandro "LL" Gimeno, Stacey Park Milbern. 6/16 - The 45th. 6:45pm to 8:45pm in person at The Little Roxie. "The 45th”, a docudrama created by Dazié Grego-Sykes, weaves personally conducted interviews and performances featuring Black perspectives and voices that reveal how Black people have confronted, made sense of, and been changed by The 45th President of the United States. Artist: Dazié Grego-Sykes. 6/18 - Drag Story Hour with PerSia. 11:00am in person at San Francisco Public Library. Please join us for a very special storytime that will inspire a love of reading, while teaching deeper lessons on diversity, self-respect and an appreciation of others. This fabulous all-ages event will feature the ultra glamorous PerSia reading children's favorite stories! 6/18 - Unicorn Triggers: A Writing Workshop to Get You Going. 2:00pm virtual event. Calling all secret journal writers, open mic junkies, eloquent status updaters, kitchen table chismosas, daydreamers and hopeful writers of all kinds. Come ready to write and trust the process. All levels welcome! Artist: Maya Chinchilla. 6/18 - Nurture the Land Not the Empire: Stories from a Liberated Future. 3:00pm in person at Hummingbird Farm. Creating a portal into decolonial imagination, this event seeks to celebrate how queerness acknowledges the wounds of the world around us, and offers a path of reverence that heals them. Come and celebrate nature through poetry and visual arts as spells. Artists: Orion Camero, Victoria Montano. 6/19 - Stono: An audio-ritual. 12:00pm virtual event. Explore the Stono slave rebellion through the voices of its beyond-human participants: ancestors, water, mushrooms, and more. Through music and spoken text listeners are offered images of liberation that extend beyond human identities and temporality. Co-commissioned by No Credits Productions, LLC and Queer Cultural Center for the National Queer Arts Festival. Artist: T. Carlis Roberts. 6/20 - Echoes and Resonances. 6:00pm to 7:30pm virtual event. Echoes and Resonances: a poetry reading and conversation with Jari Bradley, Taylor Johnson, and Alexis De Veaux. 6/20 - Dare to Love. 7:30pm in person at The New Parish. Live Jazz, and Electronica with vocalist Valerie Troutt, and Solas B. Lalgee. Expect to hear a kaleidoscope of stories and sounds that celebrate and honor love, loss, joys, and community. Featuring poet Audacious IAM, and her JazzSoul Trio. 6/21 - Vibemuzik’s Ghetto Gospel. 7:00pm in person at The Chapel. QCC and Any X Means presents Vibemuzik with supporting musicians Lunchboxx and Honest_in_10land. This concert breaks down the brick wall forged between the artist and the world to reveal Mandela’s journey of self love. Through all the ups and downs, Mandela wants people to find their own strength in their vulnerability. I am Mandela Msanii and this is my Ghetto Gospel. 6/22 - QUEER PROM: OUR LEGACY! 6:00pm in person at Curio SF. Join Fluid Cooperative SF's " A Legacy Party " for Queer Prom! A celebration for Queer and Trans folks to experience the prom of your dreams! With over 16 performers, and 4 DJs, this event is the perfect way to kick off your Pride weekend festivities! Artists: Fluid Cooperative Cafe, Kipper Snacks, Melanie Sparks, Rahni Nothingmore, Madd Dogg 20/20, Miss Shugana, Frida Mont, Mahlae Balenciaga, Bionka Simone and more! 6/23 - The NQAF & Stud Present: COMMANDO. 7:30pm in person at The Independent. COMMANDO's self titled debut album, released in 2022 on the venerable indie label Kill Rock Stars, unleashes a new type of bombastic, melodic, sensitive, and explosive queer rock music: gay nü metal for a gay nü world. COMMANDO is gay nü metal band from San Francisco, California. Featuring five of the most powerful queer vocalists in California music history--Juba Kalamka (Deep Dickollective), Lynnee Breedlove (Tribe 8, The Homobiles), Drew Arriola Sands (Trap Girl), Krylon Superstar (Double Duchess), and Honey Mahogany (San Francisco Democratic Party). QCC and the 2022 NQAF are proud to be co-sponsors of the following events: 6/3 - Queer Rebels Fest 2022 Metamorphic Horizons - Shifting Realities: Queer Rebels 6/4 - Hearts & Minds: GAPA Men's Chorus 6/10 to 6/12 - 18th annual Queer Women of Color Film Festival: QWOCMAP 6/11 - RAW (resident artist workshop) Showcase: SAFEhouse Performing Arts 6/16 to 6/26 - FRESH MEAT FESTIVAL of trans and queer performance: Fresh Meat Productions 6/16 - Queerly Beloved Pride Bazaar: Haze Streete and Streete Wise Consulting 6/18 - Mirror Touch: Gina Stella dell'Assunta 6/18 - AIRspace and RAW (resident artist workshop) Showcase: SAFEhouse Performing Arts 6/25 - There's a Chicken in the Pit! A Trans and Queercore Eggstravaganza: The Homobiles To help Queer Cultural Center (QCC) get a better idea of who is in our audience and the impact of our shows, after attending an event we would be grateful if you could please answer a few questions about the event you attended and yourself here: https://tinyurl.com/nqaf22audience If you would like to share additional comments about the Festival or an event you attended, please do so by emailing [email protected]!