In front of a crowd of about 40 people in Rooster’s Coffeehouse, Gabbie Cruz sang the famous Muppet song, “The Rainbow Connection.” They called out, “everybody!” as they got to the last chorus, inviting the whole room to join in on the singalong.
“Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection, the lovers, the dreamers and me,” the crowd chorused.
The lyric brought a triumphant and symbolic end to the Rainbow Exhibit, an event hosted by Carleton University’s Gender and Sexuality Resource Centre (GSRC) to celebrate art made by LGBT+ students on Jan. 25.
Cruz is the programming coordinator at the GSRC and a third-year childhood and youth studies student at Carleton. As the main organizer of the Rainbow Exhibit, Cruz said they wanted to explore the relationship between art and identity.
“There’s such a potential in art, to not only produce something, but [to] find yourself in it,” they said.
Artists were prompted to reflect on the event’s rainbow theme, showcasing what the rainbow means to them, and what it is like to be part of the LGBT+ community.
Cruz said they chose the theme to explore how different people interpret the rainbow.
“Some people went literal rainbow, some went more subtle, some made just anything very colourful,” they said.
Zam Onwa, a third-year cognitive science student at Carleton, shared four paintings at the exhibit. Each of the paintings are self portraits from a collection titled The Creed of a True Fraud.
“The collection is about me finding myself,” they said. “It explores my feelings of me living my life as someone who wasn’t 100 per cent myself.”
Onwa said the rainbow is about being bold and unafraid to show your true self.
“[Rainbow is] being yourself in all the undiluted colour you are in a very greyscale world that only accepts black and white … it’s just actually standing out, being yourself.”
Second-year commerce student Aanya Baindur read three of her poems, titled “Gender Euphoria,” “Inadequacy of Change” and “For Those Injustices Which Others Face” at the event.
“[The first poem is] very slam poetry—it’s very childish in its feel,” Baindur said. “It meant so much to me when I wrote it in a fit of gender euphoria, of getting the chance to be myself.”
The second poem explored the injustice and poverty she witnessed while she was living in India. The third, she said, is a call to action for young people to fight against the injustices they witness.
The GSRC sold approximately 40 tickets and raised an estimated $200 for local LGBT+ supports, Cruz said.
Tickets for the event “were pay what you can,” and proceeds went to Ten Oaks Project and Safety Ottawa, two organizations that provide community programming for LGBT+ and gender-diverse youth and adults.
“I like the idea of giving back to youth. Specifically, trans, non-binary gender-non-conforming youth,” Cruz said. “The things that are already in youth that are so inherently and innately creative [are] inspiring. Those two organizations really foster that creativity.”
In their closing remarks, Cruz thanked the artists for contributing their work to the exhibit.
“Your work inspires me forever,” they said. “I really wanted to see the art in our community and see it thrive and I was not disappointed.”
Featured image by Emma Fazakas.
