Tom of Finland Foundation (ToFF) is proud to announce its 25th Art & Culture Festival: Plugged In

Tom of Finland Foundation (ToFF) is proud to announce its 25th Art & Culture Festival: Plugged In. This year’s Festival will be hosted on a custom website, starting the second weekend of this month: December 11, 12 and 13, 2020.

This digital Festival aims to support artists by providing them an avenue to present and sell their works. The Festival #tofARTfair will feature artist “booths” and virtual events throughout the weekend. Attendees can connect with artists, see performances, watch video installations, draw, and listen to panel discussions.

“It’s so important to continue the Tom of Finland Art & Culture Festival — even virtually, because this year is Tom’s 100’s birthday. This festival is not only a platform championing queer art and queer artists, but also a gathering place where all queer communities can come together,” said Rubén Esparza, Festival Coordinator and Founder of the Queer Biennial.

The Festival is one of the key public events the Foundation does each year and 2020 is also the 36th anniversary of Tom of Finland Foundation (ToFF), a Los Angeles-based organization founded by Tom of Finland and Durk Dehner. ToFF’s mission is to protect, preserve and promote erotic art. The Foundation is located in Echo Park, in TOM House, a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument.
This digital Festival aims to support artists by providing them an avenue to present and sell their works. The Festival will feature artist “booths” and virtual events throughout the weekend. Attendees can connect with artists, see performances, watch video installations, draw, and listen to panel discussions.

The Foundation has created a website especially for this online event, which can be found at tomoffinland.org/artfair. Most of this event is free and open to the public; donations to the Foundation gratefully accepted during this difficult time and ToFF members get early access.

“As a community, we have faced so much: experiencing the devastation of HIV/AIDS, fighting the rampant censorship of how we create and express ourselves, and now maintaining connections during great social change and COVID-19,” said Durk Dehner, “Being able to come together at this moment is so vital for us.”

Visual arts segments during the Festival will include shorts submitted by artists and trailers from the Men.com x Tom of Finland series. Artist and filmmaker Bruce LaBruce’s has said,” I am thrilled and delighted to be participating in the annual Tom of Finland Art Festival. In 2019 I was honored to be invited to make a short movie based on Tom of Finland’s Kake comic Service Station in collaboration with Men.com, and I hope to be invited to do it again next year so that I can make one with Mounties based on the Kake comic Kake in Canada. They don’t call them the ‘mounted police’ for nothing!”

For further details about the 2020 Tom of Finland Art & Culture Festival, visit here.