The exhibition Projections addresses perceptions of queerness, sexuality, race, and gender while considering the expanded potential of Indigenous, Black and Queer futurisms.

In their video works, Eshrāghi and Karuhanga express concerns rooted in freedom, defiance, empowerment, presence and self-affirmation, and the disposition and power of the independent projected image brings with it characteristics that align with these concerns.

The artists’ exploration of pleasure and self-care is evident in their videos capturing subjects in nature and/or natural environments, non-verbal narratives, and acts involving touch, desire, movement, ceremony, ritual, and expressions intimate and spiritualized.

Presented within the gallery in spaces created to reference film theatres/projection booths and other voyeuristic contexts, the viewer can watch, observe, consider, anticipate, and dwell in the fantastication of the projected scenarios. In doing so, each work allows the intimate space, within separate alcoves, to assemble personal narratives, individuality, and criticality within the contexts of territory, ownership, and the physical and cultural occupation of space and land.

Léuli Eshrāghi is a Sāmoan/Persian/Cantonese interdisciplinary artist, writer, curator and researcher working between Australia and Canada. Ia/they intervene in display territories to centre global Indigenous and Asian diasporic visuality, sensual and spoken languages, and ceremonial-political practices.

Jessica Karuhanga is a first-generation Canadian artist of British-Ugandan heritage whose work addresses issues of cultural politics of identity and Black diasporic concerns through lens-based technologies, writing, drawing and performances. Through her practice she explores individual and collective concerns of Black subjectivity: illness, rage, grief, desire and longing within the context of Black embodiment.

Gary Varro is a curator and visual artist based in Regina, where in 1996 he established and continues to present Queer City Cinema Festival and Performatorium Festival of Queer Performance. Gary is also a freelance curator.