S.D. Holman
Awards
In 2014 Holman received the YWCA Women of Distinction Award.
In 2025 Holman was awarded the King Charles III Coronation Medal[1] for, “significant contributions to the arts, culture, and human rights advocacy,” by Canadian Member of Parliament Jenny Kwan.
*
SD Holman (aka: Shaira Holman, 22nd May, 1963), is a Canadian and American non-binary artist and curator[2], recognized as a “leading figure in contemporary queer and feminist art."
International exhibitions include the National Gallery of Canada, Banff Arts Center, Wellesley College, Amherst College, the Vancouver East Cultural Centre, and the Sonntags Club in Berlin, Germany.
Holman’s Transdisciplinary practice spans experimental photography, lens-based media, site-specific installations, ritual, performance interventions, portraiture, and curation. Described as “visionary”[3] by curator and scholar Jonathan D. Katz. Holman lives and works between Vancouver, Los Angeles, and Berlin.
Early Life and Education
Born in Hollywood, California, Holman developed an early interest in both visual and performing art. They studied theatre arts at Los Angeles Valley College, and trained in cinematography and lighting at the Vancouver Film School.
Holman has contributed to film and television as an actor, director, and photographer. They played the character Beth on Madison (1994–1997), the first recurring lesbian role on North American network television.
Holman is a graduate of the Emily Carr University of Art and Design (1991) and went to the Savannah College of Art and Design, MFA program in Photography (Honors Scholarship). In the 1990s, Holman was participating artist and Board member of Vancouver’s Association for Non-Commercial Culture.
Career: Artistic Practice
Holman’s transdisciplinary projects address ecological and multi-species entanglements through queer ecologies. Their 1993 work Principal Hazardous Components was a self-implicating indictment of toxicity in photographic processing, exhibited at Artropolis 1993, Woodwards Building, in Vancouver, British Columbia.
In 2025 Music for Turtles premiered as a collaborative project with pianist Dr. Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa. Music for Turtles is a transdisciplinary project on Turtle Island with the Turtle as metaphor to explore ecological grief, Interbeing, and humanity’s slow-motion response to climate collapse.
Holman’s BUTCH: Not Like the Other Girls exhibit[4] explores female masculinity and queer visibility in contemporary portraiture (2014). The show toured internationally.[5] The exhibit catalogue for BUTCH: Not Like the Other Girls (Caitlin Press 2nd Ed., 2013) is held in several archives and libraries, including Toronto’s ArQuives and Berlin’s Spinnboden Lesbian Archive and Library.
Other notable works engaging with gender include GID, Gender Identity Disorder or… Girls in Drag (1998), and Stealing Masculinity (2009), as well as ‘my pronoun is art’ (2025) featuring in the exhibition (At least) We Have Each Other, at the Sonntags Club in Berlin, Germany.
Holman’s solo exhibitions include Momento Mori, curated by Paul Wong at Capture Festival, and Pas-à-pas; not intent on arriving[6], which premiered at SUM Gallery in 2023. Pas-à-pas; derives from Holman’s walk across Canada following the death of their wife, Catherine White Holman[7], in a plane crash.
Career: Curatorial Work
As Artistic Director of the Queer Arts Festival (2007–2022), Holman helped bring queer art and artists to Vancouver by curating interdisciplinary projects that brought together local and international artists.
Holman has been described as, “one of Vancouver's most influential queer arts administrators”[8] and, “the kind of person a festival wants for its artistic director.” [9]
Holman is the founding Artistic Director emeritus of the Pride in Art (PiA) collective since it began in 1998. They spearheaded efforts to incorporate Pride in Art as a nonprofit in 2006. In 2008 Holman mounted the first multidisciplinary Queer Arts Festival. Holman founded SUM Gallery in 2018[10] as the Queer Arts Festival's year-round programming arm. SUM Gallery became the only queer multidisciplinary arts gallery in Canada.
