Throbbing Rose

Home
Canada
Toronto, ON
Throbbing Rose

The Throbbing Rose Collective is a grassroots community art collective celebrating excellence in q***r writing, performance, music, and visual art.

Its volunteer membership includes visual artists, music and theatre performers, curators, writers, educator

09/15/2026

Two Throbbing Rose Collective members, Schem Rogerson Bader and Terre Chartrand , come together in What We Make of the Dark, now on view at White Water Gallery in North Bay, Ontario.
The exhibition moves through loss, grief, disillusion, and the conditions that shape how we carry them. In different but resonant ways, Schem and Terre consider what happens when bodies, land, memory, and care are caught inside systems of extraction, abandonment, violence, and return.
There is a distinctly q***r force in refusing to tidy grief away. What We Make of the Dark asks what can be held, made, scented, shared, remembered, and sustained in the aftermath of loss.
The exhibition runs until December 3, 2026 at White Water Gallery.

***rArt ***rArtists

09/01/2026

Meet the Artist: James Fowler
Returning for his second Q***r Up North residency, James Fowler brought his long-standing interest in q***r ecology and q***r folklore back to Temagami.
Alongside his own artistic practice, James played an important role in supporting the other artists throughout the residency, offering feedback, advice and curatorial insight as ideas and new work began to take shape.
Based in Toronto, James works as both an artist and curator and has long championed 2SLGBTQIA+ artists through projects including the 10X10 Photography Project, the Church Street Mural Project, Nuit Rose, The Red Head Gallery and the Nipissing Region Curatorial Collective.
At Q***r Up North, that combination of artistic curiosity and generosity helped create the conversations, connections and creative exchange that are such an important part of the residency.

***rUpNorth ***rEcology ***rFolklore ***rArt

08/31/2026

Meet the Artist: Pearl Van Geest
Pearl Van Geest knows her way around a canoe. Chances are she is already halfway down the trail or paddling ahead before everyone else has caught up.
That love of wild places, shorelines, water and movement flows directly into her work.
As an artist and curator, Pearl explores q***r ecology, the body and the natural world, often blurring boundaries between human and non-human, land and water, and the micro and macro.
Recent work has begun with photographs taken while paddling across mirrored lakes and rivers, which she transforms into otherworldly images filled with colour, energy and unexpected connections.
Returning to Q***r Up North this year, Pearl brought that same adventurous spirit and curiosity back to the landscape, with plenty more water to explore.

***rUpNorth ***rEcology ***rArt

08/30/2026

Meet the Artist: Cai Sepulis
For Cai Sepulis, Q***r Up North brought together two things that already sit naturally alongside one another in her life: making art and being outdoors.
An illustrator, printmaker and art director, Cai brings the same curiosity and visual imagination to fly-fishing that she does to her creative practice. Calm in a canoe and happiest near the water, she is always looking for the next current, whether creative or literal.
During the residency, new waters became new stories, with the Temagami landscape offering another place to look, explore and let ideas drift in.

08/29/2026

Meet the Artist: Walter Segers 📷🌊
Walter Segers is a q***r photo-based artist working with analogue photography, collage, Polaroids, cyanotype and a range of historical and experimental processes.
His practice explores memory, transformation, intimacy and place, alongside the ways q***rness can shift how we relate to bodies, landscapes and one another.
Walter came to Q***r Up North through his interest in q***r ecology and q***r folklore, as well as his connection to Throbbing Rose. During the residency, he experimented, collaborated and exchanged skills with the other artists, making space for unexpected relationships to emerge between people, process and land.
The Temagami landscape became especially important to his image-making. Water, lakes, changing light and the rural northern environment connected naturally with processes such as cyanotype and offered a space to listen, learn and be changed by place.

