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Joy Xiang (she/her) is a writer and editor, born in Shanghai and based in Tkaronto/Toronto. Her work and life engages erotics, migration, material flows, and media nostalgia and futurity. She is currently Editor at _C Magazine_. 

Editor

Maandeeq Mohamed is a writer and researcher. Engaging Black Studies and related cultural production, her writing is featured in _Real Life_, _C Magazine_, and _Canadian Art_. 

Associate Editor

Publisher

Designer

In _C Magazine_’s 40th year of publication, the writing and visual projects in this issue form an almanac in themselves, out of the impulse to make meaning out of the present state of contemporary art and liberatory organizing. As contributors find grounding in celestial time, ancestors, the stakes of censorship, the choreography of movement building, AI incantations, and more, we express almanacs as projects of persistence between past, present, and future—and even of spell-casting.

In C Magazine’s 40th year of publication, the writing and visual projects in this issue form an almanac in themselves, out of the impulse to make meaning out of the present state of contemporary art and liberatory organizing. As contributors find grounding in celestial time, ancestors, the stakes of censorship, the choreography of movement building, AI incantations, and more, we express almanacs as projects of persistence between past, present, and future—and even of spell-casting.

Almanac

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From October 19, 2024, to March 16, 2025 at the OAG, Jeff Thomas’s exhibition unveils narratives of resilience and survival against the odds.  


“Stories My Father Couldn’t Tell Me: Jeff Thomas Origin” Opens at the Ottawa Art Gallery

Feature

Chloë p.f. Lalonde is a synaesthetic artist, writer, cultural worker, and caregiver based in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montréal. With a background in art education, anthropology, and art-science practices, Chloë’s research is slow and circular, placing an emphasis on sustainability and accessibility in the arts and exhibitions as places of learning.

The pink moon appears in the early springtime a month following the equinox in the northern hemisphere. In the sky, the moon is not pink: there are no changes in the atmosphere, no astronomical events that affect its colour. This moon is referred to as “pink” because it occurs around the times that pink wildflowers bloom. The strawberry moon then arrives in the summer, followed by the corn moon and the harvest moon, and later, the hunter moon. 

The names given to these full lunar cycles have been popularized by _The Old Farmer’s Almanac_, which attributes them to Indigenous cosmologies, and colonial American and European sources. [^1] These vernacular names have been used as a way to keep time, inherently entangled with agriculture. 

_“What’s in a name?”_

In Western astrology, named astrological ages reference the position of Earth in relation to the sun and constellations. As Earth orbits the sun, the sun also moves very, very slowly through space, passing through one constellation (from our point of view) approximately every 2000 years. Each constellation is associated with one of 12 zodiac signs, forming a clock-like calendar, or map, of our accessible/visible cosmos. The characteristics of each sign are said to inform developments in human society and culture. [^2]

The current Age of Pisces is characterized by finding solace in the belief in a higher power and the prevalence of religion across societies. In 2024, some say, we are supposed to feel a shift toward the Age of Aquarius, long revered in Western culture that popularized the term for its utopian promise of social progress, advancements in communication, cognition, understanding, freedom, equality, and justice for all. 

In outlining these periods of time, Western astrology seeks to integrate with the cosmos to understand why everything is the way it is and to predict what will happen. Similarly, how might an artwork’s date, name, and seemingly subjective visual and material language still objectively represent the times? 

For Danny Kostyshin, a potter in his 70s based in Vancouver, dating his work is for more than personal archiving purposes, but to infuse the work with its horoscope, embodying time. Since the ’70s, his pottery takes the forms of plates, bowls, and condom boxes that track gay rights, the HIV/AIDs epidemic, safe sex practices, same-sex marriages, and notable figures who challenged this socio-political progress and who challenged popular culture and his friends. I encountered Kostyshin’s work as part of an artist talk, hosted by Craft Parlour, a working group I was part of that was organized by Rebecca La Marre for her artist residency at Western Front. There, I had the pleasure to exchange with many artists who work with earth, performance, activism, artefacts, language, and symbolism. 

Expanding from Kostyshin’s practice, I am interested in looking at how different elements of an artwork, even its name, can be a “horoscope” of the times. In other words, how might abstract symbols, colours, and forms come together to embody a supposed shift of the times, like toward the Age of Aquarius? 

Élise Lafontaine is a painter who works with synaesthesia. She documents a place in time by painting sound that resonates through her body in places of solitude. Her exhibition at Pangée in Montreal, “Lombrives” (all works 2024), recalled memories of her experience in a French grotto of the same name. Forms, like something bodily, appear and reappear from the form of the grotto itself. In some paintings, like _Le grand dôme_ [_The Big Dome_] and _La Carène_ [_The Hull_] there is a straight line that divides the canvases, sometimes painted, other times cut and sewn. A direct channel of sound, or the indication of a presence. An iris-like form appears on many of her smaller canvases: some are named to illustrate specific sounds and sensations, like _Violet noise_, or times of day, like _Un soir à Ronchamps_ [_A Night at Ronchamps_] and _Un matin à Ronchamps_ [_A Morning at Ronchamps_]. The names of larger canvases like _La Galerie Blanche_ [_The White Gallery_] ground her sound studies in specific parts of the grotto. 

