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1 Public Sweat 

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The Image Centre

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ArtMuseum

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2 Public Sweat

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Steph Wong Ken is a writer based in Mohkínstsis (Calgary) and her work has appeared in Catapult, LUMA Quarterly and other publications. [stephwongken.com](http://stephwongken.com)

Guest Editor

Joy Xiang is an editor, writer, and poet based in Toronto, where she is currently the Editor of _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_. 

Reviews Editor

Designer

Publisher

Chinatowns are complex sites that embody shared histories of survival spanning generations, amidst ongoing struggles with displacement and anti-Asian racism. Guest edited by Steph Wong Ken, this issue gathers artistic explorations of Chinatowns across Canada to reinterpret and reimagine their pasts, presents, and futures. From architectural shifts and hidden stories within their visual representation, to building community bonds through a garden, queer diasporic library, and pact against gentrification, Chinatown is revealed as a home for multitudes.


Chinatown

Review

Sinead Petrasek is a PhD candidate in Geography at the University of Toronto. 


An office lies in the centre of the gallery. Two light boxes are affixed to its outer walls, projecting cityscapes with ominous dusty-pink clouds rolling across the sky. These have an oddly soothing effect. The bird’s eye view is punctured by advertisements flashing on billboards against the skyscrapers. I search for clues in the projected horizon that reflect our own urban context.  

In Joshua Vettivelu and Andreas Buchwaldt’s speculative world-building, the shelter that anchors the exhibition operates as a studio for cloud painters: art workers responsible for rendering a lifelike sky on the surface of a biodome which has been erected for protection and survival due to an increasingly inhospitable climate. A tablet displays a looped video of a local news stream on potential budget cuts affecting the cloud painters. Their craft, as one of the painters explains in an interview, is essential because it helps maintain the illusion that enables people to go on working—it makes productivity seem a little less pointless. Throughout the newscast, various advertisements play. There is a private company that will create artificial skylights in homes. Another ad offers caution about choosing neighbours wisely, lest you and your family be “rezoned” to the periphery. The periphery is undesirable, presumably more exposed to the harsh elements. Young people are being encouraged to volunteer in a pollination district, growing food.

The plausibility of these scenarios is disquieting. The beautification of public space is often used as an impetus for gentrification, sometimes only thinly papering over disrepair in hopes of attracting wealth. In the narrative constructed here, art is employed to salvage an organic sense of beauty. Cloud painters want their labour considered essential. Instead of being viewed as extraneous, in this version of urban governance the arts are as useful as other maintenance services, primarily because they maintain the illusion that keeps everything working. Before this exhibition concludes, Toronto’s city council will assess the proposed 2023 municipal budget, outlining yet another vision of the future, one in which maintenance of the present conditions, no matter how unliveable, is preferred. Artists have the potential to offer hope of transformation.  

Writer

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Video

Installation

“Cloud Painter”, by Joshua Vettivelu and Andreas Buchwaldt, ran at Trinity Square Video, Toronto, from  13 January to 18 February 2023.

"Cloud Painter” - Joshua Vettivelu and Andreas Buchwaldt

**Stacey May Koosel** is a Métis writer, lecturer, and Curator of UBC Okanagan Gallery in Syilx Okanagan Nation Territory. She teaches a course on Indigenous Contemporary Art at the University of Alberta, and researches decolonial artistic practices. 


In Terrance Houle’s “GHOST DAYS” (2022), a series of photographs depicts an antique school desk offered back to the earth, sitting amid the snow and dried leaves. Titled _GHOST DAYS: Remains_ (2018–2022), the series depicts the passage of time, as subsequent photographs feature the same desk surrounded by buds of spring, and summer foliage. Houle recalls the first time he came across this abandoned desk. He saw a little boy with long, braided hair. It reminded him of his childhood, when he was bullied as a boy who also had long, braided hair. The desk haunts. Enter the ghosts: ghosts of colonization, ghosts of future elders that never were, ghosts of people, places, and elements that haunt this land. Presented at Kamloops Art Gallery, “GHOST DAYS” is situated in the larger context of Kamloops 215. The so-called discovery of unmarked graves was only a new revelation for those who had not experienced the intergenerational trauma of residential schools, and those who had refused to believe the histories that remained undocumented by the settler colony. 

