Tender is a visual arts exhibition by artists Stephanie Trujillo and Harry Garner, who are both resident artists on the Queercore 2026 programme with Homotopia Festival, the UK’s longest-running LGBTQIA+ arts & culture festival based in Liverpool. Both artists explore everyday tender moments of care, connection, and vulnerability in Liverpool’s queer circles.
Harry captures moments of warmth, compassion and candor through a series of painted portraits and still lifes. The sitters in his paintings are based on close loved ones who identify as part of the local queer community. Harry’s quietly powerful paintings play with themes of subtlety and exposure, asking the viewer to pause and reflect on the intimate nature of their own daily routines.
Stephanie gathers stories of love and loss around ‘chosen family’ by local residents through a series of recordings, photography and other mediums. As someone with lived experience of familial estrangement, Stephanie approaches the idea of belonging and kinship through a relationship anarchist lens. Stephanie asks the community how people can feel connected and care for each other when the biological family is de-centred? What is the role of friendship, mentors, queer elders, platonic relationships and community? What circumstances lead people to become estranged, and what lessons can they pass on?
Harry and Stephanie hope that this exhibition will invite people to think how queer rebellion and protest can also show up in everyday moments of compassion, kindness and gentleness. Through normalizing queerness, debunking relationship hierarchies and celebrating self-definition, the artworks reveal tender moments of joy, pride and discovery.
18+ for exhibition and events. Work may contain themes of: family dysfunction, estrangement, trauma, grief, loss, abuse, neglect, abandonment, homophobia, transphobia, homelessness.
Opening times:
Thursday 19th November – 6pm – 8pm
Saturday 21st November – 11 am – 5 pm
Sunday 22nd November – 11 am – 5 pm
Monday 23rd November – 11 am – 4 pm
Access:
All of our participating venues except The Vault have level access and accessible bathrooms. Contact [email protected] if you have any access queries or concerns we can help with.