Courtnay McFarlane

Visual artist, poet and manager of children, youth and adult services at Davenport-Perth Neighbourhood Community Health Centre

McFarlane was a founding member of a number of Black queer groups and organizations in the early ’80s and ’90s — such as Zami, Sepia, AYA Men — that provided voice and visibility for Black LGBTQ2 individuals and issues. This activism in many ways laid the foundation for events, organizations and movements addressing Black LGBTQ2 communities today. He has also been on the board of the Toronto Inside Out Film Festival

He is also currently curating an exhibit at Toronto’s BAND Gallery called Legacies in Motion: Black Queer Toronto Archive Project as part of the Myseum Intersections festival 2019.  This exhibit seeks to unearth the stories of the vibrant period of political organizing and cultural activism from Black LGBTQ2 communities in Toronto in the 1980s and 1990s. Drawing its diverse exhibit materials from personal archives, which feature images, documents, videos and visual art, Legacies in Motion directly challenges the common narratives within mainstream LGBTQ communities that often render the history and contributions of Black queers as invisible and marginal.

MacFarlan has published works in MÃKA Diasporic Juks: Contemporary Writing by Queers of African Descent by Debbie Douglas, Courtnay McFarlane, Makeda Silvera and Douglas Stewart and Plush: Selected Poems by By Sky Gilbert, Courtnay McFarlane, Jeffrey Conway, R. M. Vaughan, David Trinidad, Lynn Crosbie and Michael Holmes.