Since 2015, Niitsitapi (Blackfoot) Kainai/Saulteaux artist Houle has explored notions of haunting, ghosts, and spirits through the films, videos, performance, photography, and music that make up his _GHOST DAYS_ (2015–2022) series. The newest additions to the series span video, installation, and photography curated and produced in collaboration with N’laka’pamux/Secwepemc artist and curator Chris Bose, at the Kamloops Art Gallery. In _GHOST DAYS: Remains_, the staging and documented decay of a found residential school desk invokes a kind of poetic justice. The wood used to furnish the institutions that constrained Indigenous children had to be stolen from the land. In “GHOST DAYS,” wood is offered back to the earth as planted healing seeds. 

Recalling the reclamation of wood in _GHOST DAYS: Remains_, the bricks used to build residential schools, courts, prisons, and other colonial institutions of oppression would also become the source material for _GHOST DAYS: The Bricks_ (2018–2022)—a video depicting a reclamation ceremony-cum-performance. In _GHOST DAYS: The Bricks_, Houle’s parents lead their son into an old brickmaking factory while singing horse and warrior rally songs meant to encourage sun dance dancers. Houle’s father sings to the beat of a drum made by artist Sonny Assu, in a show of support for his son. Rage, violence, and catharsis culminate as the artist uses a hammer to destroys bricks from a residential school attended by his mother. Piles of rubble the colour of pastel terra-cotta topped with coyote skulls lie on the ground adjacent to the video. This intergenerational supportive presence of the artist’s parents is significant in the context of the generations of Indigenous children who were denied supportive families.
 
“GHOST DAYS” goes beyond an examination of the pain, loss, and rage experienced by Indigenous peoples because of ongoing colonial abuse. It also depicts the rebuilding of broken relationships, and the forging of deeper bonds with friends, family, and the land, in spite of colonial violence. In _GHOST DAYS: Reclaim_ (2018–2022), smaller monochrome prints are reminiscent of the kind of cozy wall you’d find in the home of someone’s grandmother. These prints are mounted in campy frames, alongside the cross-stitched phrase “Mother is another word for love.” _GHOST DAYS: Reclaim_ also features larger monochrome photographs that depict Houle and Bose in tender moments and vulnerable poses. In one image, Bose and Houle are seated nude, relaxing on the land. Other photographs depict the two cuddling and spooning each other, invoking LANDBACK as the artist and curator celebrate their friendship through their physical bodies making naked contact with the Earth. Here, the celebration of deep friendship between two men levels an urgent critique of colonial masculinity. The photos raise pertinent questions: when was the last time you got naked and cuddled your friend? If you have not, why? What are you afraid of, and why are you afraid of it? 

A problematic framing of Indigenous peoples involves referring to us in the past tense, as if we were fading away in a rearview mirror. The survivors of residential schools and Indian Day Schools are still here, as are their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. The trauma experienced in these schools is passed down through the generations. Houle explained how he is the first person in the past 100 years of his family who did not attend a residential school. “GHOST DAYS” reminds us that residential schools constitute a very recent past, and that our generation must reclaim the supportive relationships that were erased by the colonial shackles of shame, humiliation, and taboo. Revitalization of culture can also look like: lying in the grass with your friend after you come out of a sweat lodge, a swim in the river, and taking the time to foster physically, emotionally, and spiritually supportive relationships. 

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“GHOST DAYS” ran from 30 June to 10 September 2022 at Kamloops Art Gallery. Curated by Chris Bose. 

“GHOST DAYS” — Terrance Houle 

Column

Denise Ryner is an independent curator working across Canada and internationally. Recent and current projects include “Ceremony (Burial of an Undead World)” at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) Berlin, and a forthcoming guest-curated exhibition at Montreal’s Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery in February 2023.  

