Presented by the Varley Art Gallery of Markham

What about the “T” in 2SLGBTQIA+!?

October 27, 2021 from 12:30 PM to 1:30 PM EST
Register Here

Join us for our next Lunch and Learn talk on Wednesday, October 27, 2021.
Presented virtually on Zoom, registration is required.

This one-hour talk features emerging museum professional Amelia Smith and artist Excel Garay. Moderated by curator Marissa Largo, the conversation brings together queer and transgender practitioners as they highlight transfeminine perspectives in museum studies and Asian diasporic art.

This month’s Lunch and Learn talk is programmed alongside our current exhibition Elusive Desires: Ness Lee and Florence Yee and expands its spirit of making space for marginalized identities.

We would like to thank TD Bank Group and the Varley-McKay Art Foundation of Markham for their ongoing support of our Lunch and Learn speaker’s series.

About the speakers

Amelia Smith (She/Her) is a transgender lesbian emerging museum professional. Her work seeks to bridge the gap between trans studies and museum studies, revealing what the museum field can learn from a transgender perspective. She began this work during her Masters of Museum Studies at the University of Toronto, resulting in her first exhibition, Transition Related Surgery: The Fight For Access, on the history of gender affirming surgery in Ontario. She sits on an advisory committee for the Transition Related Surgery department at Women’s College Hospital. Currently, she is developing an exhibition for the Transgender Archives at the University of Victoria. Her writings can be found on her website, notyouraveragecistory.com

Excel Garay (They/Them/Siya) is a Filipina-Canadian diasporic settler occupying Mi’kma’ki territory in Kjipuktuk, Eskikewa’kik (Halifax, Nova Scotia). They are Bakla, a term reserved for trans-femmes that is often considered a third gender in the Philippines. Throughout their childhood, they were immersed in Cebuano culture, tradition, and ways of being. Garay is an expanded-media painter and cultural worker. They are interested in unraveling the many invisible spiritual, environmental, economic, political, cultural, social, and cosmological contradictions that lead post-colonial subjects, like them, into colonial complicity and complacency. These contradictory topics materially manifest through paintings, ready-made objects, immersive installations and more. As a trans-postcolonial subject, their interests lie in contradictions as well as incommensurable situations in everyday occurrences with focuses on fugitivity, time, and labor. Hauntings, melodrama, and feelings of embarrassment under a queer necropolitical lens foreground their practice.

Marissa Largo (she/her) is a scholar, curator, and artist whose work focuses on the intersections of race, gender, settler colonialism, and Asian diasporic cultural production. Her forthcoming book, Unsettling Imaginaries: Filipinx Contemporary Artists in Canada (University of Washington Press) examines the work and oral histories of artists who imagine Filipinx subjectivity beyond colonial logics. She is co-editor of the ground breaking anthology Diasporic Intimacies: Queer Filipinos and Canadian Imaginaries. She serves as the Canada Area Editor of the Journal of Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas. Largo is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Visual Art and Art History in the School of Arts, Media, Performance & Design of York University. www.marissalargo.com

About the Varley Art Gallery of Markham, Lunch and Learn, and the Varley-McKay Art Foundation of Markham

The Varley Art Gallery of Markham is a vital cultural hub for artists and diverse communities. A municipal gallery, we create critical conversations about Canadian art and society. We inspire local and national audiences to engage with art through outstanding exhibitions and rich public and educational programs relevant to the communities we serve. We support artists from York region and seek to broaden access to the arts for diverse artists and cultural groups. We also share and celebrate the life and work of F.H. Varley, a founding member of the Group of Seven.

The Varley Art Gallery is situated on the traditional territories of Indigenous Peoples including the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe. We are committed to reconciliation, partnership and enhanced understanding.

Lunch and Learns are monthly artist talks that provide our community members with the opportunity to learn about current and future exhibitions, as well as hear about ongoing curatorial research happening at the gallery. This program also supports emerging and established artists by providing them with a forum in which to present their work.

The Varley-McKay Art Foundation of Markham supports the Varley Art Gallery as a vibrant cultural hub in the GTA. Our mandate is to support the Gallery’s strong visual arts program through our activities and investments. We provide funding to assist with art acquisitions, the conservation of the Gallery’s art collection, educational programming and exhibition research. We also administer the Varley Art Gallery’s volunteer program, providing additional support for their activities and events.

Varley Art Gallery of Markham
216 Main Street Unionville, Markham, ON, L3R 2H1
905.477.7000 ext. 3261
varley@markham.ca | varleyartgallery.ca

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The gallery is open Tuesday to Friday, and Sunday, 12 PM to 4PM and on Saturdays from 10 AM to 5 PM.
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For more information or questions, please contact Anik Glaude, Curator at aglaude@markham.ca