About the Exhibition

Curated by: Tobaron Waxman

THE INTERGENERATIONAL LGBT ARTIST RESIDENCY is a vision and experience of sustainability via 2SLGBTQ+ visual art and political histories in the diverse and contested territory known as Canada. ILGBTAR was invited by Tangled to design an exhibition that would poke holes in conventional notions of ‘access’. The exhibition includes seven ILGBTAR participants and alumnx from 2013-2021, each with unique critiques of ‘access’ (or conveniently misconstrued, neoliberal notions of ‘access’) and how crip materiality informs their work and life. The works, some created specifically for CYCLES of the longed for and the grasped, are surprising in scale and immediacy, directly addressing gallery visitors in embodied ways. ILGBTAR, which critiques institutional architectures and the barriers they reproduce and represent, sought out those alumnx whose inter-arts practices are often deemed ill-fitting to rooms and opportunities, because these artists generate art forms and activities which when brought together confound standard categories or conventional exhibition practices. All of these works invite physical contact or memories of it: THE GRASP, BOTH VIRTUAL AND EMBODIED; AND THE LONGED FOR, WHICH IS JUST BEYOND REACH. Several works challenge expectations of the cyclic, the spherical, and the personal orbit, offering complex structures of interdependence. The first program of its kind, ILGBTAR is committed to directly supporting queer artists and art production, in the form of funded artist residencies, studio visits, exhibitions, projects and consultation with decolonial critique. ILGBTAR facilitates resource sharing, shared practice, art career management training, and community building, in endeavoring to foster communication across generational lines.

CYCLES of the longed for and the grasped: ILGBTAR Retrospective (2013-2021) proposes an accessible wayfinding into these works, including The ILGBTAR Reading Room. In the ILGBTAR tradition of sacred hospitality, gallery visitors are welcome to think with the artists and access the work via an energy and pace of a different kind of encounter. Please feel free to relax in the Reading Room, enjoy a light refreshment and peruse bibliographic materials loaned by the artists for this exhibition. In solidarity and friendship, Tobaron