When I was invited to contribute to this inaugural edition of _Otherwise_, it was important for me to spotlight three Black curators who, after establishing their curatorial credentials elsewhere, have all chosen to live and work in Saskatchewan. I was curious about the significance of a recent increase in Black artistic leadership in Saskatchewan and the capacity of their decidedly collaborative approaches in redefining institutional spaces and narratives beyond the limits of their respective tenures and galleries. Crystal Mowry, director of programs at the MacKenzie Art Gallery, Michelle Jacques, head of exhibitions and collections/chief curator at Remai Modern, and Alyssa Fearon, director/curator at Dunlop Art Gallery, all met with me online at the start of November 2022 to share insights about the vibrant and supportive communities they found there, as well as their hopes for how their work as Prairie-based curators might ripple out to emerging artists and related networks.  

 

_Note: this conversation has been condensed and edited from its original form._ 

 

 
**Denise Ryner:** What role do the Prairie galleries of Saskatchewan, and their artistic leadership, play in smaller urban centres? What does it mean to be a big institutional fish in a small pond? 

 

**Crystal Mowry:** I would love to hear how Alyssa responds to this question. The Dunlop exists within Regina in a way that's so different from bigger institutional edifices. The library is such a meeting place, and you see the public in a way that's quite varied.   

 

**Alyssa Fearon:** With Dunlop, we've been able to expand our reach during the pandemic and increase our audience sizes, both within Regina, as well as around the country. In terms of the Gallery's context within the Regina Public Library, sometimes people are coming in with the intention of seeing and engaging with contemporary art on that day. Sometimes, people are coming in with the intention of accessing free internet at the Library, but they happen to see there's a gallery here. The Dunlop and its proximity to the library means _everyone_ is welcome.  

 

**CM:** I'm happy to continue the marine analogies. I thought, “Okay, we're coral. That's what we are!” We are a system, but we're also alive. One thing that became really apparent to me at the MacKenzie was just how woefully ill-prepared I was for recognizing how much community needed a particular place. Having worked in a smaller institution, I understood that people can have certain relationships with the permanent collection and they take their stewardship roles very seriously. The MacKenzie is so alive with the kind of energy that comes from the various communities that gather there. These communities have champions within the institution that are ready, sometimes on short notice, to shift plans and make it possible for folks to gather in a way that is meaningful to them.  

 

**Michelle Jacques:** Remai Modern's predecessor, the Mendel Art Gallery, had operated for many years as a heart-of-the-community type of institution where admission was free. It was located near a park on the river, and visitors would often hang out without looking at the art. I can't really believe that this is true, but I recently heard that the Mendel was open seven days a week, for 12 hours a day.  

 

So, the Remai functioned in a very different way when it first opened in 2017. The Mendel was an institution that centred the art history of the region. They showed lots of other work, of course, but regional art history was really important to its model. The Remai Modern was founded as an institution that was intended to draw international contemporary art audiences to Saskatchewan. Because they were operating the way other international contemporary art spaces do, Saskatchewan artists did not appear to be a priority. I arrived there at a time when a new team was reckoning with the need to better connect the museum to the community. We knew that if the Remai was not important to the local community, it wouldn't be important at all. So there have been steps toward re-establishing the site of Remai in the hearts of people from Saskatoon, and the province.  

 

A couple of weeks ago, it was announced that Mrs. Remai has provided a donation that will allow us to move back to our admission-by-donation model, which is intended to help create no-barrier access. On the first weekend where admission was by donation, I noticed the presence of lots of BIPOC families enjoying the space. I think that we had under-estimated what an invitation it would be to move to the admission-by-donation model. 

**DR:** Could you speak about artists whose practices excite you about the future of Black contemporary art in the Prairies?  

 

**MJ:** Karma Clarke-Davis recently referred to her 2000 show at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), and how it took 10 years for another Black woman to get a show at the AGO. It made me think about how important it is to be in positions of leadership where you get to change ways of working by writing policy, or by being the person that sets the vision for the other curators, or by being a mentor.  

 

On another level, Peace Akintade is an artist currently participating in a Remai Modern's _Here and Now: A Live Arts Initiative_; I happily learned at the Saskatchewan Arts Awards last week that the Dunlop had nominated her in the RBC Emerging Artist category (which she won)! 

