What Makes Rhubarb! 2026, Rhubarb!?
Rhubarb! has, for me, been about a feeling first, and as its Festival Director, I have been experimenting with how to communicate that feeling with words, ideally, only one. Transgressive communicates one side of the festival; radical describes another, but only in early 2026, I stumble into sovereignty as a concept. Or rather, I returned to it.
I still believe the two aforementioned words are part of what makes Rhubarb! an artistic movement, and at the same time, I find it difficult to be transgressive or radical without a profound sense of self-sovereignty. Without the skill to hold this state of inner leadership in which thoughts, emotions, and actions are directed not by wounded parts or fear, but by clarity, compassion, and conscious intent, I witness my artistic decisions being made in automatic ways more often than I would like to admit.
When something becomes taboo, transgressiveness flips it around. At the same time, what is natural in one area can be organically radical in another, making the use of these concepts highly specific. Self-sovereignty, however, I see as a skill that translates across pre-determined zones (or… borders). It allows me to first see things as they are, match that with who I am and then decide how I will respond to it all.
Sovereignty in Art Making
When I think of sovereignty in art making, I think of it as a skill that allows me to find the corners or transgression in what is available to me in the world. I need to know what I want, why I want it, and where I want to go with it, so I can decide my position in the discourse I’ll be a part of.
I see it as the skill that unlocks it all, or perhaps holds it in place. Radicalism in art-making, as well as transgressiveness, are ever-evolving ideas because, at their core, they are reactive: responses to overwhelming present pressures. The thing that lasts? Sovereignty. Therefore, what is the hardest to hold on to? Sovereignty.
I call it a skill because… it is. You can lose the ability to see your actions or others’ actions as choices; it’s much easier in the brain to naturalize habits, and I can always use another mental break. I’m 34 years old.
How about Rhubarb!, Ludmylla? YES! That!
Rhubarb! 2026 has asked the artists (and then will ask its audiences) to sharpen their sovereignty skills.
Let me elaborate:
Néstor Canclini talks about Hybrid Cultures, José Esteban Muñoz talks about Disidentifications, and Homi K. Bhabha talks about Hybridism — a very brief summary of those is in the footnotes.
Néstor is an Argentinian settled in Mexico; Homi is Indian-British; and José is Cuban-American, which briefly explains my personal and artistic draw to their ideas about how cultures are shaped when we clash concepts, forcing interactions and then creating results that are some kind of adaptation.
As a dashed canadian, who has chosen to be an artist first by consuming one culture (Brazil), to then produce it in a different one (Canada), I will forever navigate the question: what type of art do I want to make now?
Finding the Rhubarb! 2026 Theme: Hybrid Creatures
By the feature of holding this question, I have aligned a cohort of artists under one theme.
HYBRID CREATURES: where each piece is doing the artistic movement of smashing inspirations, forms, rules and by doing so, creating a hybrid. Something that we just can’t categorize, something born of a reshaping of what was, something that allows us to reimagine the new. And I believe we all need to re-exercise that today.
As Rhubarb! 47 artists develop works that navigate these clashes; Rhubarb’s curation has also invited them to take a detour from their regular ways of figuring things out. We asked them to think outside their habits, beyond the regular ways they view things, and beyond the expectations and demands our systems have imposed on them. Take a detour, do it in a way that might not keep you on the development path, but will give you the chance to gather some kind of information that you can take back in the journey with you — it’s fully yours.
Consider it a way to improve your artistic sovereignty skills.
A Festival Against Creative Optimization
With the ever continuous never enough resources to create cycle we are in, and with the crushing cost of a simple cup of coffee to keep you working in the city of Toronto (as well the rest of Canada, I’m sure) the demand to rework your process, or rethink why you are doing it this way, or reimagine the reason to make something like this today demands bravery. Every opportunity we have to make work forces us to optimize it to create a foundation for the next opportunity; every chance we get can have a year’s gap between them, so when you have a chance, your own expectations of achievement are crippling. I recognize all of that in myself and in the cohort of artists I’ve been programming in different opportunities for years now. That is why part of my curatorial approach is the making of a cohort, a group of artists that can go through this process together, doing this mental exercise of asking why you are making each decision, if the decisions are taking you to the artistic creation you want, and then back to “why do I want this artistic response anyways?” every dang second.
Get your reps in!
It’s only by strengthening this skill in ourselves, in our art making, that we strengthen our ability to exercise sovereignty in the world and demand it in all of our aspects of living.
Rhubarb! 2026 and the Audience Experience
Oh, and Rhubarb! as a festival is nothing without our loyal audiences.
The curation of Rhubarb! 2026 offers the audience the same experience. Each night of the festival is curated to offer you works that challenge your perceptions within this container. When you expose yourself to multiple 20- to 30-minute pieces, each approaching, let’s say, sound performance slightly differently, your brain will form a perception that is your own, a hybrid of all of them.
For example.
I recently spent 20 days travelling between countries that spoke Spanish, French, and Portuguese.
Under this time pressure, my mind began speaking a language that was only mine. A mix of all of them, with some anglicisms sprinkled in, of course. And that is because the familiarity between these languages forced my brain to switch up odd pathways, driving me into a unique perception of reality for about three days, until I settled into the new place. It was fascinating how I would constantly mix all the languages and yet still be understood, because it wasn’t a full flip; it was just a little side movement. It’s no coincidence that Portunhol (an unofficial language that mixes Portuguese and Spanish) exists as a colloquial form of communication in specific regions where these languages meet.
In that magical transitional moment of a glitch, when similarity and distinction clashed in my mind, I found something really mine. My goal, then, with the tightly curated nights and the compressed four-day festival, is to give you the same experience through Live Art. All you gotta do is immerse yourself in it.
Rhubarb! continues to be a place to rethink culture for artists and audiences alike, and I can’t wait to hear what you think on our last day of the festival, which consists of a series of public engagements, including our beloved Coffee Chats. But if you need a day or so to get your mind back in order, my email is very easy to find.
Bisous!
Besos!
Beijão!
L.
Néstor García Canclini’s Hybrid Cultures argues that Latin American identity isn’t a pure blend of “tradition” and “modernity,” but a dynamic, hybrid space where these forces constantly mix, creating new cultural forms in art, media, and daily life, challenging older notions of ‘high’ vs. ‘popular’ culture.
José Esteban Muñoz: There is more to identity than identifying with one’s culture or standing solidly against it. José Esteban Muñoz looks at how those outside the racial and sexual mainstream negotiate majority culture — not by aligning themselves with or against exclusionary works but rather by transforming these works for their own cultural purposes. Muñoz calls this process “disidentification,” and through a study of its workings, he develops a new perspective on minority performance, survival, and activism.
Homi K. Bhabha. Bhabha contends that all cultural statements and systems are constructed in a space that he calls the ‘Third Space of Enunciation’ (1994:37). Cultural identity always emerges in this contradictory and ambivalent space, which for Bhabha makes the claim to a hierarchical ‘purity’ of cultures untenable. For him, the recognition of this ambivalent space of cultural identity may help us to overcome the exoticism of cultural diversity in favour of the recognition of an empowering hybridity within which cultural difference may operate.