How does a name become infused with, embody, and predict social and cultural developments? How does naming become a way of knowing, a way of timekeeping? 

My siblings and I spend a lot of time colouring with our mother, who, at 54 years old, has quite progressed early onset Alzheimer’s. On her own accord, she will only colour in purples and blues. Every other colour is too bright, overstimulating. She makes a gesture with her hands blocking her eyes and ears, kind of shaking her head. My sibling created a playlist of songs for her, titling it _Purple Period_. We play these songs for our mother because she likes to sing along, and it helps her focus, even just for a few minutes. Now, her purple colouring pencil is a short nub, and she has moved on to pink. My sibling made a new playlist: _Pink Period_. At an exhibition at the Maison des arts de Laval, my mom named elements of the artwork—some marks on a painting were decidedly “stinkles”; another sculpture, “Gus.” Is the naming of astrological ages or artworks just as arbitrary as, for instance, neurodegenerative time marked by pencil crayon colours? 

The poetics of a name insinuate a certain metaphor, calling to the art of language that is embraced by an artist. A name serves to create a digestible, tangible link between an abstract work and a viewer, summing up an idea that grasps at something beyond words, solidifying it otherwise in the colour and form the name represents. Some names point to a story, hint at a way of knowing, or embody a sensation. Some are more poetic, the language and composition of words as much of a work as the artwork itself. 

_“That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet.”_ [^3] 

Under any name or interpretation, an object or a symbol represents the thing itself; what we call it matters not. In considering form as fact, I turn to intuitive drawing, or doodling, as a way of articulating complex ideas. 

Drawing tests are used in various forms of psychology and neurology to reveal cognition, personality type, and individual ways of perception, and to understand or predict behaviour. In dementia diagnoses, drawing a clock is a defining factor; the numbers trailing off a wonky circle reveal that something in this person’s mind is not working the “right” way. The Rorschach test is meant to reveal something about a person’s mind based on what they see in ink blobs. The Wartegg test asks you to complete an image from a simple shape, and where you place your own lines is meant to reveal something about you in relation to a symbol. Tests like these have often been used as a screening factor, like for arriving immigrants to Ellis Island. But where did the symbols involved in these tests gain their meaning? Who has agreed that a wavy line represents emotional capacities, a square represents the home, or a circle your sense of self? 

#####A visualization experiment, or, a drawing test: 

One shape sprawls; round edges of plump tentacles spread, breathing and absorbing like droplets of water becoming one large, flexible, and changing berry-coloured mass. It moves slowly. 

The other is yellow or red, sharp, edges pointy like a star, spiky like a club. Though it’s no weapon, the prongs deflate quickly on contact, like a blow-up toy castle, or an Inflatable Tube Man. 

One is Kiki; the other is Bouba. The names for either shape are arbitrary, determined by neuroscientists, but they do speak to the ways in which English speakers associate sounds with matter, shape, form, gesture, and colour. The stimuli we absorb exudes through our lives, practices, and works in similar ways. 

Common shapes may often be used as symbols of familiar items, and the act of drawing entices a certain set of questions in the drawer’s mind influenced by the size of the shape, and that person’s general experience. Colours add a layer of subjectivity to a drawing; they may provide direct context tied to a material reality or allow the mind to drift, letting senses, intuition, and somatic movements speak for themselves. 

In a figurative painting, the curtains in it might be blue to suggest sadness, or a chair might be on fire to represent an unstable environment. But in a non-figurative painting, the globular shape at the centre might be a pulsating yellow, not because it represents happiness and warmth, or hope for a dark world, but because this is the colour of the sound the artist knew it to be in part of a grotto, or a sort of chartreuse green because it makes my mom want to crack her foot. 

To what extent are we manifesting our own realities? At one time, someone looked to the sky and said, these are constellations, this is the zodiac, we are in the Age of Pisces, and that prior time, that time full of war, was the Age of Aries. 

And this green makes my mom want to crack her foot, and this sound, Lafontaine knows it to be violet. That there is water, and that constellation, that drawing in the sky, is just a bunch of stars. 

An instinctive impulse, a personal truth that becomes materialized—garnering colour and form to create symbols. Yet, subjective to others: that chartreuse green might not make you want to crack your foot, it might make you nauseous and remind you of the colour of the walls inside your dentist office as the plaque was being shaved off your teeth with a mechanical tool, making your entire spine shiver. 

Colour and form can be considered universally evocative because no matter what the initial intent behind them was, you will be able to connect a memory of some kind to them; without being attached to a visual image, they make a mental one appear. 

Thinking through life happenings in colour, form, and symbols holds space for processing multiple cosmologies and temporalities. Naming, an act of language, further adds a contextual framework, like the names of lunar cycles. 

I think of other forms that are seemingly ubiquitous or universal, like the grid: the city as a grid, our streets blocked out, our electrical systems and circuits, pixels on screens, pattern-making, blueprints, macOS Launchpads, calendars. Each square equal to the one next to it. Could it be a symbol for a utopian dream? The grid as a way of seeing, a drawing tool, was popularized by Albrecht Dürer’s 16th century sighting grid. Ancient drawing machines such as Dürer’s were similarly used to facilitate the replication of images: the void grid to be filled one square at a time. 

Sarah-Mecca Abdourahman’s colourful paintings in “Praises Unsung” (2024) at FOFA Gallery appear as part of softly sculpted blankets and plushy duvets, often formed from grids. The hands of caregivers sometimes extend past the paintings, becoming larger than life. A narrative unfolds in these hands, among the gestures and bodies present: a familial tale, an eldest daughter’s plight, her safe space. Yet, painted white and grey grids on some works’ edges suggest an absence, akin to subjects with missing backgrounds in image-editing software. This could suggest the image in question might be altered further. 

The grid also appears in Catherine Desroches’s delicate drawings in “Dans ses reflets, le Monde est beau deux fois” [“In Its Reflections, the World Is Beautiful Twice”] (2024), also at Pangée. In shades of grey, sepia, and colour, Desroches’s grids become foundational structures in flux with concrete architectural elements such as staircases and archways. Drawing without an intent to instil meaning, Desroches makes marks that serve the containing and suggestive purpose of parentheses. Suggesting a desire to ascend, to transcend, such symbols like the grid carry an objective, dissociating power, one that contains multitudes. 

As a weaver I have an inherent bias in favour of this symbol, this way of organizing time—grids block my patterns, when I follow patterns. I colour-code phrases from my journals within grids, draw grids when I do not know what else to draw. But try as I might, my grids are always wonky, warped, waving. 

In this constellation of ideas, I think I’m getting at seeing the grid as an example of a default symbol, a baseline. But ever more so, intuition and bodily knowledge take over and make the grid something else beyond material structure—its edges aren’t hard and defined.
 
Just as the simple truth of humanity passing through time told by the sun and the moon has been layered with symbols and stories in the stars, the same can be said about abstract symbols in artworks. Artworks, framed by the names they’re given, record intangible information, embodying the time and unpacking the ways in which people can perceive the world. As we see with drawing tests, scientists have already been creating informed diagnoses based on a person’s association to arbitrary colour and form. The associations are there. You guessed right: Bouba is the bulbous shape and Kiki, the spikey one. 

What if, instead of resisting or othering these intuitive urges—wanting to crack your foot because of a certain shade of green—we leaned into them? If the grid represents what we are, have been, striving toward in the Age of Pisces, is going off-grid how we get to the great Age of Aquarius? 

[^1]: Catherine Boeckmann, “Full Moon Names for 2024,” _The Old Farmer’s Almanac_, April 11, 2024, [https://www.almanac.com/full-moon-names](https://www.almanac.com/full-moon-names) 
[^2]: Celeste Longacre, “What is the Age of Aquarius?,” _The Old Farmer’s Almanac_, June 3, 2024, [https://www.almanac.com/what-age-aquarius](https://www.almanac.com/what-age-aquarius)
[^3]: This line and _“What’s in a name?”_ are from William Shakespeare’s _Romeo and Juliet_ (c. 1597). 

Writer

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Sensory

Memory

Chloë p.f. Lalonde considers how artworks, framed by their names, dates, and personal and universal symbols, might record intangible information about the period and conditions of their conception, by discussing the works of Danny Kostyshin, Élise Lafontaine, Sarah-Mecca Abdourahman, and Catherine Desroches.

Green That Makes You Want to Crack Your Foot

Review

Tiana Reid is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at York University, where she teaches Black Literatures. Her writing has been published in many places, including _Bookforum_, _Momus_, _The Nation_, _The New York Review of Books_, and _TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies_.

The self-described painter Torkwase Dyson contributed 59 works of charcoal on paper to Canisia Lubrin’s recently released book of short stories, _Code Noir_. Dyson’s erasures, shadings, geometric annotations, and marks of ruin correspond to each article in the “Code Noir,” a 1685 decree passed by King Louis XIV that outlined legal mandates relating to race and slavery across French colonies. A note at the end of the book explains that these drawings “interact, subvert, and comment on the fiction in these pages.” This mode of subversion informs Lubrin’s writing, which moves through Dyson’s spontaneous etchings, crossings, emphases, darks, and lights. Each article of the _Code Noir_ and each drawing also correspond to a section of writing by Lubrin, which range in form, from a two-line evocative note to longer narratives.

The way I’ve introduced the structure of the book, where a legal article is paired with art and writing, perhaps gives a false sense that the three genres are related in some kind of logical manner. Instead, each of Lubrin’s fragments functions as an intervention into the very meaning of fiction, exposing the controlling white-supremacist fictions in the “original” Code Noir. 

The reader travels from Timmins, ON, to Crown Heights, Brooklyn, to Roseau River, Saint Lucia, all the way to Côte d’Ivoire and Germany. In addition to the various settings, _Code Noir_ contains a multitude of characters, animals, revolutionaries, and theorists. The style varies, from historical fiction to an otherworldly story set in the future. But the text hinges not on people, places, or things but on ideas and experiments. As the 10th section reads, “Thinking is what we’ve come to do.” In the basin of capitalist life, the room for thought is faint, often hardly perceptible. This book encouraged me to recall writing’s role in domination, the definitions of fiction, about what is named in the text as “the myth of being singular,” about what a novel is, and about the Black radical tradition with which Lubrin is in conversation (including writers like M. NourbeSe Philip, Édouard Glissant, Sylvia Wynter, and Aimé Césaire).

