Bianca Santana was the creative director of ARTIVISM 2021, which merged art and activism, and was made possible by the new UBC Anti-Racism Initiatives Fund, the UBC Equity and Inclusion Office, exposure UBC (previously Dive into UBC) and the many people involved. This school year’s event was beautifully titled: Queering the Self.
The Ubyssey sat down with Santana to talk about her own experiences with and the broader impact of events like these.
This interview has been edited for brevity.
Marilo: Tell us a bit about yourself, your name, pronouns, where you come from and your history in the arts culture and community here.
Bianca: “My name is Bianca Santana. I'm from the Dominican Republic. I am a settler here: [an] immigrant. I came to Vancouver four years ago in 2017 to do media studies in school at UBC. I'm a photographer and a graphic designer and now I do film and I do a few things in media.”
“I have the power to speak my own voice through my art or to speak up or to highlight other people that, you know, may not feel like they can share their stories.”
“I would say that the first piece of ARTIVISM that I did was in my third year. I did a piece on beauty standards in the BIPOC woman community and what people felt about it and that's when I realized that I have the power to speak my own voice through my art or to speak up or to highlight other people that may not feel like they can share their stories. And that's when I really realized the power of art and activism, and that they can both be together and it doesn't have to be a separate thing from each other.”
“Through these courses, I got the language to speak about these things.”
“Closer to the last two years, I've really gotten a lot more into being in GRSJ courses. Especially analyzing gender, race and social media, and the huge role that representation plays in our lives, and everyone feeling represented is so important. Just dabbling into that class was so rewarding for me because I've felt this huge gap in what I see on TV or celebrities, magazines, whatever; I don't see myself. And I realized it's so important to see yourself in these representations. It just changes so much. It eliminates shame, it eliminates guilt, it just shows you that there's so many more ways of existing outside the colonial gaze. And I think kind of what happened through these courses is that I got the language to speak about these things. And the language to talk about my experience as a person of colour, as a settler as an immigrant, as someone who’s Queer, all of these things.”
I'm a huge fan of the ARTIVISM events. This year’s event was amazing. How did you become involved with it and what was your inspiration for Queering the Self?
“It was actually called The Art of Being before and that was the name I had chosen. And it was featuring Queer and BIPOC artists but I didn't quite know that my heart had this vision but I was too scared. It was called The Art of Being: Queering the Self in the Digital Age. And I wasn't open about who I was with people around me, so I thought, ‘Oh I can hide behind this title, and like, oh, being can be different things, right?’ And then we were ready for it, we had everything, printed the poster, and it just didn't look right. It just looked like it wasn't saying anything, because it wasn't saying anything — I didn't want to say anything. But the whole lineup is Queer BIPOC artists, that's what I envisioned, that’s what I wanted. So the structure was there. It's just that last step of coming out and saying it you know? And then three days before, Deb [Arts and Culture Director] was like, ‘why don't you just name it Queering the Self?’ (because Queering the self was the subtitle) and I was like, ‘I love that. And I'm really scared, but I wanted to do it.’”
“Queering the Self is about much more than just being Queer.”
“I kind of knew in my heart I wanted to represent this community especially, and then after four months of trial and error and thinking about different things, I had built this amazing lineup and then it just came together in the end as Queering the Self. Queering the Self is about much more than just being Queer, and you can Queer the self in so many different ways. It's about challenging the colonial narrative that we all have inside our head. At the beginning, I thought decolonization was about doing things and like showing people ‘oh I’m decolonizing by attending events or writing an article or reading this thing’ [and] of course, the outer work matters a lot — seeing the change in in effect — but I was missing the most important part, which is decolonizing yourself really. Decolonizing your own toxic ideas and all these stereotypes, shame and self-hatred that come from colonialism. And then, I think coming out with Queering the Self allowed me to, not only expand who I was, but also offer that space for other people to challenge their own ideas or the ideas that they have been imposed.”
What was the process like of putting this together with so many of these incredible performers and educators coming to all these events?
