In honour of the Day of the Dead, this evening is a summoning of queer love, ancestral memory, and transgenerational healing. Featuring artists from Mexico, Ximena Velázquez presents a haunting ritual of tortilla-making, followed by a performance from drag mutant Gaia Lacandona, and a sonic meditation by El Ángel Exterminador. The night blurs the line between worlds, celebrating both the living and the dead. Audience members are invited to bring photos, messages or names of ancestors and dearly departed to the altar. May queer ritual, sound, and spirit envelop you.

Doors at 6:30pm
Performances at 7pm
RSVPs are appreciated

This event is at capacity

Lineup

Tortillera* by Ximena Velázquez
In the flickering shadows of an altar, Ximena performs a haunting ritual of making tortillas, a practice woven with the spectral whispers of the multigenerational Mexican women in her family. Inspired by her great-grandmother's recipes, each tortilla is a conjuring shaped by hands long gone, strengthening the unbreakable tether to her ancestral past.

*In Mexico, “tortillera” (tortilla-maker) is a derogatory term for lesbian. This performance is a reclamation of the word and a reconnection to matrilineal wisdom, healing not just the body but the spirit.

Portales by El Ángel Exterminador
In darkness sounds spread like a thick fog, enveloping you within it. The curtain between worlds becomes thin and flickers in and out, let it transport you.

Mi Orgullo Perdido by Gaia Lacandona
To migrate is to uproot ourselves and transplant our beings to new territories. This drag mutation by Gaia Lacandona is a call back to their lands, a longing for the place they call home. A performance that resurrects their lost pride and honours their dead, reminding us that we don’t have to cut our roots to grow new wings.

Image: Gaia, Daniel Gallardo

About the Artists

El Ángel Exterminador (Max Ammo) is a non-binary audiovisual artist hailing from Mexico City who currently lives and works on the Unceded and traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. Their visual work spans across graphic design, illustration, animation, ceramics & more and is encompassed within their freelance work at Slime Studio. El Ángel Exterminador [FKA Goo] started as a DJ project to showcase music producers from LATAM and its diaspora, but is now melding with their sonic experimentation into the realm of music production. This year they began their curatorial and event organizing efforts in Canada and teamed up with Elias Musiak AKA Jaijiu to start Cadena - a coast to coast project (MTL/YVR) seeking to spotlight Latinx producers and similar efforts within these geographies. They are also the magic hand behind Hechizo, a local event and mix series in Vancouver blending magic and celebrating the sounds from LATAM and the broader Southern majority regions.

Daniel “Gaia” Gallardo is a nonbinary Mestizx drag artist and decolonial scholar from Mexico. Their research contributes to the emerging field of Indigenous-informed gender and sexuality scholarship as it proposes to interrogate and dismantle patriarchal and colonial assumptions of heterosexism and binaries through decolonial SOGI education and drag pedagogy. Daniel gives life to Gaia Lacandona, a drag mutant looking to end the monarchy of queens and kings and embrace a community of monsters, creatures and things. Through the art of drag, Gaia cultivates a place where trans and queer youth can imagine otherwise.

Ximena Velázquez, also known as @laposmobaby, is a DJ, artist, workshop facilitator, and community organizer from southeast Mexico, currently residing in Vancouver. Her work combines autoethnographic research with video, performance, poetry, and sewing to explore the cultural analysis of her life between Mexico and Canada. Her video performances contemplate the dialectics of existence in these two places and explore the nuances of longing and belonging.

Banner Image: Tortillera (2024), video still