Announcing Our Creating Queer Communities Level 2 Cohort!

This is an exciting moment – we are announcing the first Creating Queer Communities (CQC) Level 2 cohort, designed to help local LGBTQ2IA+ artists advance their technical and creative production skills. This is our first ever level 2 cohort, a new aspect of our artists development program designed to help local LGBTQ2IA+ artists hone their ability to devise and produce original artworks for our community. We’re excited to welcome Deon Brown, Tiara Amar, Esotérica Tropical, Grupo Chuqui Chinchay, Lyn Patterson, Sagaree, and Yanni Brumfeld. Read their full bios below!

Members of the CQC Level 2 cohort will produce original work to be shown as part of the 2025 Spring Queer Arts Festival. The artistic theme for the 2025 Spring Queer Arts Festival is “Pleasure in the Storm”. Cohort artists will create projects that address queer approaches to sustaining ourselves and our communities through cultivating inner joy, community connection, and sensory pleasures amid the ongoing political, cultural, public health, and climate crises that shape our current material reality. Sometimes when it’s storming, the only thing you can do is dance and play in the rain!

For over 25 years, Queer Cultural Center has provided Creating Queer Communities members an opportunity to build their knowledge base around their artistic practice by providing small grants, free educational opportunities, and mentorship. Some of the artists supported by our artist development programs have grown into prolific and powerful artists who continue to shape the LGBTQ2IA+ arts scene, especially in the SF Bay area, such as Sean Dorsey Dance and QWOCMAP. You can support our ongoing work to grow queer and trans cultural power by donating here!

And, without further ado, our Creating Queer Communities Level 2 Cohort!

Artist Bios repeated for accessibility:

Deon Brown, originally from Pasadena, CA, is a transcendent and magnetic multi-disciplinary singer/songwriter pushing the boundaries of R&B, Hip Hop, and beyond. Drawing from his roots in church, Deon crafts profound narratives around identity, religion, and Blackness through sound. His work has garnered comparisons to iconic artists like Kanye West, Frank Ocean, and Sade. Deon’s career took off with the release of his highly anticipated album “HOME,” following his electrifying debut performance as an opener for Rico Nasty in 2021. With a bold and audacious approach, his music and visuals transform personal healing into high art, offering immersive worlds for listeners and viewers alike.

Esotérica Tropical is a queer Boricua bruja who transcends musical boundaries with her commanding voice, intuitive folk harp, and a fusion of Afro-Puerto Rican Bomba rhythms and electronic innovation. Her work boldly challenges colonial mentality, advocating for sovereignty and surrealism. A chance encounter with a Celtic harp on a Puerto Rican beach in 2009 transformed her from an acupuncturist into a genre-defying musical magician. Drawing on 20 years as a healer, Esotérica’s ritualistic performances have captivated audiences at major venues and festivals worldwide, from the Oakland Museum to the Teatro Municipal de Cusco.

Grupo Chuqui Chinchay (GCC) is a collective of Q/T Andeans with roots in multiple parts of Tawantinsuyu producing events on stolen Muwekma land. We hold gatherings and ceremonial spaces to connect Andeans across geographies and steward our relationships with Northern 2-Spirits, colonially oppressed QTBIPOC, land, ancestors, and descendants. GCC’s members first converged as a diasporic response to the call for mobilization across the 4 suyus after the 2022 Peruvian coup. Our work continues towards holistic decolonization of our ancestral lands and sacred spaces and the re-constitution of the ancestral role of QT Andeans in our communities and cultures.

Lyn Patterson is a storyteller and visual artist who lives in Oakland, CA. She is a deeply invigorated poet, specifically inspired to write about Black diaspora and those who have been systematically marginalized in society as a means of empowering future generations with their stories. For Patterson, storytelling is a sacred ancestral endeavor which can be used as a tool for paying homage and building future communities. Patterson often uses visual mediums to encapsulate her words and elevate the ways in which texts exist in conversation with one another. Her work has been published in Popshot Magazine, the Berkeley Poetry Review and has been featured on KQED.

Sagaree (they/them) is a poet and queer from the Bay. They have published poems or essays in The Margins, them. magazine, The Offing, and Autostraddle. Their book SHRINES is out from Game Over Books now. They are obsessed with words, fire, bodies, reproductive justice, oceans, abolition, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. They are class and caste privileged and tweet at @sagareej.

Tiara Amar is a Bengali artist and organizer born and raised on occupied Ohlone lands. Their practice relies on distortions of truth and negotiation to explore the fantasy embedded in the earthscapes of the Bay Area. Through archival work and percussion, they seek to hold reverence for worldbuilders of the past and the blueprints they left. Their work has been featured by the San Francisco Public Library, Medicine for Nightmares, Californians for the Arts, and the Washington State History Museum. Tiara is a Mixed Media studio facilitator at NIAD Art Center.

Yanni creates Limitless, a groundbreaking queer fashion show dedicated to centering marginalized bodies, specifically Black and brown bodies, in a celebration of identity, diversity, and liberation. Born from the need for greater representation on the runway and media, Limitless is a reflection of us—Black and brown queer people who deserve to be seen, adorned, and appreciated. This event is more than just a fashion show; it’s a vibrant celebration of the intersectionality of identity and the power of visibility. We believe that centering our joy is an act of resistance and liberation. Limitless is a space where every person involved, from the cast to the attendees, is encouraged to embrace their inner confidence and carry it forward into their next phase of life.