For Asian Heritage Month, QRL Vancouver librarian Rachel Lau will be hosting Places, Histories, Communities: Exploring Queer Asian Identities through Zine-Making, a workshop on Sat, May 27 from 2:30-4:30PM at SFU Harbour Centre.
We are grateful to our partners at UBC Hong Kong Studies Initiative, SFU Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies and SFU Institute for Transpacific Cultural Research for making this event possible. Register here.
March 12, 3-4:30PM: Bring a poem, let’s talk about poetry! The QRL_Corner features volumes of poetry by Yau Ching and Ren Hang alongside other publications inspired by Myth Makers on display in the Tai Kwun Artists’ Book Library. In this session, Queer Reads Library member and host Kaitlin Chan will discuss these books, as well as the anthology 100 Queer Poems, in an open forum where readers are invited to bring and share a poem that is meaningful to them. Register here.
This QRL_Corner event at Tai Kwun Contemporary, hosted by Kaitlin Chan (Queer Reads Library) and Kary Kwok, will discuss photography as a form of archiving life, with a particular focus on queer storytellers. Drawing from photography publications inspired by Myth Makers and including works by Oscar Chik, Acúdus Aranyian, Ho Tam, Mimi Wong, and Kary Kwok, this casual session will provide a forum for visitors to discuss both the creating of photos and the appreciation of them as a way of seeing ourselves and each other.
A display with thirty new book titles inspired by Myth Makers, including special selections by Queer Reads Library (Kaitlin Chan, Rachel Lau, Beatrix Pang). The title refers to the “corner” where most of Kary Kwok’s self-portrait photos were shot at his 1990s studio flat in London. Conceptually, “corner” also represents subversion, infinity, empowerment, and resistance to power and control. On view through April 10, 2023 at the Tai Kwun Contemporary Artists’ Book Library, 2/F.
Featuring publications by and from: 6699 Press, Acudus Aranyian, Against Nature Journal, Aki Hassan, Ashley Franklin, Becca Tobin, Brown Recluse Distro, Bruno Zhu, Datura Magazine (editors: Sunmi Flowers + Mar Julia), Dream Babes 2.0 (curator: Sin Wai Kin), El Sub, Gorgeous Glam Gays (Singapore), Hiram To, Ho Tam, Holok Chen + Small Tune Press, Kary Kwok, loneliness books, Manbo Key, Mimi Wong, Mixed Rice Zines, ourself zine, Oscar Chik, Pseudonym Jones, Pui Yin Cheung, Ren Hang, Sarula Bao, Shiloh, Silver Sprocket Press, TransFighters (Oakland), Xiyadie, Yau Ching, Zairong Xiang.
On view through April 10, 2023: In collaboration with Myth Makers — Spectrosynthesis III (Tai Kwun Contemporary and Sunpride Foundation), QRL is pleased to present a collaborative vitrine display with Kary Kwok: Can’t Get You Out of My Head: From Kary, to Hiram, focusing on his friendship with the late Hiram To. Featuring artworks, catalogues, cards and personal ephemera, the objects tell the story of how these two queer artists forged their own practices within Hong Kong and beyond. More information on the opening hours and full press release here.
From June 6 – July 6 2022, QRL collaborated with WMA Space to display, document and research the personal archives of local LGBTQ+ publishers, artists and organisers, containing periodicals, books, magazines, publicities and news clippings. This collection will be followed up with a publication containing articles and transcripts of the community discussions held in the incubation, forthcoming January 2023. More details on the incubation here.
PRIDE 2022: Queer Eyes: 1990s – 2000s queer magazines in Hong Kong 囧異之眼：香港九十年代與千禧年間的同志雜誌: a talk featuring Kary Kwok, Joe Lam, Kalen Lee, and Queer Reads Library. To celebrate the 20th Anniversary of Dim Sum, the first full color gay lifestyle magazines in Hong Kong, we invited Joe Lam, founding publisher and art director of Dim Sum, and partner-in-crime Kary Kwok, photographer and fashion editor of Amoeba magazine, to engage in a dialogue and share their experiences and observations in visualising and recording popular gay culture in Hong Kong in the 1990s and 2000s.
Thirteen QRL publications are free to read at PS Shop as part of a new program, QRL x Para Site Reading Corner. Opening December 3 through February 22, 2022. More details here.
QRL is happy to be part of the opening exhibition for SPRINT21 Independent Publishers’ and Artists’ Book Salon in Milan, Italy: HARD COPY SOFT TOUCH | Experiences on Queer & Transfeminist Archives. Read more about the exhibition and visiting details here.
July 9: Rachel Lau, Kaitlin Chan and J. Wu (Mixed Rice Zines) led an online sharing about how we put our WO MEN zine corner together, an event presented by the Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco! We discussed the behind-the-scenes process and power of queer friendship that fuelled QRL’s mobile library arriving in San Francisco by way of Hong Kong, Taipei, and Vancouver. The discussion was followed by a zine sharing where participants shared their zine projects and zines in progress. Visit WO MEN at CCCSF, on view until the end of 2021.
On Sunday, June 13th, we hosted a zine workshop and lexicon brainstorm in collaboration with the Center for Heritage and Textiles (thanks Bruce!) The event featured an exhibition tour of Interweaving Poetic Code, and a mini-zine workshop on queer identity and language.
In collaboration with Fine Arts Reading Room at Concordia University, QRL hosted a a free zine organizing and tidying workshop on May 27th. We introduced some simple and fun techniques for organizing and storing zine and book collections. Watch the event recording here.