***rUpNorth ***rEcology

08/28/2026

Meet the Artist: Mimmo Baronello 🌿🔎
For Mimmo Baronello, Q***r Up North was a chance to explore the northern landscape while being surrounded by artists from across the q***r community, each bringing different experiences and ways of seeing.
In such a vast landscape, Mimmo found himself captivated by the smallest things: tiny creatures, textures, details and diversity that reveal themselves when you stop and really look.
He found a parallel in the community around him too. Just as closer attention revealed unexpected complexity in the landscape, spending time with his fellow q***r artists opened up another world of difference and connection.
Mimmo also brought his own classical Mediterranean background into conversation with Temagami. His Sicilian visual inheritance, rich in art, architecture and colour, met both his q***rness and the northern Canadian landscape.
The result was a meeting of cultural, natural and q***r histories, and a reminder that beauty never belongs to just one story.

***rUpNorth ***rEcology ***rArt

08/27/2026

Meet the Artist: Mercury Gray 🌌🖤
Mercury Gray creates graphic linocut prints exploring the fantastical, celestial bodies and the magic of q***rness.
For Mercury, Q***r Up North offered a chance to slow down, shift attention towards the natural landscape and spend time connecting across different q***r experiences.
The residency also opened up new ways of thinking about materials and process. Through knowledge shared by other artists, Mercury began exploring how their practice might develop in more ecologically considerate ways.
Temagami provided plenty of inspiration too, from the formations of the landscape and local wildlife to the Perseid meteor shower unfolding overhead.
A week of looking up, looking closely and finding new possibilities for making.

***rUpNorth ***rEcology ***rArt

08/26/2026

Meet the Artist: Jean Marc Raymond 🧵🌲
Jean Marc Raymond is a maker at heart, interested in process and in seeing things through from beginning to end. His practice moves across textiles, embroidery, painting and pottery.
Q***r Up North also has a particularly personal connection for Jean Marc. Four years ago, he was part of the conversation from which the residency first grew, and the idea of reclaiming the north resonated deeply with him as someone who grew up there.
During the residency, Jean Marc turned his attention to northern folklore, playing with stories of Sasquatch and exploring what might happen if he embodied the character himself, bringing costume and elements of clowning into the mix.
A little folklore, a little performance, and a very Q***r Up North way of returning to the landscape that helped shape him.

***rUpNorth ***rFolklore

08/25/2026

Meet the Artist: Mouse

During Q***r Up North, Mouse explored the connections between q***rness, the fat experience, animals and the natural world through a practice rooted in creature design.

Their work critiques social norms while celebrating q***r relationships, dynamics and forms of connection that often sit outside what is considered conventional.

For Mouse, the residency was also a chance to connect more deeply with the land, with other artists and with themself. Intergenerational conversations became an important part of that experience, helping them better understand their own themes and feel more grounded within q***r community.

Learning about the landscape and species of the region also shifted the way Mouse thought about q***rness in nature.

As they put it, recognising that q***rness exists in nature in endless forms helped them articulate more clearly the q***rness they feel both around them and within the land itself.

***rUpNorth ***rEcology ***rArt

08/24/2026

Meet the Artist: Lydia Wilson 🌿

During Q***r Up North, Lydia Wilson came looking for deeper connection with q***r community, new collaborations and ways of thinking about how we care for the land.

An interdisciplinary artist with a focus on dance and performance, Lydia often uses their own body as the medium for their work. Throughout the residency, conversations around q***r folklore, myth, storytelling and ecology began to shift the way they thought about that practice.

Lydia was especially drawn to the connections between nature, q***r bodies and our shared humanity, and to the way stories can help us understand those relationships differently.

For them, the residency became a space for exchange, experimentation and a transformation in how they think about artmaking.

***rUpNorth ***rEcology ***rFolklore

Address

Toronto, ON

Website

https://www.throbbingrose.ca/projects/nuitrose2026

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Throbbing Rose posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Establishment

Send a message to Throbbing Rose:

Want your establishment to be the top-listed arts & entertainment in Toronto?