  

 

**AF:** There's also several artists in Winnipeg that I'm excited about, such as Chukwudubem Ukaigwe, Iyunade Judah, PJ Anderson, and many others. There are also quite a few Black artists in Alberta, such as Raneece Buddan, Braxton Garneau, and many others I have yet to meet. I've been getting to know more Black artists in Saskatchewan, and as Michelle pointed out, Dunlop recently nominated Saskatchewan artist Peace Akintade for an award. The Prairies are an exciting place to carry out the kind of work we're doing.  

 

I am also reminded of a conversation with Michèle Pearson Clarke, on the discussion of work by Black artists in her classroom. She said that showing this kind of work does not only benefit Black students—it necessarily benefits everyone in the class.  

 

**CM:** I would quickly add that there is a national treasure in our community here: Carol LaFayette-Boyd. She is the life force of the Saskatchewan African Canadian Heritage Museum (SACHM). While the museum doesn't have a bricks-and-mortar facility, she hustles to develop partnerships with institutions that amplify the SACHM's agenda. Her efforts are a constant reminder of what it means to care for legacies, care for histories, and care for collections that, even if they don't exist in institutions, exist in family homes in the forms of the stories we tell.  

 

*** 

Reflecting on what initially drew her to Saskatchewan, Mowry remarked that “there was possibility here,” which is quoted as the title for this text. What's interesting about the developments in Fearon's, Jacques's, and Mowry's work, as they describe it here, is an investment in the collective and future contexts for Black and other overlooked imaginaries in contemporary art.  

***

**Alyssa Fearon** is the Director/Curator at Dunlop Art Gallery. She was previously the Curator at the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba. Raised in Ontario, Fearon was Curator of the inaugural Scarborough zone as part of the 2018 edition of Nuit Blanche Toronto in addition to taking on other roles in the visual arts sector across North America. Fearon holds an MBA from the Schulich School of Business, an MA in Art History from York University in Toronto, and was a 2018 Fellow at the Salzburg Global Forum. Currently on view at Dunlop Art Gallery, is “the excess is ritual,” an exhibition of works by Norwegian and North American artists, guest curated by Winnipeg-based scholar Noor Bhangu. 

 

 

**Michelle Jacques** came to the Remai Modern as the Head of Exhibitions & Collections/Chief Curator, following an eight-year tenure as Chief Curator at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (AGGV). She has also held curatorial positions at the AGO and the Centre for Art Tapes in Halifax. She was also recently appointed the Board President of the Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC) of North America, and is the 2022 laureate of The Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for Curatorial Excellence in contemporary art. Currently on view at the Remai Modern is the ambitious contemporary art survey “In the Middle of Everywhere: Artists on the Great Plains,” which was cocurated by Jacques alongside Rose Bouthiller, Sandra Fraser, Troy Gronsdahl, and Tarah Hogue. 

 

**Crystal Mowry** is the Director of Programming at the MacKenzie Art Gallery. She was previously a Senior Curator at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery (KWAG) for 13 years, where her past exhibition projects with artists Maggie Groat, Ernest Daetwyler, and Deanna Bowen were each awarded the Ontario Association of Art Galleries' (OAAG) Exhibition of the Year prizes. Current exhibitions at the MacKenzie Art Gallery include “What the Bat Knows”—an exhibition focused on the storytelling role of art collections, curated by Mowry.  

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C_O_RYNER

Curatorial practice

Institutional critique

In this first _Otherwise _column, co-presented with the Centre for the Study of Black Canadian Diaspora, Denise Ryner speaks with Prairies-based curators Alyssa Fearon, Michelle Jacques and Crystal Mowry on their "investment in the collective and future contexts for Black and other overlooked imaginaries in contemporary art."

“There Was Possibility Here”: A Conversation on Black Visual Arts Leadership in the Prairies

Feature

amanda wan (they/them) is a queer han chinese settler based on the unceded, occupied territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and sʔəl̀ilwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Wau tuth) First Nations. Their MA thesis project asks how the “Asian” body is produced through erotic mediations, and suggests that staying with the erotic ambivalence around what is aestheticized as in/organic, im/material, or self/ other can enable reciprocity to become a form of queerly reproductive labour. amanda also creates poetry and artwork in the form of zines, illustrations, and published writing in _Room Magazine, Augur Magazine, LooseLeaf Magazine_, and elsewhere.

