Queer Newfoundland Hockey League 

Lucas Morneau
Union House Arts, Port Union NL | May 17-June 28, 2025

Reviewed by Brayden Pittman

Anyone who grew up queer in Newfoundland, or “had a queer look to ‘em,” likely has a complicated relationship with certain settings. I remember certain interactions in masculine spaces, like sports and shed parties, as some of the first “otherings” in my life. Even now, anything outside of the narrow gender binary is still seen as a joke or something to ridicule.

Currently residing in Sackville, New Brunswick, Newfoundland-born artist Lucas Morneau’s interest has always lain in how gender nonconformity interacts with Newfoundland traditions, which are often upheld strongest in the more conservative parts of the island. In Morneau’s practice, primarily via installation and drag performance, tradition becomes a site for queer expression that can exist outside of spaces that have historically othered queer people.

Morneau is widely concerned with the idea of performance in relation to gender. In Queer Newfoundland Hockey League (QNHL), first shown in Moncton in 2021, Morneau takes this idea of performance to the rink, interrogating sports culture as not only a space which excludes queer people, but a space where putting on a performance is par for the course, due to “hegemonic masculinity.” Male athletes are expected to maintain a certain level of stoicism and strength, otherwise they’re looked down upon and targeted with homophobic derision. Morneau toys with this by creating an imagined and loudly queer hockey league based around Newfoundland and Labrador, with team names such as the Port Union Pinkos (the exhibition’s current home), Fogo Island Fag Hags, the St. John’s Sissies, and the Dildo Dykes. Each team has one accompanying trading card of their players with drag looks assembled and photographed by Morneau.

With the QNHL, Morneau draws parallels between the theatre of hockey and the camp of queer culture. The largest pieces made for the QNHL are the fourteen crochet jerseys with rughooked team emblems. The colour choices feel true to the pre-aughts era of regional sports design, feeling homespun and intimate while also being technically impressive—the combination of rug hooking and crochet is something I’ve never seen before on a clothing piece, but it works perfectly for the teams’ logo designs. It brings to mind women’s craft shows in my hometown, with intricate but tactile pieces hanging from church walls and pews. This is something Morneau seems to have intentionally referenced, wanting to explore “craft practices often delegated as women’s work” as per their artist statement. The intimacy of the textiles creates a thrilling tension with the stoic performance of masculinity inherent in athletics. Morneau’s subversion is executed on a conceptual, technical and material level.

Both drag artists and male athletes play a character of some kind in the midst of their work. Drag artists play up their feminine mannerisms to serve; and hockey players perform their masculine mannerisms to serve as heroes to their fans. Drag artists speak of how the drag community is their family and how they feel more like themselves when performing; while players also seek community in their teams. Physical strength is a core tenet of masculinity and sport. The role of “athlete” is gender affirming, a marker of success in masculine performance. Drag and sports are communities based on performance and how the public knowingly interfaces with the performer’s persona constructed in relation to their gender, placing both on the spectrum of camp. What can truly be discerned about someone from their performance? Is the persona one creates to affirm themselves more real than when they’re alone, off the stage or rink?

Outside of these wider questions on public identity and gender performance, there’s also the “protect queer art” of it all. Attacks on DEI initiatives underway in America are a looming threat towards marginalized stories. Seeing this show for the second time, I’m thankful for the progressive environment that the artistic community in NL and Canada has cultivated, even if I worry about where we’re headed. Achieving equality in public spaces feels less and less likely at times, but art can be a way to envision this kind of future, and as a way to resist the backlash which aims to further restrict anything remotely queer or transgressive. 

Lucas Morneau’s work utilizes camp and joviality as tools to execute witty observations on gender and sexuality. QNHL speculates on longstanding cultural norms in spaces resistant to change and wields humour to subvert oppression.