Rights of Passage is a drag opera presented as an immersive sound and video installation. Lou Sheppard stages Hogweed, Turkeytail, and Algae, three hybrid figures wandering through the lost, buried, or compromised waterways of Greater Toronto. The exhibition, which also includes sculptural elements inspired by plants and fungi from the St. Lawrence River, explores the right of access to riverbanks, now impeded by privatization. Through a script composed by artificial intelligence and edited by Sheppard, the work orchestrates points of queer emergence, where unclear boundaries between city and nature, past and future, access and intrusion allow us to imagine other paths toward common ground.

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Exhibition produced in partnership with OPTICA.
This exhibition is commissioned by AGYU in Toronto, and funded by Canada Council for the Arts.