##### Queer Reads Library (QRL) is a project as multiple as it is mobile. A collection of zines and independent publications that moves with its organizers, QRL is home to works by artists who identify as part of the queer Asian diaspora around the world. Created in 2018 by Hong Kong-based artist-curator Kaitlin Chan and artist-publisher Beatrix Pang, QRL was in part a response to the Hong Kong government’s shelving of 10 children’s books featuring themes of queerness, the result of lobbying by anti-gay rights groups.[1] When artist-writer Rachel Lau joined the project, they launched a North American chapter in Vancouver. 

Since its inception, QRL’s programming has consistently prioritized collaboration with fellow artists and cultural workers. As part of Queer Zine Friends Worldwide, QRL connected with J Wu of Mixed Rice Zines to talk about bringing the collection to Hong Kong, Taipei, Vancouver, and San Francisco. QRL also participated in the opening exhibition of SPRINT21 Independent Publishers and Artists’ Book Salon in Milan, Italy, speaking on the theme “HARD COPY SOFT TOUCH: Experiences on Queer and Transfeminist Archive.” And more recently, a QRL Reading Corner at Para Site, an independent art centre based in Hong Kong, focused on the collection’s late-’90s to 2000s Hong Kong theatre ephemera and queer publications on cinematic culture, curating a conversation on “publishing one’s own zeitgeist.”[^2]

I spoke to QRL member Rachel Lau about the transnational mobilities that make the collection possible, Chinatown, “cool queer stuff” as forms of cultural capital, and contributing to the vibrancy of the queer Asian diasporic community. 

>**amanda wan (aw):** I’m curious to hear how QRL imagines its relationship with the artists that contribute to its collection. Kaitlin has been quoted as saying—I love this phrase—“cool queer stuff”[^3] in response to questions about the kind of work that QRL houses. How do you, as curators, hold conversations about what kinds of work you want to include, and which zines you select for the collection? 

**Rachel Lau (RL):** With QRL’s curation and collection, there’s a kind of unspoken sensibility around queerness and Asianness that people don’t always think about. “Cool queer stuff” involves what artists in the collection have adopted based on the people they spend time with, the spaces they frequent, the media they consume, and their upbringing. All that “stuff” becomes a sensibility that operates on a subconscious level. Not to say we don’t put thought into our curation, but what’s queer to us as QRL is something that isn’t always conscious. 

We often talk about how QRL is not really about the material books themselves. It’s about the relationships we build with other queer Asian artists. The artists are everything. If their work didn’t exist or they hadn’t put their stories out in the world, we wouldn’t have a library. We see the artists who are involved with us like collaborators, but ultimately, I see us as a community of voices coming together. There’s a stewardship aspect to it. Beatrix, Kaitlin, and I all have zines in the library as well, because we also want to be part of the conversation we’re curating, carrying, and fostering. Each work is saying something different about queerness and queer experiences. In this way the library also speaks as a whole, with its own dialogue, through the interactions of the zines in the collection. 

Kaitlin, Beatrix, and I all have slightly different approaches to how we relate to the Asian diaspora, or “Chinese” culture in general. My parents immigrated from Hong Kong and China to Vancouver and met here. I grew up here with cultural exports, and a sort of time capsule of Chinese culture that my parents brought with them from the late ’80s. Coupled with North American queer history, such as the Stonewall riots, LGBTQ2IA+ and queer rights movements, the AIDS crisis… all that history informs the way that I imagine queerness.

Kaitlin’s dad is from Hong Kong and her mom grew up in Australia. Kaitlin has an Australian passport, but went to an international school in Hong Kong and college in the US. She experienced being an immigrant in the US later in life. Beatrix was born and raised in Hong Kong when it was still a British colony. They grew up going to a local school, went to college there, and their family’s there. So, we all have tangential connections to what a queer Asian diaspora is, and how we experience it. This informs our sensibilities, and what we think is “cool queer stuff.” 

>**aw:** I love how you frame QRL in relation to a queer Asian diasporic sensibility. In the case of QRL’s organizers, this seems to emerge in flows of relationality through different Chinese diasporas. This sensibility, as you call it, seems very attentive to the people and materials around you all, in a relational way. 