The comprehensible ways we read and write reflect the paucities of our everyday. Challenging her reader, Lubrin wants to unveil the structural terms under which we read fiction, non-fiction, official order, legal sanction, and poetry. Lubrin defamiliarizes the familiar, encountering the novel form anew and imploring the reader to discover fictions in the very legal doctrines that constrict life.

Perhaps a book tells you how to read it. Not outright, not openly—but the more closely, intensely, and seriously you read, the more the text opens up to you. A late direct reference to King Louis XIV’s _Code Noir_, appearing about two thirds of the way in, sets up another way to read: “She admired being confused. She changed her mind about the world. She did not know the world she had lived in all along. And she was relieved for that renewed breath. The strangeness made something pure.” In that moment, “she” became the author and the author became me. 

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_Code Noir_ was published by Knopf, New York, 2024.


_Code Noir_ — Canisia Lubrin

Patrick Cruz considers the role of spirituality, improvisation, intuition, and play as emancipatory tools to reify embedded colonial frameworks and ideologies in art-making. Cruz employs meditation, divination, and hypnosis as research methodologies to exhume and retrieve hidden ancestral knowledge. His works are informed by the intersections of clown philosophy, magic, and the occult, and its
syncretic manifestations and relationship in contemporary life.

Fiona Nguyen is a visual artist born and based in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal. Her artistic practice and research focuses on systems of cultural and self-censorship experienced in 20th- and 21st-century totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, through the lens of post-war migration, as well as the importance of pop music as a tool for political resistance.

Kate Nugent is an archivist and writer born and based in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal. She co-organizes the reading series Nouveau Poem. Her current archival research is interested in structures of power and knowledge production in settler-colonial archives.

Bea Parsons is a visual artist based in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal. With a practice encompassing printmaking, drawing, and painting, Bea’s work conjures imagery that reflects the nuance and complexities of her Indigenous (nehiyawak/Cree) and colonial heritage.

Danica Pinteric is a curator, writer, and editor born and based in Tkaronto/Toronto. In 2022, she established Joys, an independent contemporary art gallery dedicated to exploring the politics of vulnerability.

Cadence Planthara is an artist, craftsperson, and educator of South Asian and European descent born on unceded Algonquin Anishinaabeg territory and currently based in the city of Toronto.

Participant

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Spirituality

In Mind Pool, Memory Spring’s roundtable, the experimental research group engages with how techniques of past life regression, a form of hypnotherapy, might expand limiting Western conceptions of the soul (as group member Danica Pinteric suggests). The discussion highlights how past life regression might inform the group’s artistic practices, which span topics including ancestry, spirituality, empathy, and the tether between memory and fiction.


Roundtable: Mind Pool, Memory Spring

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**The 20th Annual C Magazine Contemporary Art Auction runs online from October 26 to November 4, 2024 at benefit.waddingtons.ca.**
Preview the work in person and join us in a toast at our 40th Anniversary Celebration on the evening of October 26. Enjoy an evening of music, drinks, and snacks with the _C_ Team and community. Learn more and get tickets. 

[View the event page](https://cmagazine.com/events/c-magazine-40th-anniversary-celebration-and-auction) for access to the catalogue pdf and information on registering to bid! 

For the first time ever, the auction includes seven “experiences.” These lots offer opportunities, ranging from practical to luxurious, to engage directly with artists, curators, and cultural workers. As a nod to the central role artist projects have played in _C_'s history, one of an edition of 40 prints by Dan Starling will be gifted to the first bidder on every artwork lot. Every bid and contribution helps us continue to publish _C Magazine_ and deliver programs and awards that present the work of hundreds of artists and writers each year. 

On October 26, we invite you to celebrate this collective achievement with us and enjoy  This event includes a preview of the work in the 20th Annual _C Magazine_ Contemporary Art Auction. 



#### Celebrating 40 years of _C Magazine_

_“This is the first of what we hope will be many issues...we’ve tried to create something new for a Canadian art publication. The idea was to show a partnership between art and criticism...We want to be magazine of both the eye and the mind.”_<br/>

>  Richard Rhodes, Letter from the Editor for _C Magazine_ Issue 1 (Winter 1984) 

In 1984, then-editor Richard Rhodes introduced the first issue of _C Magazine_ with the hope it  would become “a magazine of both the eye and the mind.” _C_ has since earned its place at the forefront of art publishing in Canada and has gathered a uniquely dedicated community by taking art seriously. _C Magazine_ facilitates the critical and imaginative discourse that contemporary art needs to thrive, and is committed to engaging audiences in the complex perspectives that art offers on the world. 40 years and 158 issues later, this work is just as important, especially as _C_'s longevity leaves it one of perilously few platforms for art criticism in the country.  

