NATIONAL QUEER ARTS FESTIVAL 2002

This series of visual art exhibitions, performances, and interpretive programs has been organized by the Queer Cultural Center (QCC) and the Harvey Milk Institute (HMI).

Since its debut in 1998, the National Queer Arts Festival (NQAF) has showcased some of the best professional and emerging artists in the Queer Community. The National Queer Arts Festival has been produced in collaboration with numerous Bay Area nonprofit arts organizations, including Jon Sims Center for the Arts, SomArts, the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Art (MCC), the African American Art and Culture Complex (AAACC) the Asian/Pacific Island Cultural Center (APICC), Brava! for Women in the Arts, and many others whose events you’ll find in this catalog.

The National Queer Arts Festival presents the breadth of our communities’ diverse artists and arts organizations. In this catalog, you’ll find spoken word performances, multimedia work, visual art exhibitions, dance, theater, comedy, literature and poetry readings, video screenings, and a wide array of multidisciplinary programs featuring artists discussing their own works.

On its 5th Anniversary, the NQAF is examining how issues of the intersection of race/culture and queerness can be expressed by the arts in our community. As a microcosm of the world, the Queer Community encompasses its full diversity; how we differ or mirror that larger world is the question that many of our artists have addressed for this festival. A large percentage of our events will focus on the construction of racial identity and/or racism from the queer artist’s perspective. The artists mine the past and present and create a future to express their vision. These visions are, at times, hilarious and pointed in their satire, tragic or triumphant in their outcome, and always original as we have come to expect.

This year, NQAF delightfully celebrates its fifth anniversary at our new home at the San Francisco LGBT Community Center. This remarkable new building provides the NQAF with two new performance spaces to showcase the talents of a greater number of artists than ever before. We thank everyone involved who helped make the Center a reality. Please join us at the Center on Saturday, June 1 as we celebrate with a Gala Festival Opening Night Performance Party.

The National Queer Arts Festival has been financially supported by SomArts, the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Art, the Bayview Opera House, the Cultural Equity Grants program of the San Francisco Arts Commission, Grants for the Arts, the California Arts Council, the Gateways Initiative of the San Francisco Foundation, the Horizons Foundation, the Astraea Foundation, the Zellerbach Family Fund, Hispanics in Philanthropy, New Performance Network, California Poets & Writers, Inc., African American Art and Culture Complex, the Vanguard Foundation, and the Walter and Elise Haas Foundation.