In dark times, this Halifax art show is a celebration of trans joy

When the participants in Out Of Line — a group show of emerging trans and gender nonconforming artists at Halifax’s Khyber Centre for the Arts — were getting too anxious and stressed as the show’s opening date loomed ever-closer, project facilitator Mo Glitch knew exactly how to quell everyone’s nerves. 

“Just saying, ‘No, this is a place to explore, and the exhibition can be just the residue of us being together and being creative’ allowed for something else to happen,” Glitch says. “I was really like: ‘We can all lie on the floor, and that’s the show. Like, if we do that, it’s going to be brilliant.”

That exploration unfolded over 10 monthly meet-ups where the exhibiting artists created together in a closed space. The resulting art — which, don’t panic, isn’t just the artists lying on the floor — is what’s on view. But as Glitch says, it’s the “being together and being creative” that the whole thing is really about. The group studio time for Out Of Line wasn’t just co-working. It quickly became a sacred space of trans joy, a step beyond identity that celebrates all things gender nonconforming.  

Glitch’s speech to their co-exhibitors paid off.

“People started to make work, and they started to collaborate … and riff off of each other, and have an idea and somebody else pick it up,” they say. “We had too much work to fit in the gallery. We had to do an edit, because so much was created over the course of our time together.”

Glitch explains that the entire genesis of the showcase was as much about building community with other trans and gender-nonconforming artists as it was about making a masterpiece. The project, Glitch says, “came from a place of really wanting space to meet people and work with other artists who had similar experiences and to make a space to talk about art that could be something other than like, ‘Oh, your gender is so fascinating,’ or, ‘Oh, this work is so brave and special.'”

They add that, instead, the focus got to be “more personal-story-based stuff, but also be able to play and have fun without some of the pressures of being a representative of a trans experience.” 

“There’s a kind of pigeonholing, or pressure, to be a representative of something, or be a teacher or say something importantly political,” when working as a trans artist, Glitch says. “And all those things are fantastic, and yet they also create a very narrow scope of what it feels like you’re allowed to do or to make. Or, that your identity is the work.”

It couldn’t have come at a better time: Aside from adding (more) trans representation to the Halifax art scene, Out Of Line was also, as participating artist Lou Campbell puts it, “a beacon of light” during what felt like an unending barrage of headlines documenting trans erasure and oppression in the U.S. and U.K. 

“To be able to continue to meet and just like, affirm that we are here, and just finding joy together: I continued to be affirmed in that idea that joy is really necessary,” Campbell says. “It’s obviously extremely important to show up in protest, and also it’s really important to find those moments of joy together. And that’s how we resist this force of obliteration that’s trying to control people.”

Marley O’Brien, another artist participating in the exhibition, echos Campbell’s excitement about the joy to be found in the cohort Glitch created.

“I just was reaffirmed in how much people love my gender identity and how much fun it is to share those parts of yourself with other trans people,” she says, adding she can’t wait to plan everything from beach days to film festival submissions thanks to “having more trans people’s phone numbers in my phone.”

“I kind of treated it like each meeting was like walking in on the first episode of a competition reality show,” adds O’Brien “Not really in a competitive way, but just in a fun way.”

This feels like a departure from most trans-specific gatherings, which can focus on resistance and remembrance, which, while important, can be heavy. 

“When gender nonconforming folk get together, we’re often grieving stuff,” O’Brien adds. “And this was a lot of like, celebrating and laughing and building on each other’s jokes.”

And while community and joy were the central themes Glitch and their collaborators fostered all winter long, the arrival of Out Of Line shows that while the art might have been the byproduct of something bigger, it was by no means an afterthought. 

Glitch shares that one of the first people through the doors on Out Of Line‘s opening night was a trans friend of theirs. He wandered the exhibit for a long time. 

“At the end, he said to me, ‘This is the best art show I’ve ever seen in my whole life. Because I was invited to touch things and to take them off the wall. And then there was a video in the gold sparkly curtain, and then I could scan a QR code,'” Glitch adds. “He just experienced a kind of playfulness and joy and adventure of being in that space, when I think transness is something that weighs very heavily on him every day.

“He got it 100%, and enjoyed it,” Glitch says. “[He] just felt like, ‘Oh, it’s good to be trans. Look at what we can do. Look at what we can feel together.'”

Out of Line runs at the Khyber Centre for the Arts (1880 Hollis St.) in Halifax until Aug. 2.