Flux & Fracture

Queer Spectra Arts Festival 2025

May 15, 16, and 17

SORENSON UNITY CENTER

1383 S 900 W, Salt Lake City, UT 84104

Transportation: UTA bus line 9 (California Ave / 900 W - Stop ID: 198489900) Plenty of places to chain up bikes and park

2025 Festival Schedule

Thursday, May 15

• 6:30pm - Performance I followed by Artist Panel

Friday, May 16

• 6:00pm - Gallery Reception with snacks and nonalcoholic beverages 

• 7:00-8:30pm - Queer Bachata Workshop hosted by Rue Zheng from SLC Queer Latin Dance 

Saturday, May 17  

• 1:00-1:45pm - Keynote with Jacoby Ballard

• 2:00-3:00pm - All-Ages Collage Workshop - Drawn From Home: Journaling Family Stories through Collage and Mixed Media with Pablo Cruz-Ayala

• 3:15pm-4:15pm - Body Liberation & Yoga: the embodied experience of the artist with Azul Bolivar

• 5:00pm - Performance II followed by Artist Panel

“When we speak of systemic change, we need to be fractal.  Fractals— a way to speak of the patterns we see— move from the micro to macro level. The same spirals on sea shells can be found in the shape of galaxies. We must create patterns that cycle upwards. We are microsystems.”

— adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy

“When we speak of systemic change, we need to be fractal.  Fractals— a way to speak of the patterns we see— move from the micro to macro level. The same spirals on sea shells can be found in the shape of galaxies. We must create patterns that cycle upwards. We are microsystems.” — adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy

The Queer Spectra Organizing Team is grateful to welcome you to our seventh annual festival, Flux & Fracture. We are excited to present our largest festival yet, with 3 days of programming, 51 artists across the performances and gallery, multiple workshops, and a keynote address. We encourage you to embrace our interdisciplinary festival and check out multiple events and artistic modalities while you are here. 

This festival is a confluence, an invitation to come together as artists, creatives, and community members. In our times of division and fear, queer spaces are vital to practice expansiveness, participate in generative contradictions, and celebrate fluctuations. As queer creatives, we embrace ruptures and the erosion of barriers to spark queer possibilities.

When the organizers gathered to choose this year’s theme, we reflected on the hostile environment that queer and trans people, BIPOC, disabled people, undocumented people are facing. We asked artists to respond to the world around them: to express pain, uncertainty, and possibilities for change. We hope that the community can take a moment to become grounded in our queerness and support each other locally. 

In 2024, Queer Spectra was awarded federal funding for the first time. This funding was through a program called ArtsHERE, an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with South Arts. The goal of this grant was to create more organizational stability and expand our community outreach, specifically adding more programming to serve BIPOC communities and Utah communities outside of Salt Lake. Less than two weeks before the festival, we learned that this grant was terminated and Queer Spectra, along with arts organizations across the country, were losing vital funding. Despite this, we will continue to showcase queer art and queer voices in Utah. We invite you to make a donation to support our mission and partner with us to expand the reach of queer art in Utah.

There are so many people involved in bringing Queer Spectra to you. Thank you to Justin Ellsworth and Sean Martin at the Sorenson Unity Center for your incredible support. Thanks to Umbrella Theater for equipment and technical assistance. Thanks to Full Circle Yoga, SLC Covid Ed, and Blankets by Brian for providing materials and support. Thanks to all of our generous sponsors. Thank you to our incredible festival intern, Pablo Cruz-Ayala. Thank you to our amazing team of volunteers. Thank you to our adjudicating committee, keynote speaker, workshop hosts, and our presenting artists.

We’d like to thank you for attending the festival and being part of our queer community. Queer Spectra is grateful to be contributing to the queer dialogue here in Utah and thankful for our audiences of the past six years who have sustained this organization. Thank you for your support and we hope you enjoy the show!

-Rae Luebbert, Tori Meyer, Ricky Begaye, and Madazon Can-Can

THANK YOU

Queer Spectra Arts Festival is made possible by generous support from the following sponsors: