Nuit Rose: REWILDING (2026) is just around the corner.
Join us in Toronto’s Church–Wellesley Village June 18–21 for an unforgettable celebration of queer art and performance.

Throwback to Nuit Rose 2016, when Duo Trapeze (Britt and Tanya) dazzled audiences at The 519 with their performance Angles and Curves. Supported by A Girl In The Sky Productions, the piece explored the shifting dynamics of sexual desire and the beauty of bisexuality and pansexuality through breathtaking aerial movement.

Relive the moment:
https://youtu.be/tVn5NRZAoqQ?si=tjdJQ9XB7bpPkuCP

Stay tuned for updates as we reveal what’s coming for Nuit Rose 2026.

Nuit Rose 2017: What Lies Between Venus and Mars brought together a vibrant constellation of queer art and performance across Toronto.

Highlights included the indie band Long Branch, whose genre-blending sound moves between city and country influences; the LOVED Collective exhibition, presenting intimate portraits while unpacking the power of queer social formations; and Laura Petelko’s collaborative documentary following musician T. Thomason’s journey through gender transformation.

The festival also featured a joint exhibition by Maddie Alexander & Morgan Sears-Williams exploring femme identity; Shawn Postoff’s Praise the Gods mosaic series inspired by Emperor Hadrian and Antinous; and Rob Croxford’s playful paintings using wordplay to reflect on gay identity and labels.

Performances included Charlena Russell’s multi-instrumental, sound-activated light suit with loop pedal and video projection, while projects by Irem Harnak (Made This Way) and Mark Sepic (The Junkestra) explored self-discovery, transformation, and the creative possibilities of sound, material, and myth.

Two exhibitions unfolded at Artscape (now ArtHubs) Youngplace and the Critical Distance Centre for Curators during Nuit Rose 2019, bringing together work by nine remarkable artists: Alejandro Rizzo Nervo, Alexi Pedneault, Humboldt Magnussen, Joey Suriano, Michael Stecky, Kyle Yip, Texas & Glory, Ebrin Bagheri, and Eric Chengyang.
Curated by John Rubino and Emily Peltier, these exhibitions expanded the festival’s presence across the city, creating space for contemporary queer practice in dialogue with community and place.

In past years, Nuit Rose has invited the community to gather and illuminate creativity through lantern-making workshops. Artists and participants of all backgrounds came together to craft glowing forms that lit up our shared journey, celebrating self-expression, connection, and collective joy.
These workshops flowed into luminous Light Parades across the Village, including Joey Bruni’s Cocoon Project, presented during the opening weekend of WorldPride 2014, where light became both spectacle and statement.
Want to be part of this year’s festival? Stay tuned for upcoming posts and join us for Nuit Rose: Rewilding, June 18–21, 2026.

On June 13, 2019, Nuit Rose transformed the former Slack’s nightclub at the heart of Toronto’s Church–Wellesley Village for the ARCADE Launch Party. The space pulsed with performance, art, and celebration, honouring the queer artists, performers, and contributors who shaped that year’s festival.

The night set the tone for the annual Art Crawl and Light Parade on June 15, with a special DJ set by Tam Ika carrying the energy forward.

Nuit Rose returns June 18–21, 2026, rewilding the Church–Wellesley Village with art, performance, light, and sound.

Collective member Sarah Hunter is beginning a new body of work rooted in memory, myth, and transformation.
Started in the fall of 2025, this emerging series draws on Sarah’s time spent in India at age 17, when she completed Grade 12 at Woodstock School in the Himalayas. Working with coloured inks on paper, she looks to Indian art traditions and Mughal miniature paintings of Krishna, alongside Hindu myths and creation stories, as sources of visual and conceptual inspiration.
The work explores magical, mystical, and hybrid figures, part human, part animal, echoing Sarah’s long-standing fascination with fairy tales, mythologies, and the spaces where identities blur. Through these images, she reflects on how those early experiences in India informed her as a young artist, while also considering queer resonances within myth, hybridity, and non-binary forms of being.
This series marks the beginning of a longer exploration Sarah plans to develop over the coming years.

“Wild Waysides: Queer Ecology and the New Natural” is a multidisciplinary exhibition exploring how queer thinking reshapes our understanding of nature and belonging.

Originally curated by Pearl Van Geest and James Fowler, the project has toured across Canada, presenting works that challenge conventional ideas of landscape, identity, and the natural world.

For its next presentation — curated by Kristy Boyce — Wild Waysides comes to the RIT City Art Space, where selections from the original exhibition will be shown alongside new contributions from artists in the LGBTQIA+ community.

Featuring: Francisco Alvarez, Schem Rogerson Bader, Emily Baker, Hartley Bauer, Dillon Bryant, Louis Chavez, Kit Foster, James Fowler, Audrey Fuller, Massimo Greco & Silas Sims, Dante Hansen, Charlie Hunter & Mike Wyeld, Sarah Hunter, Katthew Kennaz, Lou Losier, Jack Manning, Jonathan Mills, Remington Potter, David Rose, John Anthony Rubino, Evie Johnny Ruddy, Walter Segers, Cai Sepulis, Christian Bernard Singer, Josh Thorson, Pearl Van Geest, Caroline Williams, Jason Wu, Keely Wu, Jackie Zysk & Lydia Sharp.

