What is a mark? The Queer Arts Festival ask a simple question. In a settler colonial society, we have a very solidified perception of what “counts” as worthy of articulating. Programmed in an imperial tradition, we literally count success and attach dates to significant momentous occasions, times in history when someone is said to have “accomplished something” that should be celebrated and then written down to measure its worth, annually. History has tried to erase the Other in its wake of calculating a difference, asserting authority, superiority, a bar to be set by systems of power to ensure the success of a single story.

2018 marks 10 years of the Queer Arts Festival and Pride in Art’s 20th year as an artist-led organization. The Queer Arts Festival (QAF) is an annual artist-run professional multi-disciplinary arts festival at the Roundhouse in Vancouver, BC. Recognized as one of the top 5 festivals of its kind worldwide (Melbourne Sun Herald), QAF produces, presents and exhibits with a curatorial vision favoring challenging, thought-provoking work that pushes boundaries and initiates dialogue.

Each year, the festival theme ties together a curated visual art exhibition, performing arts series, workshops, artist talks, panels, and media art screenings. QAF’s programming has garnered wide acclaim as “concise, brilliant and moving” (Georgia Straight), “easily one of the best exhibitions of the year in Vancouver” (Vancouver Sun), some of the most adventurous of any local arts festival” (Vancouver Province) and “on the forefront of aesthetic and cultural dialogue today” (Xtra).

2018’s curated visual art exhibition DECADEnce remembers the Other marks and interrogates what we collectively choose to celebrate. By engaging queer artists across disciplines DECADEnce explores marks that live beyond the page, numerical devices, and quantitative data; the mark that lives in actions unnoticed, voices unheard, lost stories of self, and races won in forgotten Herstories/Ourstories.

Pride in Art will celebrate the 10th anniversary of its Queer Arts Festival this year along with the opening of its queer art gallery in May. This means that Vancouver will soon have gallery space devoted to presenting queer art and supporting LGBT artists.

While the Vancouver-based Pride in Art Society holds the annual Queer Arts Festival, the organization is planning to open an approximately 700-square-foot gallery that will provide yearlong multidisciplinary arts programming, including exhibitions, performances, workshops, and other events.

“Year after year everyone from volunteers, artists, attendees, and our partners tell me that they want to see us doing more activities throughout the year, outside the festival season,” Pride in Art artistic director SD Holman stated in a news release. “But we haven’t had the venue to do so until now. Having a gallery opens up so many opportunities to show incredible art to the public and support more artists.”

Meanwhile, this year's edition of the Queer Arts Festival will include the world premiere of Lesley Ewen's play Camera Obscura, a 30-year retrospective concert of composer Barry Truax's work, operatic tenor Jeremy Dutcher performing traditional Wolastoqiyik First Nations songs, and performances by Su-Feh Lee, MACHiNENOiSY, and Erato Ensemble.

Full details about both the gallery and the festival are available the QAF website: http://queerartsfestival.com