Queer Time
Open Gallery
June 7 to July 19, 2025
“In five hundred, twenty five thousand, six hundred minutes, how do you measure a year in the life?”
— Jonathan Larson, “Seasons of Love” from the musical Rent
Queer Time was created through a collaboration between the Kamloops Art Gallery and Kamloops Pride. 10 local queer artists came together in the KAG Studios weekly over the course of five months to ponder identity, time, and how they intersect.
Queer people have a complex relationship with time due to social, physical, and legislative systems and circumstances that influence or control their lives. At its height in the 1990s, the HIV/AIDS epidemic created a sense of uncertain life expectancy for the queer community. Exclusive marriage laws have limited a queer person’s ability to experience a socially recognized milestone signifying adulthood. Barriers to gender affirming health care can elongate or halt a trans person’s ability to become their full selves.
Most queer folks feel societal pressure to follow the “normal” path of life dictated by cis-gendered, heteronormative, monogamous hegemony. The conventional path in Western society dictate the milestones of life as follows - 1. Go to school 2. Get married (to one partner of the opposite sex) 3. Have children — in that order. For queer people especially, it is impossible to follow this path. There is no built-in step for “coming out” as 2SLGBTQPIA+ and all the self-discovery, community finding/building, and time that this process entails.
Queer time is a description, an assertion, and a reclamation for the timeline of every individual queer person. It transforms social, physical, and legislative vulnerabilities thrust on the queer community into strength. Queer time is agency over queer living, dreaming, and becoming. Queer time states that as queer people, we are here, we are normal, and we are on our own timeline.
Curated by Teresa Donck-Matlock
Presented in partnership with Kamloops Pride
