Dear queer community, friends, snowboarders, skaters, artists, and beyond,
For a participatory art piece called Queer Childhood, we (Mikaela Kautzky, Kennedi Deck, Jake Kuzyk, and Tanner Pendleton) are hoping to collect as many childhood photos of LGTBQIA+ people in our communities as possible. Our goal is to create an archive of queer people in snowboarding, skateboarding, and beyond through a collection of kid photos.
Queer Childhood is interested in how our gender and sexuality was expressed or
suppressed as young queer children and what it feels like now, as LGTBQIA+ adults, to reflect on our queer inner childs. We see this reflection process as a form of healing.
When we see some of our childhood photos, especially the ones below the age of 10, we feel like we see glimpses our truer selves before we began contorting our identities to be safer in a cis/heteronormative world. We acknowledge that this also compounds within white supremacy, ablism, colonialism and other system of oppressions that dominate
today’s society and that many factors still make it challenging and dangerous for our
community at different intersections to be our truest selves.
We want to compile as many images as possible to show the growing numbers of gorgeous openly queer people in our industries and continue to break open the possibilities for
representation and authentic storytelling. We invite you to send images of yourself as a kid where you see your inner child and true essence captured in moments of joy, in moments of dysphoria, or whatever expression you want to share in this project.
These images will be compiled into a large photo display with the goal of being presented at an art exhibition supported by Vans in 2022. With your consent, they will also be used in a video by Seen Snowboarding and Vans which will centre queer and trans snowboarding. Seen Snowboarding is a community group run by queer snowboarders for queer
snowboarders and hosts snowboarding meet-ups, aiming to change the representation in snowboarding. The video project and art exhibition are both supported by Vans.
Lastly, if the artwork with your photograph in it is ever sold, we will donate 100% of the money to a Black and Indigenous Trans mutual aid fund as we acknowledge these are the communities who have always been and continue to do the heavy lifting for our collective
liberation.
Do you consent to all these things, identify as LGTBQIA+, and want to participate in this project? If yes, please submit a favourite childhood photo of yourself with your name and pronouns. High Res scans are preferred but photos of photos will also be happily accepted!
Thank you!! <3