Nuit Rose 2016 unfolded as NIGHT SHIFT, a city-wide surge of vibrant performances, visual art, music, and collective courage. The night pulsed with energy, love, and a spirit of resistance, as artists and audiences moved through Toronto after dark, transforming public space into sites of connection and expression.
From the breathtaking aerial work of Duo Trapeze’s Angles and Curves, to quiet moments like Slow Dance and Cast Me at The 519, NIGHT SHIFT held space for spectacle and tenderness alike. Across galleries and pop-up venues, artists explored intimacy, nightlife, memory, and movement, including works shown at AKASHA Art Projects and Artscape Youngplace.

Nuit Rose returned in 2019 with ARCADE, filling Toronto with vibrant energy, colour, and queer creativity. Across the Village and beyond, the night unfolded through art-crafting at The 519, lanterns glowing for the Light Parade, performances at The Garage, and exhibitions at Artscape Youngplace where nine artists explored queer contemporary practice.

Be part of this next chapter. Submit your proposal for Nuit Rose: Rewilding (2026) by January 15, 2026. Visit https://www.throbbingrose.ca/projects/nuitrose2026 or check the link in bio.

From taking over Church Street to the sounds of the Counterpoint Community Orchestra, ARCADE transformed the city into a playground of performance, light, and collective joy an unforgettable night of art, excitement, and community in motion.

Nuit Rose - Drag in a Bag returned in February 2018 with Family Jewels, a fundraiser celebrating queer excess, performance, and playful subversion. Family Jewels turned drag into a joyous act of inheritance, chosen family, and collective glamour.
Be part of this next chapter. Submit your proposal for Nuit Rose: Rewilding (2026) by January 15, 2026. Visit https://www.throbbingrose.ca/projects/nuitrose2026 or check the link in bio.
Rooted in humour, risk, and community support, Drag in a Bag has long been a space where amateur drag meets unapologetic spectacle. Family Jewels carried that spirit forward, proving once again that joy, camp, and generosity sit at the heart of Nuit Rose.
Photos by Marycarla Quintazzi and Adam Zivo

Nuit Rose 2017: What Lies Between Venus and Mars? Nuit Rose returned in 2017 with a festival that stretched across four Toronto neighbourhoods, filling each space with queer imagination, performance, and art. The theme asked a simple but expansive question: What Lies Between Venus and Mars? The answer unfolded through exhibitions, street activations, the Light Parade, parties, and works by dozens of artists exploring myth, identity, desire, and the cosmos.
Be part of this next chapter. Submit your proposal for Nuit Rose: Rewilding (2026) by January 15, 2026. Visit https://www.throbbingrose.ca/projects/nuitrose2026 or check the link in bio.

Between Protest and Parade: Love and Resistance - For Nuit Rose 2017 (Nuit Rose: Unbound), artist Pearl Van Geest explored the intertwined energies of love and resistance. Drawing from historic photographs of Toronto’s first Pride parade and the 1980 bathhouse raid protests, Between Protest and Parade transformed archival imagery into tactile carvings, prints, and banners, acts of art-making that bridge memory and movement.
Be part of this ongoing story. Submit your proposal for Nuit Rose: Rewilding (2026) by January 15, 2026. Visit https://www.throbbingrose.ca/projects/nuitrose2026 or check the link in bio.
In Between Protest and Parade: Love and Resistance, visitors to The 519 were invited to create their own prints from the sculpted reliefs, a shared act of creation that echoed the collective energy at the heart of Pride’s beginnings. The piece reminds us that joy and defiance are not opposites but intertwined forces, beating in rhythm together.

Sarah Hunter: Embracing Identity Through Art - For artist and collective member Sarah Hunter, Nuit Rose has been a space of discovery, expression, and connection. Their first participation in WorldPride 2014 introduced them to a vibrant community of queer artists, including a photographer from Jamaica who helped organize the country’s first Pride Parade, an encounter that left a lasting impression.

Be part of this legacy. Submit your proposal for Nuit Rose: Rewilding (2026) by January 15, 2026. Visit https://www.throbbingrose.ca/projects/nuitrose2026 or check the link in bio.

By Nuit Rose 2017, Sarah presented works exploring their genderqueer identity for the first time, marking a powerful step in their personal and creative journey. “Having the opportunity to show these works helped me embrace my identity more fully.” Sarah Hunter

Sarah’s contributions across 2014, 2016, 2017, and 2018 reflect the spirit of Nuit Rose, a celebration of queer transformation and creative courage.

Kiss-Up: Love as Protest - At WorldPride 2014 (Nuit Rose: World Pride), collective member Pearl Van Geest transformed a tent outside The 519 into a living artwork of love, intimacy, and resistance. The Kiss-Up booth invited participants to share a kiss before a red-curtained backdrop, a joyful, defiant act streamed live onto nearby walls, transforming tenderness into a bold public statement of queer visibility.
Be part of this legacy. Submit your proposal for Nuit Rose: Rewilding (2026) by January 15, 2026. Visit https://www.throbbingrose.ca/projects/nuitrose2026 or check the link in bio.
“Kiss-Up is a testament to the power of love as an agent of change.” Rooted in the long history of queer ‘kiss-ins,’ Kiss-Up celebrates love as protest, a reminder that tenderness can be revolutionary.

