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.⁠
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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.⁠
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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.

Collective member Micheal Venus brings the iconic House of Venus to Toronto for a one-night celebration! Join us for a special screening of Venus Envy: The House of Venus Story plus the 30th anniversary of their legendary Wiggle Festival

About last night… The Opening reception of WILD WAYSIDE: Queer Ecologies and the New Natural was last night. Thank you to everyone who attended. There is a curitorial talk and tour with @pearlvangeest and @jamesfowlerart this Sunday, August 10 at 1pm @redheadgallery at @401richmond. Many of the artists will be in attendance. The exhibition continues to August 16. Come enjoy the work. For some, it is a new way of looking at queerness and ecology. This initiative is made in partnership with @nrccprojectspace and with the financial support of @canada.council #queerecology #queerart #canqueer #throbbingrosecollective
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À propos d’hier soir… Le vernissage de WILD WAYSIDE : Écologies queer et nouvelle nature a eu lieu hier soir. Merci à tous les participants. Une conférence et une visite guidée avec @pearlvangeest et @jamesfowlerart auront lieu ce dimanche 10 août à 13 h à la galerie Redhead au 401richmond. Plusieurs artistes seront présents. L’exposition se poursuit jusqu’au 16 août. Venez admirer les œuvres. Pour certains, il s’agit d’une nouvelle façon d’envisager l’identité queer et l’écologie. Cette initiative est réalisée en partenariat avec