>It also seems conscious of accelerating flows of capital. Capital in the sense of speculative finance, surveillance technologies, and colonial education—but also cultural capital, where “coolness” becomes significant to producing QRL as a mobile library that is compelling enough to be circulated throughout the queer Asian diaspora, and more broadly.

>Cultural capital is present in a lot of Asian diasporic artist communities. Take the visuality of certain fruits like durian, bitter melon, or mango, for example, which are then taken to represent and mediate specific parts of a very broad Asian diasporic sensibility and can be used in the direction of “identity,” but hardly ends there. This is not to say aesthetics is frivolous, that frivolity isn’t political, or that nuance is lost in the circulation of cultural capital. Meaning is actually enriched when we ask about the conditions of the queer Asian diaspora in terms of its materiality around desire and perceived value. We can then attend to the potency of identity or art movements as aesthetic tropes that compose a queer Asian diasporic sensibility.                                     

**RL:** It was significant that Kaitlin, Beatrix, and I were all in Hong Kong during a pivotal time for political activism in the city, including anti-Extradition Bill protests that began in 2019.[^4] Movement in terms of capital, activism, and community organizing informs the artists that we connect with, which will inevitably affect the collection’s contents and how we steward them. 

>**aw:** QRL Vancouver began when you returned to the city. How does the movement of each organizer affect where QRL chapters are located? 

**RL:** Realistically, what having “chapters” means depends on how much capacity we each have for QRL, which fluctuates. The more pertinent question is: how can the library have a life beyond the three of us? I would hate for the library to no longer exist because, for whatever reason, the three of us are not doing it anymore. People move on from projects and decide to go in different directions or practices. It’s not necessarily inevitable, but it can happen with collectives. Then the question becomes: how can we sustain the collection of voices that is QRL? 

>**aw:** Even though QRL began as and continues to be a mobile library, it sounds like you’re trying not to emphasize the movement of the organizers as the key to the project. But given the scope of QRL’s collection and reach, is transnationalism something that QRL focuses on? Or is it just one element of the bigger picture?

**RL:** The transnational connections that make up QRL are reflected in our collection, which includes works from people who are based in Asia, those in diaspora, and people who are kind of in a hybrid zone. In that way, QRL will always be transnational because it includes work from queer Asian people all over the world. Centring these voices in the collection is one of the library’s central tenets.

Having Hong Kong and Vancouver as QRL chapter locations also checks out because they’re cities people generally move through. Thinking about flows of capital and empire across the Pacific, QRL’s particular form of transnationality makes sense. We didn’t choose Hong Kong and Vancouver as strategic places for QRL chapters, but the way that each of us has arrived in our personal histories of migration translates into how we connected to one another, and where QRL now has its roots.

>**aw:** This conversation came out of a prompt to consider Chinatown in relation to QRL as a space within the queer Asian diaspora. To some extent this connection is clear, given the specific histories of Chinese migration. But we can’t say that everyone involved in QRL has a connection to Chinatown or identifies with the same histories, because that’s just not true, especially framed within the concept of queer Asian diasporic sensibility.

>That said, you also work in Chinatown as program manager for the Yarrow Intergenerational Society for Justice.[^5] How have you and QRL approached your relationship to Chinatown, given the messiness of artist communities shaping interrelated histories of mobility and settler colonialism?

**RL:** I think about how the young Chinese people working at Yarrow, who care about Chinatown as a community, who care about the elders, and are trying to maintain that culture, are often queer and trans. I don’t think that’s an accident. There is something to be said about the ways queer and trans Asian people exist and what we value, and what kind of care we want to bring to our communities. One of QRL’s most recent group exhibitions was in San Francisco’s Chinatown at the Chinese Culture Center, which focused on artistic works related to the non-binary and diasporic Asian communities.[^6] These types of group exhibitions reflect our desire to bring queerness to the forefront of Chinatown spaces, to highlight the queer Asianness that already exists in multiple ways.

Sometimes I see that desire channelled into efforts that I don’t necessarily agree with. I wonder how they affect the flow and exacerbation of gentrification. I don’t know if the connection between QRL and Chinatown is so simple and sexy. I don’t think it works that way. 

