Meet Gayance, DJ Extraordinaire
MEET GAYANCE. Gayance, pronounced ‘guy-ence’, is a creole word for [...]
MEET GAYANCE. Gayance, pronounced ‘guy-ence’, is a creole word for [...]
How else would I have made my way as an artist but to stumble into it and keep pushing forward when I didn’t see the way paved out ahead of me? When you don’t see yourself represented or there is active hostility to your presence within these spaces, you are forced out of necessity to carve out your own way.
Once the article was published, I shared it far and wide. I received a wonderful response. People emailed me to tell me that my story was moving and let them know they weren’t alone. Someone asked if I was writing a memoir, something I had never considered but once the idea crossed my mind, I saw a whole new world of possibility open up. Three years later, in 2020, five months after applying right before the deadline, I received a surprising email from an arts council. I had won a grant to write my book.
Just like a road trip, when you think of a career in the arts the end destination can’t be the only goal or you miss all the sights and weird turns along the way.
Despite having had over 100 bylines, including Huffington Post, Canadaland, [...]
It's time we talked about sexual violence in the arts community. In the first instalment of a two-part series, I share my experience as a young racialised survivor navigating the Toronto arts scene. Hopefully, my experiences can spark discourse and push you to think about what we need to do in order to increase safety in our community.
The first year in business is always a tough one, as it can be full of doubts, long hours and achingly slow results. Add art into it and it becomes even trickier. Here are some of the challenges (and lessons) I faced in my first year on this path.
Transitions (Unmute), diorama with paper figurine. Walking down [...]
The passion I have in building creative resilient immigrant communities that are effectively addressing social issues at a grassroots level fuels the dense research I am undertaking. As a result, I have come to view my works as performative containers. Performative in the sense that my cultural memories and explorations of urban liminal spaces are intentionally replayed nonstop through the process of research, creation and public sharing, and containers because they hold and frame personal narratives in constant flux. Through visceral manipulation and critical arts interventions, I examine urban contemporary realities and the fractured cultural landscapes of immigrant femme communities who in the making of their identities are paving the way for transnational dialogue and urban imaginaries.