Highlighted Curatorial Projects with QAF / SUM gallery
- Vanishing Act, 2022 co-curated with Adwait Singh
- It’s not easy being green, 2021, visual arts exhibition co-curated by Jeffrey McNeil-Seymour
- Piano Burning, 2021[11]
- WICKED, 2020 [12]
- Time-lapse: Posthumous Conversations, a Geoff McMurchy retrospective
- DECADEnce, 2018[13]
- rEvolution, 2019
- UnSettled, 2017[14], Two-Spirit curated arts festival in collaboration with Adrian Stimson, Cris Derksen, and others
- Drama Queer, 2016, curated in collaboration with scholar Jonathan D. Katz
- TRIGGER: Drawing the Line, 2015 celebrating the 25th anniversary of the feminist collective Kiss & Tell
Publications
- 2014 BUTCH: not like the other girls. Holman, SD. Foreword by Persimmon Blackbridge. 1st ed. Shooting Gallery Press, Vancouver. 2nd ed. 2020, Dagger Editions, Caitlin Press
- QueerArts festival catalogues
- 2022 Vanishing Act
- 2021 It’s not easy being green: Exhibition Catalogue by Jeffrey McNeil-Seymour; SD Holman. Pride in Art Society, Vancouver, BC
- 2020 WICKED: Exhibition Catalogue by Jonny Sopotiuk; SD Holman. Pride in Art Society, Vancouver, BC
- 2020 Time-lapse: Posthumous Conversations, a Geoff McMurchy retrospective on Geoff McMurchy; Yuri Arajs; SD Holman; Persimmon Blackbridge. Pride in Art Society, Vancouver, BC
- 2019 rEvolution: Exhibition Catalogue by Elwood Jimmy; SD Holman. Pride in Art Society, Vancouver, BC
- 2018 DECADEnce: Exhibition Catalogue by Valérie d. Walker; SD Holman. Pride in Art Society, Vancouver, BC
- 2017 Drama Queer: Exhibition Catalogue by Jonathan D Katz; SD Holman; Conor Moynihan. Pride in Art Society, Vancouver, BC
- 2007 Culture and Education. Wadham, Pudsey, & Boyd. Pearson Education, Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia. [reprinted 2012 and 2009 The National Library of Australia]
- 2003 New Considerations on the Way we want to go—Gibson and Meem. Harrington Park Press
- 2002 Fusion—Link Publications, Vancouver, BC
- 2001 The Mammoth Book of Erotic Photography—Constable & Robinson, London, UK & Paris, France
- 2001 The Mammoth Book of Illustrated Erotica—Knopf Press, New York, NY
External Links
Platforms 2025: The Teachers Among Us City of Vancouver Public Arts Program
9 Stunning Photos of 'Butches' That Shatter Society's Stereotypes About Masculinity, MIC, New York, 2014
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- ↑ NDP, Vancouver (February 24th, 2025). "Media Release: MP Jenny Kwan Presents King Charles III Coronation Medals to Outstanding Community Leaders". Jenny Kwan, NDP MP for Vancouver East. Retrieved November 17, 2025. Check date values in:
|date=(help) - ↑ Paterson Marketing Group, Murray (April 25th, 2018). "INQUIRE: SD Holman Talks Queer Arts Festival + Beyond". Murray Paterson Marketing Group. Retrieved November 17th, 2025. Check date values in:
|access-date=, |date=(help) - ↑ Griffin, Kevin (June 15th, 2016). "Drama Queer exhibit aims to forge emotional connection". The Vancouver Sun. Retrieved November 17, 2025. Check date values in:
|date=(help) - ↑ Larocque, JP (November 7th, 2014). "SD Holman is not like the other girls". Xtra! Magazine. Retrieved November 17, 2025. Check date values in:
|date=(help) - ↑ da Silva, Michelle (April 4th, 2013). "SD Holman's BUTCH: Not like the other girls challenges traditional gender roles". The Georgia Straight. Retrieved November 17, 2025. Check date values in:
|date=(help) - ↑ Smith, Janet (April 18, 2023). "SD Holman steps through grief in SUM Gallery photo-based exhibition Pas-à-pas; not intent on arriving". Stir Magazine. Retrieved November 17, 2025.
- ↑ Natasha Barsotti, Robin Perelle (December 1, 2009). "Catherine White Holman 'was a light to so many': Community leader dies in float plane crash near Saturna". Xtra! Magazine. Retrieved November 17, 2025.
- ↑ Smith, Charlie (August 16th, 2021). "Mark Takeshi McGregor will succeed SD Holman as artistic director of Vancouver's Queer Arts Festival". The Georgia Straight. Retrieved November 17, 2025. Check date values in:
|date=(help) - ↑ Derdeyn, Stuart (July 23rd, 2013). "Queer Arts Festival getting better, not bigger". The Province. Retrieved November 17, 2025. Check date values in:
|date=(help) - ↑ Knegt, Peter (May 9, 2018). "Canada's only queer multidisciplinary gallery just opened in Vancouver — and that's quite SUMthing". CBC Arts. Retrieved November 17, 2025.
- ↑ Smith, Janet (August 3rd, 2021). "Stir Cheat Sheet: 5 things to know about the fiery Piano Burning at the Queer Arts Festival". Stir Magazine. Retrieved November 17, 2025. Check date values in:
|date=(help) - ↑ Smith, Janet (July 8th, 2020). "Bold new Queer Arts Festival questions the mainstream". The Georgia Straight. Retrieved November 17, 2025. Check date values in:
|date=(help) - ↑ Holliday, Elizabeth (Unknown). "In Conversation with QAF Artistic Director SD Holman". SAD Magazine. Retrieved November 17, 2025. Check date values in:
|date=(help) - ↑ Gee, Dana (June 14th, 2017). "Two-spirit perspective for Vancouver's 2017 Queer Arts Festival". The Vancouver Sun. Retrieved November 17, 2025. Check date values in:
|date=(help)
