Installation · Pride Toronto 2026
Archive of
Unstoppable Bodies
Régis Souto × Pride Toronto 2026
June 10–30, 2026
CF Toronto Eaton Centre, Level 2 (outside L’Occitane) • June 10–30
existing
morphing
creating
becoming
About the work
Our LGBTQ+ identities are not singular images.
They are built through accumulation: memories, performances, reinventions, losses, desires, and acts of survival. We are shaped by the people we meet, the communities that hold us, and the versions of ourselves that emerge, disappear, and reappear throughout a lifetime.
Archive of Unstoppable Bodies presents four portrait works that explore identity as a living, evolving process rather than a fixed destination.
The exhibition brings together four interconnected portraits:
Becoming — featuring Régis Souto
Existing — featuring Ms. Myles
Morphing — featuring Pinkity-Twinkity
Creating — featuring Zhané
Each work portrays a central figure surrounded by layered fragments of selfhood. The secondary faces that emerge throughout the compositions are not background elements. They represent alternate selves, past identities, aspirations, experiments, masks, and memories. They are the versions of ourselves we once inhabited, the possibilities we considered, and the traces that remain long after transformation occurs.
These fragmented portraits exist in a space between graffiti wall and baroque altarpiece.
Street culture and ornament coexist. Personal history collides with collective memory. Layers accumulate without erasing what came before. Marks overlap. Images transform. Yet every previous version remains visible beneath the surface.
In Existing, featuring makeup artist Ms. Myles, identity appears as an act of endurance. The work reflects the courage required simply to occupy space authentically in a world that often attempts to regulate visibility and belonging.
In Morphing, featuring drag queen Pinkity Twinkity, transformation becomes the central language. The portrait embraces fluidity, reinvention, and the freedom to continually reshape oneself beyond inherited expectations.
In Creating, featuring the digital creator Zhané, identity emerges through imagination and authorship. The work explores the power of creation as an act of self-definition and cultural contribution.
In Becoming, a self-portrait by Régis Souto, identity remains deliberately unfinished. The work acknowledges that personal evolution is ongoing and that becoming is not a stage preceding arrival—it is the condition of being alive.
Together, these portraits form an archive—not of the past, but of persistence.
The title refers to the countless LGBTQ+ lives that continue to exist despite social, political, and historical attempts at erasure. Bodies change. Communities evolve. Languages shift. Yet the desire to live truthfully survives across generations.
This exhibition rejects the notion that identity must be static, complete, or easily categorized.
Instead, it proposes identity as movement.
A continuous process of existing.
Of morphing.
Of creating.
Of becoming.
The figures presented here are not monuments to who we once were.
They are declarations of who we are.
They stand as evidence that queer lives, queer bodies, and queer culture cannot be reduced to a single narrative, contained by a single moment, or erased by time.
We are not finished.
We are not fixed.
We won’t stop.
⸻
Archive of Unstoppable Bodies
Régis Souto
Presented as part of Pride Toronto 2026 ArtZone programming.
Inspired by and created in collaboration with:
Toronto, Canada
The work speaks in four verbs
existing
presence
morphing
transformation
creating
authorship
becoming
continuity
About the artist
Régis Souto
Brazilian-born, Toronto-based multimedia artist. From birds in gouache to portraits in layered mixed media finished in oil, one hand holds the work together: the black contour line and the act of preserving what matters. His practice centres on identity, queer resilience, migration, and the body as territory.
Group exhibitions in Toronto since 2024. Solo exhibition at The Show Gallery, Toronto, April 2026. Current series: Beyond the Contour.
regissoutoarts.com →"We are an idea that will not stop."
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