Drag Diasporas

Join Toronto-based drag artists Bom Bae, Manny Dingo, and Tifa Wine for a critical conversation surrounding drag performance and the politics of community- and solidarity-building during times of struggle. They will specifically unpack local histories of drag activisms and feminisms, issues of racism, homonormativity and other marginalities within Toronto “queer” spaces, and the role of performance for feminist and decolonial pursuits in diasporic space. This event will feature a mini-lecture on Toronto drag histories and politics by Tifa Wine, two special video performances by Bom Bae and Manny Dingo, as well as a roundtable conversation and question and answer period.

Registration via Zoom is required.

This event is produced and curated by Ryan Persadie and graciously funded by the UTM department of English and Drama. Many thanks to Prof. Nazli Akhtari for their help and support with organizing this important event.

ABOUT OUR SPEAKERS

BOM BAE (she/her) is Toronto’s reigning “Satanic Supreme.” She is a club kid who started doing drag in 2019. Since then, she has been performing all over Toronto from the Beaver in the West end, to Woody’s in the Village. She is known for her outlandish costumes, ungodly makeup, and the ability to give you art! She’s a model, drag queen, and human disaster who hosts shows online on Twitch too! At a Bom Bae show you can expect production, props, and explosive choregraphy because everyone knows that she is the bomb, bae.

MANNY DINGO (he/him) hails from Haliwood, Nova Scotia. He has been performing for five years and recently started taking up space in Tkaronto. He is a powerhouse performer mixing gymnastics with vogue and wacking, amateur DJ, pidgeon daddy, and one half of the House of Kings Toronto and one quarter of the House Royale Team who now stream on Twitch.

TIFA WINE (she/her/he/him) is an artist, educator, performer, and researcher based in Toronto, Canada. His/her aesthetic and scholarly work interrogates the relationships and the entanglements between queer Indo-Caribbean diasporas, Caribbean feminisms, Afro-Asian intimacies, legacies of indenture, performance, embodiment, and popular culture as archives of erotic self-making in Toronto and New York City. His/her work as a performance artist seeks to offer an expression and center the experiences, narratives and voices of queer Caribbean communities. As a fiercely unapologetic Caribbean tanty (aunty), Tifa Wine pays tribute and draws up the energies and spirit of fearless and transgressive Caribbean women who, for time, have been working to resist and dismantle the patriarchy all-the-while mashin’ it up on de road.