ResiStories: Living Archives of Pride

Shay Dior is a Vietnamese Canadian drag luminary whose aesthetic channels both King and Queen drag elements into a harmonious body of gender fluidity. They often share their art and perform locally and internationally. Dedicated to increasing representation and creating a world where queer Asians can feel important, Shay Dior founded Canada’s first all Asian drag family, becoming matriarch of the House of Rice, a collective of talented and inspiring leaders—and shortly after, founded Ricecake, an event organization that began as a dance party celebrating the queer and Asian community by providing well-paid work and a platform for queer Asian entertainers. With tremendous support and love, Shay Dior and the team behind Ricecake expanded beyond a dance party, collaborating with business and events around the city. Through Ricecake Events and the House of Rice, Shay Dior now has a legacy of building safe spaces for queer Asians to share joy, participate in activism and express their excellence.

Continental Breakfast is a non-binary multidisciplinary artist and the Director of Queer Based Media. They are Beardy’s and Okemasis Cree and are a settler on the stolen lands of the Txʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. They are self-taught within the mediums of film, photography, drag performance art, design, and production. Their artistic practice looks at untold queer stories and histories along with complicating intersections of identity. They are also a member of the Darlings, a non-binary drag performance art collective and was named in Vancouver Magazine’s Power 50 list, BC Business’ 30 under 30, and has had work screened at the Vancouver Queer Film Festival, Seattle Queer Film Festival, and Red Nation Film Festival.

What if Eros and Dracula had a baby? Count Cupid, so-called-Vancouver's vampiric demigod of love defies definition as a multi-hyphenate monstrosity: trans, non-binary, South Korean diaspora, multimedia artist, anti-Confucian prodigal child, and anthropologically-trained misanthropic anime villain, hiding in the daytime as a denizen of the Museum of Vancouver. Responding to Count, Cupid or Your Majesty, this urban legend has been haunting the city since 2019. They like long walks on the beach, dumplings and deconstructing patriarchal ideas of binary masculinity.

The name is Mx Bukuru, a melanated, non-binary, draglesque, fantasy being from your most titillating dreams. With a tight lip sync and dancing feet, their performance will leave you bound (and gagged) and begging for more. A member of Enby 6, Vancouver’s best drag show 2023, and Diasporic Dynasty, Mx can be found twirling stages far and wide. A cofounder of Juicy Gems, after choreographing their group’s debut at Vancouver International Burlesque Festival, the group made their way to Fatlesque Seattle. Remember it’s: B-U-K-U-R-U and if you don’t know what it means honey, look it up.

Dr. John Paul (JP) Catungal (he/him) is the Assistant Professor in the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice, and Co-Director of the Centre for Asian Canadian Research and Engagement at UBC. As a queer, first generation, Filipinx Canadian scholar, he currently works in partnership with local Filipinx, Asian Canadian and queer of colour organizations to explore the value of community-engaged and arts-based research approaches for uplifting historically marginalized communities’ knowledges, creativity and histories. His past work on queer and diasporic Filipinx politics in Canada has appeared in his co-edited volumes for the journals ACME, TOPIA and Alon. His volume Filipinos in Canada: Disturbing Invisibility was published by the University of Toronto in 2012.

Isabel Machado (she/ela/ella) is a Brazilian cultural historian whose work often crosses national and disciplinary boundaries. She specializes in Gender and Sexuality Studies and Celebration Studies. Her first book, Carnival in Alabama: Marked Bodies and Invented Traditions in Mobile (2023), uses Mardi Gras as a vehicle to understand social and cultural changes in Mobile, Alabama in the second half of the 20th century. For the ongoing oral history project, Queens of the South(s), she is interviewing performers who defy gender normativity in different parts of the globe. The project inspired the documentary short Lip-synching Your Life, a collaboration with photographer Laura Patricia Alvarez and some of the most iconic Northern Mexico queens. She serves as co-editor-in-chief for the Journal of Festival Studies and is currently a Lecturer at UBC’s Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice.

Daniel Gallardo is a non-binary Mestizx from Mexico with the UBC Department of Educational Studies. Their research contributes to the emerging field of Indigenous-informed scholarship, where they aim to interrogate and dismantle patriarchal and colonial assumptions through the practice of SOGI education and drag through from a decolonial perspective. Daniel also gives life to Gaia Lacandona, a drag mutant belonging to the radical House of Xoconostle. Gaia is a deviant artist looking to end the monarchy of queens and kings and embrace a qmunity of drag monsters, creatures and things. Gaia is a community mentor at CampOUT! who drags up trans and queer youth and creates a space for them to imagine otherwise.