𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙞𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙣𝙩 𝙙𝙚𝙨𝙞𝙧𝙚𝙨 is a collaborative exhibition featuring Eli Nolet and Ardyn Gibbs, two Hamilton-based emerging queer and trans artists whose practices investigate queer affect through new media and material explorations. Engaging with the queer cultural touchstone of “backrooms” – spaces of queer sexuality and liberation, playgrounds that allow for a possibility to transgress, the installation recontextualizes the gallery space as a site for queer potentiality and dreaming.

Eli Nolet (they/them) is a queer trans settler-Indigenous artist and arts worker from the occupied territories of the Erie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee, and Mississaugas (otherwise known as hamilton, ontario). Their work explores how technology and affective materiality can function as a vessel for the medium of self and queer potentiality. Across their practice, Nolet is interested in investigating the many layered histories of queer culture and desire, and questioning the binaries of visible/invisible, normative/transgressive.

Ardyn Gibbs (they/them) is a queer and trans, settler-Indigenous (Mohawk) artist and arts worker located on the territories of the Haudenosaunee, Anishnaabe, and Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation otherwise known as Hamilton, ON. Using digital new media technologies Ardyn’s work explores themes of queer futurism, digital dreaming, and visibility/legibility of queer bodies in public spaces. Ardyn is passionate about collective dreaming, placekeeping, and fostering meaningful connections.