The Vancouver Outsider Arts Festival (VOAF) is returning for its year, running from October 11–13 at the Roundhouse Community Arts & Recreation Centre.
The festival aims to showcase visual artists and performers who are not typically represented within mainstream art institutions, such as artists from marginalized communities or those who found their way to art via non-traditional means (like being self-taught, for example) — anyone who considers themselves an “outsider.”
UBC student and filmmaker Ethan White will be showing their work at the festival — for them, working with VOAF has been a better experience than previous attempts to exhibit their work as a young, Queer artist.
White found applications to most festivals and exhibits have many barriers and hoops to jump through. They found the process of applying to VOAF to be the opposite.
“I'd been looking for places to show art since coming out here three years ago or so, just to be able to get my foot in the door of the art world. I found myself kind of being a victim of being young and being uncompromising in Queerness. The things that I was making were kind of ugly things in a lot of ways, and uncomfortable things for people,” they said.
“The [VOAF] application was very inviting. It was free to apply. I know there's a lot of paywalls for other applications … There was good community outreach to get to it and it was a very inviting thing for somebody who felt like they didn't really belong.”
In addition to paywalls for application, White noticed the preparation and transportation of large artwork is also a cost barrier for most artists hoping to exhibit their work.
“[VOAF] is happening at the Roundhouse Community Arts Center. It's a very community-oriented space. It’s right on the transit line, which is very helpful,” White said.
“They actually have a really good team of people that are there to answer any questions that you might have, that you can reach out to, that will actually offer their support to be able to help you get your art seen.”
White grew up in Alberta, which they described as a “pretty regressive place” for discussions about gender and sexuality, which encouraged them to turn to art for solace as they navigated being non-binary.
“I found a lot of help in expressing that angst, that discomfort in my own body, through art. Rather than taking it out on my actual body, I could make a little avatar that could embody all the feelings that kind of come up and that are difficult for me to face on my own,” White said.
And while Vancouver isn’t perfect either, they’ve found themselves growing a lot more comfortable with their identity since moving here.
“I'm also in this period of making art which is about celebrating genderqueerness … It's like the flowers and bees and nature and us coming from the earth, and that's where spirituality kicks in. It just feels very aligned to be able to be out here and connected to nature as well as in [a] community with other Queer people, it's very sweet,” they said.
Platforms like VOAF have the potential to facilitate space for artistic conversation and strengthen this much-needed sense of solidarity in the arts, since creating art can often be an isolating, competitive practice.
White also co-founded the Chocolate Milk Art Collective, a filmmaking company which builds on this idea of nurturing creative collaboration rather than competition — their own interest in filmmaking stems from the field’s collaborative nature.
“[The collective] is based in Edmonton, now operated in Vancouver, and it's just like the most beautiful community that I've been able to cultivate. There's no set roles, necessarily. It's very loose and open … essentially a commune,” White said.
“You can't make a film on your own. It takes a whole village of people that want to help each other.”
White’s artwork represents humanity’s relationship with technology, gender identity and their intersections with religion and spirituality. They hope to delve into the importance of ‘strangeness’ as an initiator of social change, because according to them, “to be strange is to be imaginative.” Strangeness is needed to imagine alternative worlds, and also to bring change to the world as we know it.
One of the works White is sharing at the festival is titled “Soul Searching,” a four-panel photo print showcasing an ant getting carried away by waves in the shower.
“One of the very few times I fear for my soul is when there's an ant or a bug in the shower, it's been a day where I just can't stoop down and pick it up and take it out and set it free, and instead, I just choose to let it go,” White said.
“It really is a heartbreaking piece for me … It also highlights how important it is to me to truly just try and be as good to your environment as you possibly can be. The life of a bug will weigh heavily on me, and I think that we might be in a better place if we can all learn how to care that much.”
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