“Hello, my name is”
Bowen Pride Festival 2026 Artist’s Call Out
The Hearth Gallery (Bowen Island Arts Council), partnering with Bowen Pride Society, is planning Bowen Pride Festival (2026), a community-based and multidisciplinary festival featuring a dynamic mix of art exhibitions and cultural events to celebrate LGBTQIA+ identities and lives as well as the coming-together of the community that we all belong to.
We welcome proposals from 2SLBGTQIA+ artists in all media styles: 2D, 3D, literary, and beyond—provided all work is original and created by the artist. Art in cultural styles to which the artist has no ancestral or cultural connection will not be considered. We encourage artists to use this year’s theme as a starting point. Take the freedom to explore the intersections of queerness, identity, and belonging in your work.
The title of this queer arts show at the Hearth gallery is “Hello, My Name is…,” an open-ended introduction that is meant to raise critical questions about the relationship among identity, art, and community. We seek, in presenting this opening, to encourage the public to consider a range of general questions: how do you feel when self-identifying or labelling? What are the comforts and challenges of labeling and identity categories? We will also focus conversation on issues of gender and naming, to enable the public to consider why we should have conversations about gender and sexual identities and expressions in local communities in Canada; how we give voice and offer space as a form of activism during precarious times for gender and sexual minority people; and - most importantly, for our Arts project - what Queer-identified artists can tell us about our world in holistic terms.
If name-calling and coded names historically suggest acts of exclusion or even violence for 2SLBGTQIA+ people, we want to reclaim the myriad meanings of names, just as how we have reclaimed the very meaning of the word “queer”. Through this process of renaming and reclamation, we transform ways of othering into possibilities of belonging— convergent moments and processes of self-acknowledgement by the very simple phrase, “Hello, my name is…”
This group show is open to the visual, the performative, the literary, and the installational. All works will be curated and exhibited within the Hearth gallery and outside in the common space by the gallery entrance in June 2026 during the Bowen Island Pride Festival. Genres and forms can be (not limited to): printed poetry/ short story, painting, sculpture, installation, mixed media, spoken word, site-specific performance, etc. Established and emergent artists are both warmly welcome.
Submissions:
Please include the following information with your proposal:
1. A Completed Application Form
2. An artist statement/ proposal with a detailed description your proposed work for the show
3. CV/Resume which includes your contact information and exhibition history
4. Samples of your previous work, or link to your work, social media posts, etc. to provide an opportunity to share who you are as an artist.
Please ensure your submission reflects clear artistic intention and thoughtful purpose—the adjudication committee values genuine consideration in every proposal for a show at the Hearth Gallery.
Incomplete applications cannot be considered.
We encourage artists to consider offering workshops, demonstrations, artist talks or other creative interactive opportunities.
Timeline:
Complete submission by November 30th, 2025 Acceptance will be announced in January 2026 after adjudication by the organizing committee. In consultation and collaboration with the artist, the Curators reserve the right to choose the location where the art will be placed and the number of pieces that will be included in the art show. We encourage artists to promote their art show to their clients, friends and families. The show runs from June 3rd to 15th, 2026.
What the Hearth Provides for promotion and sale of the art (when applicable):
· Hearth Gallery Website and social media platforms are managed in-house by staff
· Professional design and distribution of Poster & media files.
· Skilled volunteer hosts & staff trained to represent and sell your art
Our usual offerings:
· Install the art show, sell and wrap art safely when sold
· Provide info on the artist and their artwork to the community
· Provide & print art tags, artist statement and additional information on the art pieces & artist
· Keep inventory lists and sales records
· Quick turnaround for commission payments to the artist
Art sales are split 65% to the artist and 35% to the Hearth. The Hearth’s portion supports the promotion and management of gallery exhibitions.
For any questions, please reach out to us at Hearthqueerart@gmail.com
ABOUT THE CURATORS
Fei Shi
Fei Shi, writer, scholar, artist, and educator, is full time faculty at LLPA (Language, Literature & Performing Arts) at Douglas College, where he teaches English Literature as well as Gender, Sexualities and Women's Studies. Dr. Shi also currently serves as the president of the Board of Directors at Playwright Theatre Centre.
Dr. Shi grew up in Shanghai where he completed his B.A. and M.A. in Chinese Literature and Comparative Literature in Fudan University. There, as an undergraduate student, he co-created a theatre company that still actively produces plays today. He then finished his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at the University of California, Davis with designated emphases in Women and Gender Studies, Theatre and Performance Studies, and Critical Theory. Before joining Douglas College in 2024, he taught for over a decade (2010-2023) at Quest University in Squamish as Professor of Arts and Humanities and directed numerous plays and arts initiatives. He has been mentoring a new generation of young artists (creative writers, filmmakers, performance artists, and visual artists) with their inspiring creative projects.
Dr. Shi is extremely grateful to live and work on Nex̱wlélex̱m (Bowen island) – the land of the traditional unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples, including the Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations, and enjoys hectic and beautiful family life with his partner and two baby girls in this place of rich history and wonder. As a queer immigrant person of colour, he actively participates in local arts activities and initiatives as a volunteer, including serving on the Bowen Island Arts Council (Hearth, 2021-2024). His critical reflection on belonging and theorization of queer art as a form of self-transformation appears in his recently published article: “Embodying Islands: Ecosomatics and the Transnational Queer” in Geographies of Us (Routledge, 2024). It is a meditation on the transnational linkages between Nex̱wlélex̱m (Bowen island) and Chongming Island from the unique perspective of a queer immigrant
Liz Nankin
Liz Nankin is an interdisciplinary artist, educator and community activist. She has been a costume designer from 1984 to the present in film, theater and dance. She also trained as a puppeteer with the Bob Baker Marionette Theater in Los Angeles. She is an arts educator with the Los Angeles Unified School District as well as private schools creating art curriculum as an adjunct teacher from 1994 to 2015.
Liz grew up in Los Angeles and immigrated to British Columbia with her husband in 2018 and became a Canadian citizen in 2022. Bowen Island Nex̱wlélex̱m became her home upon landing.
Community participation is a joyful life force for Liz. She has been the Co-Chair of Here's Bowen Arts Tour 2024-present as well as the Chair of Tourism Bowen Island 2023-present. She is an art committee Member at the Hearth Arts Gallery. As an artist she participated in the Art Activism project Diving In: Divers for Cleaner Lakes and Oceans as well as a workshop leader for the Youth Environmental Conference at UBC. She was the Co-creator of Bowen Fables, a series of shadow puppet films telling the stories of the history of Bowen Island.
“Making Art creates culture and culture is our legacy to our humanity. I am a mother of three people who are artists -- a film maker, a ceramic artist and a choreographer. Two of them identified as queer in their early teens and though I cannot speak for them, I support them with love and understanding. Mentorship is paramount to pass the knowledge to emerging people who deserve a chance to be elevated and heard. The Queer Arts Festival opens a door to those who have not been able to walk through and to be seen.”