This Body is a Gift

In this art-based lecture, Michael V. Smith presents a retrospective of his body-based creative work. Smith has made a career examining how bodies are read, misread or re-read. This Body Is a Gift explores ways in which art can (de)construct gender as a functional tool for undoing, unseeing, unbecoming. Inspired by the work of artists Leigh Bowery and Cindy Sherman, Michael V. Smith up-ends the everyday to complicate what is a freak and who is familiar. 

Michael V. Smith is a queer writer, performer and professor teaching Creative Writing at UBC's Okanagan. Smith has received awards for his writing and short films, including the Director’s Choice at the Cinema Diverse festival for his feature film, The Floating Man. His novel, Cumberland was nominated for the Amazon/Books in Canada First Novel Award, and he won the inaugural Dayne Ogilvie Award for Emerging Gay Writers.

Smith has performed at dozens cabarets and festivals worldwide, including VideoFag in Toronto, nGbK gallery in Berlin, the Vancouver Fringe Festival and the Vancouver Comedy Festival.

Smith's latest book is Queers Like Me, a poetry collection published by Book*hug Press in 2023.

*Please note there are photographic images containing nudity.