More than continuity, _C_’s survival as a non-profit, and its lasting resonance, reflect four decades of evolution. “_C_ began as a project initiated by artists and curators with the purpose of serving creative workers and thinkers,” says former Executive Director and Publisher, Kate Monro. “For some time, this work has involved recognizing and actively addressing the historical shortcomings of a publication founded in the colonial and racist ideologies and structures of the 20th-century art world.” _C Magazine_ has grown in response to the shifting concerns of 40 years of readers and contributors, learning from them, as well as the creative vision of nine+ editors, the tenacious stewardship of successive publishers, and the collective wisdom of countless board members, interns, and staff. Above all, _C Magazine_’s present vitality is a testament to the incredible investment and enthusiasm of the art community. _C_ reaches this milestone thanks to its dedicated readers, and the immeasurable contribution of thousands of artists and writers. To everyone, we are profoundly grateful. 

[Get tickets for _C_'s 40th Anniversary Celebration.](https://cmagazine.com/events/c-magazine-40th-anniversary-celebration-and-auction)




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The 20th Annual C Magazine Contemporary Art Auction celebrates 40 years of _C Magazine_ with 40 works. Bid online at benefit.waddingtons.ca from October 26 to November 4, 2024 

The 20th Annual _C Magazine_ Contemporary Art Auction: "40 works for 40 years"

Aman Sandhu is an artist and writer working between Montreal and Glasgow. His installations often include drawing, moving image, sculpture, and text. He considers them as ensembles of objects that come into view through improvisation.

Sahar Te is an artist and writer whose practice exists at the intersection of text, installation, and time-based media. Her interest in media, politics, literature, theatre, and acoustics inform her work. Te’s engagements span language and poetics, aesthetics and semiotics, social dynamics and inter-species, and oral histories.

Our Third Sun

Emma-Kate Guimond is a performance artist and writer based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. She has published essays in _Espace art actuel_ (2023) and _Inter, art actuel_ (2024), and works as a creative ally for the theatre company Joe Jack et John. Her recent exhibition and short film _The Plot_ (2024) was presented at Centre CLARK in Montreal.

Gui B.B’s Performances and the Erotics of Debt

Raven Davis is an Anishinaabe, 2-Spirit artist and educator, born in Michi Saagiig Territory, Toronto, ON. Davis investigates land-based and archival research, with calls to action, healing, and works authenticized by lived and intergenerational experience. Davis utilizes movement, visuals, and sound/media in their practice. For over 30 years, Davis has advocated for equitable, IBPOGM art and liberated futures.

Cara Tierney (they/them) is a transdisciplinary artist and educator who lives/works on unceded Anishinaabe Algonquin land. A settler of Scottish-Irish-Italian descent, their work investigates the way meaning is structured in, around, and through the body. They are oriented toward building more equitable and sustainable futures.

Hard Limits, Soft Landing

Adrien Crossman is a queer and non-binary white settler artist and curator currently residing on the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe in so-called Hamilton, ON. They are interested in the affective qualities of queerness: how queerness can be felt through specific aesthetics and sensibilities. Crossman cofounded and co-runs the online arts publication off centre and is an Assistant Professor in the School of the Arts at McMaster University.

Fetish Aesthetics and Fan Fiction in Dana Buzzee's Philosophically Pornographic Practice

Andrea Dávila is a researcher, writer, and museum professional interested in the cultural and disciplinary intersections within art history, focusing on the visual dialogues and continuities within contemporary Latin American art. She graduated from Barnard College, and has held curatorial internships at the Dallas Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

One Thing: Tracing Fragments of Queer Desire


Erica N. Cardwell is a writer, critic, and educator currently based in Toronto. She is the recipient of a 2021 Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. Her writing has appeared in _ARTS.BLACK_, _Art in America_, _Frieze_, _BOMB_, _The Believer_, _The Brooklyn Rail_, _C Magazine_, _Studio Magazine_, and other publications. She is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Toronto Scarborough and a Terra Foundation Research Fellow for _Threewalls_, a Chicago-based arts organization. Her book, _Wrong Is Not My Name: Notes on (Black) Art_ will be published by _The Feminist Press_ in March 2024.


Sinister Pleasure: Interview with Ja'Tovia Gary

Alexa Bunnell is an emerging artist, writer, and fermenter based in Mohkinstsís.

A Good Animal on Wet Sheets: Disobedient Gasps in Subspace

Born in Kjipuktuk (Halifax) and currently living in Tkaronto, traditional territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples, Trish Salah is the author of the Lambda award-winning poetry collection _Wanting in Arabic_, and of _Lyric Sexology Vol. 1_. Her writing is widely published in journals and anthologies, and translations of her work have appeared in French, Greek, and Arabic. She has co-edited special issues of _TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly_, on cultural production, and of _Arc Poetry Magazine_, showcasing trans, Two-Spirit, and non-binary writers. She is also an Associate Professor of Gender Studies at Queen’s University, and Editor at the _Journal of Critical Race Inquiry_.

Composition: give up your own

eunice bélidor is a curator, researcher, and writer born and based in Montreal. Her current curatorial research focuses on letter writing as creating affective archives; she is interested in the intersection of epistolary writing with care, feminism, anti-capitalism, and racial issues.

What is the Safe Word?