>**aw:** There is cultural capital that operates within Chinatown, like you’ve mentioned. In this way Chinatown can sometimes feel, in your language, like a “sexy” space. People are drawn to Chinatown and its histories as a visual, aural aesthetic, and as a site of social critique.

**RL:** The point of tension is when other queer Asian people are drawn to Chinatown because it’s “sexy.” When wealthy white people are gentrifying Chinatown, that dynamic seems obvious, so there’s less tension there. Not in the sense that gentrification doesn’t suck, but it’s more like, “We’ve seen that before.” There’s language for it: “That’s just colonizer shit!”

It’s more complicated when queer Asian people engage in that process. As an arts and culture worker, and a community worker in Chinatown who’s queer and Chinese, I feel like I exist at the intersection of these tensions. I’m constantly asking how I navigate that space. So far, my answer is to bring the seniors I work with at Yarrow into art spaces. And to give people money! But I don’t think that’s a long-term solution. 

>**aw:** I think it’s valuable to question the desire to connect with ourselves and others through the idea of Chinatown as queer and Asian—particularly Chinese—people. In some cases, desire isn’t always transformative. 

**RL:** I see where that desire comes from. Sometimes there’s a desire from queer Chinese artists to reconnect culturally because they have become estranged from their biological family, so they’re looking for another space to exist. Obviously, that doesn’t change the fact that their work materially affects the well-being and lives of residents in Chinatown.

I think the desire for queerness to exist in a cultural space isn’t inherently “wrong.” But how do we go about creating these spaces? That’s very important to me: thinking through how we’re affecting other people. I love the mobility of the QRL collection because it gives us a chance to think about how each space interacts with our values. 

>**aw:** Distributed across your room, Kaitlin’s, Beatrix’s, and elsewhere, the physical space of QRL is both material and not material. This feels different from how Chinatown has been made available to people, in part because it’s a space that doesn’t move, per se; it’s a place people go to and leave or stay, with different paths and capacities. 

**RL:** So much of what people love about Chinatown and its aesthetics is also a consequence of similar material realities around mobility, such as red-lining or discrimination via policy. People love the colours, signs, smells, and the fact that the neighbourhood is a one-stop shop. But all those things, which people want desperately to copy or embody, are a result of what residents needed to do to survive. 

In Hong Kong, there are older public-housing buildings coloured pink and green. Apparently, there was a point in time when these paint colours were cheaper. So, the contractors of those buildings just went with it. We then have this aesthetic that arises from material conditions of the finance capital of Hong Kong, not unlike the emergence of aesthetics in Chinatowns across North America. 

>**aw:** Right, now we have a visual language for this mediation of capital, materialized in the form of pink and green paint on buildings in a housing project. These questions about aesthetics and mobility in relation to capital make me think about how intimacy, in the form of physical proximity, can be used as a shorthand for relationality. Some developers claim they have a relationship to Chinatown just because they’re present in it. Yet these relationships can also be detrimental, creating displacement and gentrification. I’m curious about how this complexity translates to the work of QRL, a project that is predicated on the dispersal of spaces, with the collection and its artists always in multiple locations at once.

>You’ve talked about the process of curation as one of stewardship. How do you see yourself as a curator or cultural producer, as someone who’s able to shape a narrative? And how does this role work, given your dependence on artists to provide the material with which you shape that narrative? 

**RL:** To be honest, I don’t actively call myself a curator when I’m organizing with QRL. Most of the time, I focus on being a queer Asian artist who connects with other queer Asian artists. I think this stripped-down approach to the work by-passes the formalities of an institutional relationship between “curator” and “artist.” In the absence of these formalities, a space for new connections emerges. Artists are often very generous and excited about being part of our library. There are some artists who have offered their works to us for free. And of course, we try to buy artwork directly from artists too. 

Artists based in North America often have a desire for their work to be shared in Asia. They want to ask, “What does it mean for my work to be circulated in the place my ancestors are from?” At the end of the day, reciprocity and generosity between us and the artists makes the whole thing go around. 

>**aw:** As QRL continues to evolve, how are you approaching your role in building a queer Asian diaspora community in the context of current social and political events? 

