The Pussy Palace: An Instagram Story

From June 12 – to July 5, “The Pussy Palace: An Instagram Story” will be set up at the Gallery 1265 at UTSC. This is a brand-new research-creation exhibit led by Professor Elspeth Brown at the LGBTQ Digital History Collaboratory at UTM. This exhibit features the narratives from 36 collected interviews of patrons, organizers, volunteers and others who took part in Pussy Palace bathhouse events.

Location: Gallery 1265, The Meeting Place, Science Wing, UTSC

Dates: June 12-July 5, Monday-Friday (except holidays)

Times: 9am-7pm

About the exhibit

This is a self-led, interactive digital exhibit that showcases queer joy, resilience and radical sex/gender cultures in turn-of-the-21st-century Toronto.

Organized by the Toronto Women’s Bathhouse Committee, the Pussy Palace was a series of radical public sex events for queer women and trans people in Toronto (c. 1998-2014). The Pussy Palace was both the site of the last major police raid of a queer bathhouse in Canadian history, and a space of intimacy, community and exploration for queer and trans people.

Through a blend of digital sketches, narrative text, and interview soundbites, The Pussy Palace: An Instagram Story creatively reimagines an “average night” at the Palace, if there ever was such a thing.

More information about the exhibit can be found on the EDIO website: https://edio.utsc.utoronto.ca/programs-events/pussy-palace-utsc-2023.

For more information about the LGBTQ Digital Collaboratory, please visit their website: https://lgbtqdigitalcollaboratory.org/projects/pussy-palace/