Liliona Quarmyne is a dancer, choreographer, actor, singer, and organizer based in Kjipuktuk/Halifax, on the unceded and unsurrendered territory of the Mi’kmaq people. From Ghana and the Philippines, she has an eclectic background that has taken her through many performance styles on four different continents. She performs and creates both as a solo artist and with various companies, facilitates community programming, and is an experienced curator and artistic director. The scope of Liliona’s artistic work is broad, but is particularly focused on the relationship between art and social justice, on the body’s ability to carry ancestral memory, and on the role the performing arts can play in creating change. Liliona loves to work in collaboration and community, and is mom to two wonderful kids.


_proxy_ by Mo Glitch: Text

Salena Barry is a writer from Toronto, Canada, who is currently based in London, UK. She was a 2021 Frieze New Writer and a 2022 Jerwood Writer in Residence. She has written for institutions including Delfina Foundation and Site Gallery as well as for publications including _Frieze, ArtReview,_ and _Emergent Magazine._

Weaving Through the Binary: Qualeasha Wood's Textile Inheritances

Jasmine Gui is a Singaporean-born interdisciplinary artist, arts programmer, and PhD student based in Tkaronto/Toronto. She works in paper, ceramics, tea, and experimental book formats through the inter-arts and publishing space Teh Studio. 


Different Things in Different Scenes: Encountering Ichi-go Ichi-e in Tea

D. St-Amour (they/she) is a writer, book-maker, and recovering arts worker. Since 2011, St-Amour has held curatorial, administrative, and research positions at a range of institutions, including the AGO, the Walter Phillips Gallery, Art Metropole, and Galerie SBC. St-Amour regularly writes about artists’ books and publishing practices through the lens of visual arts and media history, and is slowly publishing a series of queer sci-fi and speculative fiction books through their slow-press project, specific. place (with co-editor S F Ho). Recently, St-Amour completed an MA in Art History/Visual Cultures at York University, and is currently an MLIS candidate at Western University in London. 


Anni Araújo Spadafora (she/ her) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Toronto. Her work spans performance, music and sound, and textiles. She regularly studies at the Marshfield School of Weaving (Vermont). Recent project and performance sites include Extrapool (Nijmegen, NL), Milieux Institute (Montreal), Gardiner Museum (Toronto), The Khyber Centre for the Arts (Halifax), and the Art Gallery of Ontario. She is also a founding member of the band New Fries, who have released music with Telephone Explosion Records (Toronto) and Soul Jazz Records (London, UK). New Fries has toured across Canada and internationally and opened for The Pop Group, Neil Hagerty, The Ex, and Xiu Xiu (among others).


Marking Time Spent Absurdly

Amanda Shore is a white-settler arts worker, critic, and curator based in K’jipuktuk (Halifax, NS). 


Love Made Object

matt lambert is a non-binary, trans, multidisciplinary collaborator and co-conspirator working toward equity, inclusion, and reparation. Their practice is based in polydisciplinamory, entangling making, writing, curating, collaborating, and performing. lambert is currently a PhD Researcher at Konstfack in Stockholm, Sweden, in Artistic Practice in Visual, Applied, and Spatial Arts. Their research focuses on mapping collaborative movements with craft through a developed methodology of cruising. They have published, curated, exhibited, and been collected internationally. 


_Exploratory Touch_ by Trevor Novak: Text

Holly Chang is an artist, curator, researcher, and writer living in Toronto who has recently completed her MA in Communication and Culture at TMU/York University. Her overall artistic work explores the themes of her second-generation mixed-race identity. She maintains cultural ties with her cross-cultural identity and draws on her hybrid background for inspiration. 


The Moon and Material Kin: Interview with Akash Inbakumar

Suzanne Morrissette is an artist, curator, and scholar from Winnipeg. Her father’s parents were Michif- and Cree-speaking Métis with family histories tied to the Interlake and Red River regions and Scrip in the area now known as Manitoba. Her mother’s parents came from Canadian-born farming families descended from United Empire Loyalists and Mennonites expelled from Russia. 


Shalaka Jadhav is based between Block 2 of the Haldimand Tract (Kitchener, ON) and Treaty 1 (Winnipeg, MB). Trained as an urban planner, they took the advice of an aptitude test to pursue curatorial studies and currently practice as an independent curator, writer, and service designer. Shalaka curates projects for Textile, a hyperlocal project on the Haldimand Tract, and is a Visiting Curator at the University of Manitoba’s School of Art Gallery. They currently hold roles at OCAD University and, more recently, at the Blackwood. 


Tilling: The Centre for Cultural and Artistic Practice: In Conversation with Luther Konadu

Hannah Hanski (b. 1985) is a Canadian neo-folk artist blending textile and digital media. With a deep belief in the power of narrative, she pursued her studies in Folklore and completed her MFA at Carnegie Mellon in 2017. She currently resides in a church in rural Nova Scotia with her dog, Moshe.


Cat Bluemke (b. 1993) makes art about work and play. She graduated with an MFA in Design for Emerging Technologies at SAIC, and is currently Digital Exhibitions Consultant at the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina. Recently, her practice has spanned augmented reality, game design, performance, and risographic prints.



Jonathan Carroll (b. 1990) is an artist and programmer creating games, software, and performances. His work unfolds as a dynamic collaboration between artists, audiences, and their interactive digital interfaces. He lives in rural Nova Scotia where he creates digital-art tools.

