gendertrash from hell:
to heaven
Film still from ALLO PERFORMANCE! Mirha-Soleil Ross and Mark Karbusicky, 2002
Co-curator, with Karina Iskandarsjah (as Crocus Collective)
Vtape
September 9, 2021
gendertrash from hell: to heaven presents three performance and video works by transsexual videographer, performance artist, sex worker, and activist Mirha-Soleil Ross: Tremblement de Chair (2001), Madame Lauraine’s Transsexual Touch (2001), and ALLO PERFORMANCE! (2002). This mini-retrospective looks back at Ross’s activism as it relates to pleasure, desire, and futurity. Each video work puts forward artistic strategies invested in a safer and more inclusive future, projecting fragments of a potential utopia into our contemporary lives. These works speak to Ross’s legacy of actualizing a potential heaven for trans people and sex workers through her videos, performance art, and activism in the 1990s and 2000s.
This program featured a live conversation with Monica Forrester, sex work activist and Program and Outreach co-ordinator for Maggie’s Toronto Sex Workers Action Project. Since 1999, Monica has worked in various agencies to educate and make services accessible for trans folks, advocating for trans women to be allowed into women’s shelters and in creating policies to prevent shelters from discriminating against trans women.