For artist and Throbbing Rose Collective member Michael Venus, Nuit Rose marked a moment of arrival. After nearly two decades in Vancouver, moving to Toronto and joining the first Nuit Rose festival felt like finding home. “It was the first art event I did here, and I felt supported and part of the community from that very first year.”

Be part of this legacy. Submit your proposal for Nuit Rose: Rewilding (2026) by January 15, 2026. Visit https://www.throbbingrose.ca/projects/nuitrose2026 or check the link in bio.

Michael Venus, the creative force behind the House of Venus and the legendary Wiggle Festival, has spent decades celebrating queer imagination, transformation, and joy through wearable art and performance. What began as a DIY fundraiser in Windsor and Detroit grew into a cosmic spectacle, blending drag, fashion, and avant-garde art into one night of pure glam-alchemy.

The wait is over! Nuit Rose: Rewilding is back! After six years, Toronto’s Festival of Queer Art and Performance returns June 18–21, 2026, ready to rewild the Church–Wellesley Village with art, performance, light, and sound.

This year’s theme, REWILDING, invites you to explore regeneration, resistance, and joy. To plant seeds of change and reimagine queer futures.

Submission Deadline: January 15, 2026
Submit your proposal online (link in bio)

We’re calling on artists, performers, writers, curators, and community groups to join us in transforming the Village into a living, breathing celebration of queer creativity.

Festival Dates: June 18–21, 2026
Main Event: Saturday, June 20, 7PM–12AM
Church–Wellesley Village, Toronto

Organized by the Throbbing Rose Collective, Nuit Rose has showcased over 300 projects since its debut at WorldPride 2014. Join us as we bring the wild back to queer art.

This is the final post in our series on last summer's Wild Waysides: Queer Ecology and the New Natural. The exhibition ran August 6–16, 2025 at the Red Head Gallery, Toronto.
Curated by Pearl Van Geest and James Fowler, the show featured 2SLGBTQ+ artists and researchers exploring queerness, ecology, and creative practice. Many works grew out of the Queer Up North Artist Residency in Temagami, where artists engaged land, sound, movement, and storytelling through queer and ecological lenses. This exhibition is made possible though the generous support of @canada.council and @ontarioartscouncil

Sound workshop: The Queer Sonic Postcard: Queer Frequencies and Fugitive Listening, part of the Queer Up North Symposium II, created space for listening, reflection, and creative engagement alongside panels and dialogue.

Led by Mike Wyeld and Charlie Hunter, the workshop invited participants to explore queer listening as an act of attention, resistance, and world-building. Rooted in sound art, ecological awareness, and queer presence in public space, the session unfolded as a collective experiment in sonic record-keeping. Through brief reflections, audio excerpts, and shared listening, participants created "sonic postcards" that reimagined the soundscape of the city as a space of resonance, memory, and queer connection.

#soundart #fieldrecording #queersound

Cyanotype workshop, part of the Queer Up North Symposium II, offered space for hands-on discovery alongside dialogue and panels.⁠
⁠
Walt Segers, Kristy Boyce, and Jackson Bailey led a cyanotype workshop in the parking lot of 401 Richmond, where about 15 participants created striking blue-toned prints. Using this simple, UV-light-based photographic process, participants experimented with shadows, objects, plants, and transparencies to produce unique images. Centred on play and discovery, the workshop required no prior experience, with all materials provided.

Queer Up North Symposium II, organised by the Throbbing Rose Collective, took place August 8–10, 2025 at 401 Richmond Street West in Toronto. Rooted in wildness, land, and queer connection, the symposium built on the momentum of the 2024 artist residency in Temagami and the Wild Waysides exhibition series. Over three days, artists, scholars, and community gathered to share ideas, practices, and dialogue at the intersection of ecology and queerness.⁠
⁠
Panels explored a spectrum of ideas related to Queer Ecologies. The IndigiQueer panel with Terre and Lou opened the symposium, followed by an exciting sound workshop. After the sound workshop, Terry Dame, Mike Wyeld and Charlie Hunter addressed issues of field recording and approaches to creative output. The Ethics of Gathering panel with Christian Bernard Singer, Schem Bader Rogerson, and Terre Chartrand, with guest speaker Peter Hobbs, discussed their art practices in terms of materiality. Our largest panel, Exploring Trans & Queer Ecologies Through a Post-humanist Lens, included Cesar Forero, John Rubino, Rose Cullis, Mimmo Baronello and Jackson Bailey and was moderated by Kelly McCray. Our cyanotype workshop was followed by Picturing Queer Ecologies with Walt Segers, Kristy Boyce and Jackson Bailey. Mimi McGurl was our Keynote speaker, who gave a dynamic talk on plants, art and conceptual framework.