From Algorithms to Aesthetics: Unlocking the Mind of CritBot.AI, Pioneering Critic

Stevie Ada Klaark is an interdisciplinary artist, adjunct professor, and writer. She holds an MFA in Visual Art from Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning. Their work appears in _Paprika!_ (Yale University), _Chicago Review_, and _Mn Artists _(Walker Art Center). Klaark lives on unceded Anishinaabe lands in Michigan. 



Untangling Beauty from the Elite

Erin Reznick is a curator, producer, and publisher whose research tends to the assembly of community, specifically in social spaces that negotiate public and private domains. She is a graduate of the Master of Visual Studies in Curatorial Studies program at the University of Toronto. She was the Co-Editor in Chief of _Phile Magazine_. 


You Only Live Twice

Christina Hajjar is a Lebanese artist, writer, and cultural worker based in Winnipeg on Treaty 1 territory. Her practice considers intergenerational inheritance, domesticity, and place through diaspora, body archives, and cultural iconography. Her writing has appeared in _BlackFlash Magazine_, _C Magazine_, _The Uniter_, _CV2_, _Prairie Fire_, and _PaperWait_.

Petal by Petal: Feminine Desire as a Conduit for Home

Coco Zhou is a writer and cultural worker living on an estuary where river meets sea, on the unceded territories of xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples.

“A Political, Ethical, Existence Practice”: In Conversation with Valentina Desideri and Denise Ferreira da Silva

Mercedes Webb / ma̱lidi / məlidi (they/she) is a writer, art historian, and artist with mixed ancestry; Kunn janaas, Mama̱liliḵa̱la, Fort Williams First Nation, Italian, and Welsh. Language reclamation, currently Kwak̓wala, figures prominently in their practice. Central to their practice is perennially learning non-authoritative, anti-capitalist, anti-colonial, and anti-ableist ways of being.


Kaylee Maciejko is a settler of Swedish, Polish, and Scottish heritage, and an artist and arts administrator based in Mohkinstsis/Calgary. 


masus wəλəɫəʔos? we hear the brook

Meech Boakye (BA in Visual Studies from the University of Toronto) is an artist and writer currently based in “Portland, OR.” Their practice is rooted in relationships with flora, fungal, and microbial kin as armatures for learning how to be in a community.


spirit-flesh-soul-icon

Matt Nish-Lapidus’ practice probes the myth that computers should be useful rather than beautiful through examining contemporary technoculture and its histories and impacts. His work results in diverse outputs including publications, recordings, installations, performances, software, and objects. You can find Matt under various aliases and collaborations including emenel, New Tendancies, and, < blink >.

Joyful, Poetic Microworlds

##### Call for Pitches for EXTRA LIFE

##### C160—Spring 2025

##### Accepted until: October 25, 2024

What does it mean to access “extra life”? In video game worlds, extra lives are taken for granted, where death is not an obstacle; it can be outmaneuvered and cheated, by loading from a previous save file. Relieved from physical impacts and linear time, players can experience multiple ways of being in these virtual worlds. Having extra life can apply in numerous other senses—from being a metaphor for moments of transition, to seeing outside oneself, to the actual extension or creation of a life. 

For this issue, we invite interpretations of extra life through contemporary art—and ask how art practices might engage with, or function, as virtual worlds, which can both expand or denigrate life and its consequences. The impermanence of death in video game realms is one example, among many, that provides a lens to view the dissociation of life from the living, including in: the name of capitalism; the link between warfare fought in the virtual and warfare waged IRL by empire and settler-colonial states; the disposability of land, people, and resources; the melding of the digital and physical as experiences are dictated by AI and algorithms; the unreality of living life as a marginalized person. How does the virtual influence our reality? Who is afforded extra lives? Can art be re-generative?

Thematic feature, artist project, and column pitches accepted until October 25, 2024. Review pitches, not required to be on theme, are accepted on a rolling basis.
 
Send pitches to [pitch@cmagazine.com](mailto:pitch@cmagazine.com), with a subject line that starts with the word PITCH and indicates the submission type (review, essay, interview, One Thing, for example). 
 
Please include ~150 words about your subject and how you’ll approach it, including hyperlinks wherever relevant. An estimated word count is appreciated. If you have not written for us recently, include a link to your website—or a copy of CV—and one or two writing samples (ideally ones in a style similar to your pitched piece). We do not publish reprints or previously written pieces. Please see our [writer’s guidelines](https://www.google.com/url?q=https://cmagazine.com/about/submissions&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1697147081646416&usg=AOvVaw2LThVx84yWvZVSHyA0KeCG) for more information.

Call for Pitches for EXTRA LIFE

Call

Thematic feature, artist project, and column pitches accepted until October 25, 2024.

Call for pitches for EXTRA LIFE

You’re invited to submit a letter in response to _C Magazine_ Issue 158 ALMANAC by October 25.

Selected letters will be published in C159 Mirror Mirror (Winter 2025).

The Letters column features a selection of 100-400 word letters to our editors, contributors and readers, and is printed at the front of every issue. A $100 honorarium is paid to each writer whose letter is selected for print. Published letters may be edited lightly for length and clarity.