“I had that fear of being myself with other people — I've known who I am for a while — but being myself out in the world. I felt like coming back from COVID and isolation really gave me a lot of time to cook up something, [to] prepare mentally. I was like, ‘Wait, I get a chance to be who I want to be more,’ and I was like, ‘You know what, I'm just gonna be that and then find people who have that same vision.’ [And] it's all people that I've met along the way. Not even one person did I know because I was just hiding: painfully hiding.
“I realized a lot of us are in different clubs doing the same thing.”
“I contacted everyone myself. I researched everyone. I found everyone and then, people started suggesting other people or like [saying] oh, I have a friend who loves the idea. So for example, I connected with Exter (Liam Hart) who connected me with like Continental Breakfast and Maiden China and like Count Cupid and Carrie Oki Doki … and then Liam connected me to Pride [Collective] and then that connected me to [UBC] Slam and then I realized a lot of us are in different clubs doing the same thing.”
“And then that was really exhausting with social anxiety and I just had to be this person who had it all together and was at the forefront contacting all these artists and then I realized artists want to be contacted, they want to do stuff and it's a lot more collaborative than what I thought it would be and a lot less scary than what I thought I would be. And then after that contacting, planning, talking to people, we launched [on] September 24. The launch was crazy, we had so many people that believed in the idea and loved it so much and then clubs started reaching out [and saying] like, ‘I want to be a part of it.’ It was 24 events with over 1,000 attendees total and it was just crazy, like even having Zoom talks, it just showed, from the first event, people wanted this.”
“It felt so crazy because I had this internal vision and … it came out like a baby and then people were like loving it and that's when I knew I'm not the only one that's been hiding or that's felt like there's not enough representation at UBC. Like, oh my God, is it all gonna be in the hands of the Pride Collective to do Queer events? Everyone should be doing Queer events, or BIPOC events. It doesn't have to be every event, but like, once in a while, you know? And I feel like the scene at UBC is just so dominated by frat and frat-adjacent groups that it is just so hard for you to feel like campus is yours when that's just at the front page of everything. And there's hundreds of students that are doing really important things, really cool things and are just not highlighted.”
“I felt myself taking up the space that I deserve, that I should have taken from the first moment.”
“Something I think we're lacking in the arts community, is [an] understanding of intersectional issues … being Queer is white, being an artist is white, being in those spaces it's just white-dominated and there's a huge gap in understanding [intersectionality]. Like yes, we're artists, but we don't all have the same story and we don't all have to look, you know, sexy or look ‘Queer-enough’ in a white gaze or artsy-enough in a white gaze. There's just so many other ways to do it and that's kind of what I wanted to introduce to UBC. As a BIPOC individual, it's just so hard to take up space and I realized why it's so hard. I have all these things that make people wanna shut me up, right? And I grew up with that voice of ‘no, don't take up space. It's not safe to take up space.’ So that was what I had to overcome — saying ‘I'm here and I want people to listen to me.’ … I'm not only making space for myself, I'm supposed to be the provider of space for other people who feel that they can't have space. But by the end of it, I [took up space] so many times that I felt myself expanding. I felt myself taking up the space that I deserve, that I should have taken from the first moment.”
“Creating ARTIVISM and doing Queering the Self has opened an avenue for so many more Queer events on campus.”
“Honestly what kept me going and inspired me was people that would come to events and say ‘Oh, I've never been to an event like this. I feel really good.’ Or, at the poetry night, [there were] so many people that performed for the first time and that had such good stories to tell — emotional stories — and it just felt so safe, just such a safe space to share. And that's kind of what kept me going or [was] the most rewarding part, just saying, ‘We're here and we deserve this space.’ And like I said, UBC is dominated by other kinds of events and it's hard to say ‘I'm the first person doing this,’ you know, because people have been doing it for years, but to this magnitude. Creating ARTIVISM and doing Queering the Self has opened an avenue for so many more Queer events on campus. Like, there's the Drag Night starting monthly later, I’m really excited for that. That's the most rewarding thing because I know it'll just keep going. Every event sold out. We showed that we are here, we want this.”