Saturday, June 14, 2025 – 2:00 pm @ Artexte's reading room
As part of the public programming surrounding the exhibition We’re Here. We’re Lesboqueer. We’re Still Fabulous., on view at Artexte until June 21, 2025, and curated by Kristen Hutchinson, join us for a panel about lesboqueer activism in the past, present, and future featuring Montreal queer activists, community workers and artists from Grind’her, Helem and Sweet Like Honey. Following the panel will be a brainstorming session about potential queer events, protests, performances, etc., you would like to see happen in Montreal and the formation of organizational working groups to connect and get started. Let’s create opportunities for more queer joy, protest, art, and happenings together!
Event schedule
2:00 pm: discussion
2:45 pm: question period
3:00 pm: break & group discussions
3:30 pm: group sharing
4:00 pm: open discussion, tea and cookies will be served
5:00 pm: end of event
Moderator: Ziya Jones (Grind’her & senior editor at Xtra)
Panelists: Yara Coussa (Helem board member), Estelle Davis (Grind’her co-founder), Marlyne (Sweet Like Honey founder), Kristen Hutchinson (curator, visual artist, writer & occasional professor)
About the participants
Kristen Hutchinson is a queer and gender fluid (they/she) visual artist, cultural critic, curator, writer, editor, and adjunct professor of art history, feminism, media studies, and popular culture. They are the author of three books: Monsters No More: How We Came to Love the Denizens of the Dark (Leanpub, 2025), Prairie Tales: A History (2017) and Kiss & Tell: Lesbian Art & Activism (Art Canada Institute, June 2025). She received her PhD in the History of Art from University College London in 2007 and teaches independent seminars about art, feminism, and popular culture in person and online.
Marlyne (she/they) is a multi-disciplinary artist. A queer performer whose performances range from drag, burlesque and gogo under the names Carmen Mayhem and Uncle Marly. She is a star in the ballroom scene where she is known to walk Body, Sex Siren and Face. Her joy of storytelling has brought her to do stand up comedy. Being a Black Lesbian, they saw a lack of BIPOC spaces that were welcoming to lesbian/sapphics. Since June 2021, Marlyne founded Sweet Like Honey, a grassroots initiate that organizes a variety of events for people who relate to the lesbian/sapphic experience all while highlighting BIPOC artists, talents and small businesses. This aims to provide visibility and form connections with the members of the Montreal community.
Yara Coussa, a community organizer, immigrated with their family to Montreal from Beirut at the age of 14. Having graduated from McGill University in International Development & Gender Studies, Yara is currently an intervention worker specialized in care for autistic adults as well as a librarian at the Queer Feminist bookstore l’Euguélionne. Yara seeks to create safer spaces for Queer, SWANA, BIPOC and trans people through their involvement with Helem Montréal, La Wild Pride, and other organizations.
Ziya Jones is a writer, editor and sometimes event organizer. They are currently the managing editor of health at Pink Triangle Press, Canada’s largest LGBTQ2S+ publisher. As a journalist, they cover sex, health, housing, culture and politics and their work has been published in The Narwhal, Chatelaine, Ricochet and the Toronto Star, among other places. Last year, they joined the organizing committee for Grind’her, a leatherdyke cruising party.
Estelle Davis is a community organizer and comedian, a founding member of Taking What We Need and Grind’her, and a midlife lesbian crisis waiting to happen! She is a staunch advocate for the rights of trans and non-binary people and sex workers, having worked at Action Santé Travesti(e)s et Transexuel(le)s du Québec, Maggie’s Toronto Sex Workers Action Project, and others.