Letters should engage the previous issue—its theme, articles, images—and related ideas beyond the magazine’s pages. They may be informal, informative, creative, inquisitive, speculative, critical, or any other number of things imaginable in the epistolary form. The column is intended to create space for dialogue on and around contemporary art and to continue conversations between issues, themes, and writers.

Read the [Call for Pitches](https://cmagazine.com/events/call-for-pitches-for-almanac) for this issue.

**Send letters to [pitch@cmagazine.com](mailto:pitch@cmagazine.com) with LETTERS in the subject line.**

Call for Letters: Almanac

The Letters column features a selection of 100-400 word letters to our editors, contributors and readers, and is printed at the front of every issue.

We're celebrating 40 years of _C Magazine_! **Join us at Top Top Projects on October 26, from 8 to 11 PM** for an evening of music, drinks, and snacks in honour of our collective achievement. Guests will also have the opportunity to preview this year's special anniversary auction collection. The 20th Annual C Magazine Contemporary Art Auction runs online from October 26 to November 4, 2024 at benefit.waddingtons.ca. Bidding through this Waddington's charity platform [requires its own registration.](https://benefit.waddingtons.ca/my-account/account-sign-up/) 
Regular waddingtons.ca accounts will not be elegible to bid unless they were made before May 2024. 

Since 1984, _C Magazine_ has facilitated the critical and imaginative discourse contemporary art needs to thrive, emphasizing art’s capacity to deepen and complicate our understandings of the world. _C_’s present vitality reflects the investment of a uniquely dedicated community, and in reaching this milestone we are profoundly grateful. For half its history, _C Magazine_’s financial stability has hinged significantly on the generosity that artists and buyers demonstrate during our annual auction. Our 20th Annual _C Magazine_ Contemporary Art Auction includes a special anniversary collection featuring works by artists connected to the magazine. Representing acclaimed and promising practices across disciplines and media, these works demonstrates _C_’s essential contributions to the past, present, and future of Canadian contemporary art.

A nod to previous auction editions and the central role artist projects have played in _C Magazine_, a limited edition print by Dan Starling will be gifted to the first bidder on each work. For the first time ever the auction also includes a seven "Experience Lots," offering bidders the opportunity to engage directly with artists, curators, and cultural workers.

**This year’s auction features 40 works for 40 years, by** Hangama Amiri, Sara Angelucci, Anni Araújo Spadafora, Robin Arseneault, Barbara Astman, Dean Baldwin Lew, Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge, Caroline Douville, Sameer Farooq, Brendan Fernandes, Robert Frank, Vera Frenkel, Maggie Groat, Andrew Harding, Christine Howard Sandoval, Meaghan Hyckie, Kelly Jazvac, Hannah Jickling and Reed H. Reed, Sara Jimenez, Chantal Khoury, Harold Klunder, Devon Knowles, Tiziana La Melia, Huy Lam, Sophia Lapres, Jimmy Limit, Mallory Lowe Mpoka, John McEwen, Caroline Monnet, Shelley Niro, Nicole Ondre, Rajni Perera and Nep Sidhu, Meghan Price, Jamie Ross, Jayce Salloum, John Scott, Margaux Smith, Tania Willard, and Dan Starling. 

**Plus, seven experience lots:**

**Art Experience for Two: Toronto**— Gallery hop with Joy Xiang and Jayne Wilkinson enjoy a 10-course blind-tasting menu at Goji Studio, plus a one-night's stay and dinner at the Fairmont Royal York.

**Art Experience for Two: Vancouver**— Tour galleries with Henry Heng Lu and Sarah Wang, enjoy a private tea ceremony and snacks at the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden, and a live evening musical event with Amy Kazymerchyk.

**Art Experience for Two: New York City**— Enjoy guided art experiences with Caitlin Chaisson and Tess Edmonson, including an artist's studio visit, and a tour of the private Gochman Family Collection

**Two First Look Tickets to Art Toronto 2025**— Attend opening night and get VIP access to the entire fair

**Four Opening Night Tickets to Artist Project 2025**— Enjoy one of Toronto’s most lively opening parties, work from 250 participating artists, plus DJs, live performances, and fashion shows.

**Starting an Art Collection: Consultation Session**— With Rachel Elliott, founder of the Toronto art advisory firm, Lio Projects.

**Artist-Led Collage Workshop: Issues Magazine Shop**— Private workshop hosted by mixed-media artist tahsine al hassane for up to 10 people



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We're honouring 40 years of C with a celebration and a special anniversary edition of our annual auction. The 20th Annual C Magazine Contemporary Art Auction features 40 works in celebration of C's 40th anniversary. 

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The 20th Annual C Magazine Contemporary Art Auction: "40 works for 40 years"

C Mag

The Latest

“Stories My Father Couldn’t Tell Me: Jeff Thomas Origin” Opens at the Ottawa Art Gallery

Green That Makes You Want to Crack Your Foot

Code Noir — Canisia Lubrin

Roundtable: Mind Pool, Memory Spring

Issue 158

Almanac

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Call for pitches for EXTRA LIFE

Call for Letters: Almanac

C Magazine's 40th Anniversary Auction and Celebration

Call for Indigenous Art Writing Award