This thesis is a twofold project that explores a queer and rurally-embodied curatorial methodological approach to exhibition making in rural Northeastern Ontario. The central focus is around an experimental presentation space I launched in the pheasant coop on my family farm in Kerns Township called Between Pheasants Contemporary. Secondly, this thesis also includes a critical contextualization of two artworks in the inaugural exhibition, tethers, featuring queer Métis artist Andrew Harding, and Luke Maddaford, a queer artist from rural Saskatchewan. tethers, which concerns itself with queer and anti-colonial critiques of nationalist mythologies attached to the aesthetics of circulated visual and material culture in the rural, serves as a case study to explore how Between Pheasants Contemporary is poised to readily respond to the unique cultural fabric of Kerns Township. Mud, Hay, Plywood, Pheasants: Towards a Rurally Embodied Queer Curatorial Practice answers the following research questions: How does rural cultural production differ from — and even oppose — urban, metronormative queer cultural production? What, then, is a rurally embodied queer curatorial methodology and exhibition making practice? Why do curatorial projects excel in non-institutional and experimental spaces in the rural North? What makes BPC’s programming approach differ from regional artistic discourse, while also challenging urban queer curatorial discourse? As this thesis unfolds, I draw upon the importance of a deep reading of local communities to inform curatorial practices outside of the centre, and how a queer, anti-colonial methodological approach to exhibition making challenges both existing artistic discourse in this area of the rural North, and queer urban discourse. Using Scott Herring’s notion of ‘critical queer rusticity’ and Mary L. Gray’s concept of the ‘boundary public’, I identify the specific underpinnings that sustain and produce a rurally embodied queer curatorial practice.

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