**RL:** The changing political situation in Hong Kong, especially with the enforcement of the Hong Kong national security law,[^7] is something we think about as an explicitly queer project with roots in Hong Kong. I wonder what the political situation will mean for the future of the library and for queer people. But there are queer people, movements, and projects in spaces where queerness is “illegal.” Queer people will always build community with one another. We have to; we always will.

[^1]: Karen Zhang, “_And Tango Makes Three_ Among 10 Children’s Books With LGBT Themes Taken Off the Shelves in Public Libraries by Hong Kong Government,” _South China Morning Post_, June 20, 2018, https://scmp.com/news/hong-kong/community/article/2151705/and-tangomakes-three-among-10-childrens-books-same-sex 
[^2]: “QRL Reading Corner at PS Shop: Queer Visual Culture of Hong Kong in the 1990s and 2000s,” _Para Site_, December 3, 2021 to February 20, 2022, https://para-site.art/programme/qrl-readingcorner-at-ps-shop-queervisual-culture-of-hong-kongin-the-90s-and-2000s 
[^3]: Shea Fitzpatrick, “The Queer Zine Library in Hong Kong That’s Finding a Global Community,” _AIGA Eye on Design_, June 6, 2019, https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/the-queer-zine-library-inhong-kong-thats-finding-aglobal-community 
[^4]: Since scrapped following major protests from people in Hong Kong, the Extradition Bill was proposed by Carrie Lam (chief executive of Hong Kong) and would have enabled the Hong Kong government to detain wanted people in relation to certain criminalized activities, even in territories where Hong Kong has no formal extradition agreements. People detained would have been transferred to Beijing and become subject to its legal system. Protestors critiqued the potential loss of governmental sovereignty from Hong Kong to Chinese authoritarianism, the brutal response of both governments to protestors, and how the bill would effectively legalize abduction by the Hong Kong or Beijing governments under the guise of “national security.” 
[^5]: https://yarrowsociety.ca 
[^6]: “WOMEN我們: From Her to Here,” Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco, February 19 to December 18, 2021, https://cccsf.us/post/women%E6%88%91%E5%80%91-from-her-to-here
[^7]: Put into effect in 2020, the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region gives jurisdiction over nation-state security operations to the centralized Chinese government in Beijing. Under this legislation, the Chinese government can convict and prosecute permanent residents and non-residents alike on charges like “terror ism,” “sedition,” or “collusion with foreign forces” in Hong Kong. What activities fall under these broad categories seem to be defined at the discretion of the national security agency set up by the Chinese government personnel in Hong Kong. While government officials in Beijing and Hong Kong have claimed that the legislation will not affect rights or freedoms around assembly and demonstration, speech, publication, or press, critics have pointed out that such broad terms ex tend the ability of the Chinese and Hong Kong governments to criminalize any activities they deem threatening to their authority, under the guise of security and protection. Such critiques also highlight ongoing tensions around Chinese authoritarianism and the after maths of British colonialism in Hong Kong.

**Rachel Lau** (they/them) is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, and community worker based on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and sʔəl̀ilwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations, colonially known as Vancouver. Inspired by the tenderness and strength of queer and racialized communities, they create work that embraces feeling and communality. With friends, they organize Queer Reads Library, a mobile library of queer books and zines based in Hong Kong and Vancouver.

Participant

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Libraries

Collective

In their conversation with artist-writer Rachel Lau, amanda wan uncovers how the Queer Reads Library started as a project between friends, before expanding across several countries to become a transnational collection with chapters in Hong Kong and Vancouver.


Queer Asian Diaspora as Sensibility

Queer Asian Diaspora as Sensibility: A Conversation With Rachel Lau of Queer Reads Library

Print and Digital subscriptions are available for individuals and institutions

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After the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco destroyed the city’s centrally located Chinatown, community leaders strategically chose a team of white architects led by Bernard Maybeck to build a space white Americans would also love, replete with single-eave hip roofs, pagoda roofs, and other recognizable, if wildly out-of-context, tropes. This consumable architectural caricature still defines North American Chinatowns today and has helped Chinese communities “earn” the economic and political means to access space, at the cost of their continued tokenization and marginalization.[^1] As vernacular iterations of a place that never really existed, North American Chinatowns are the architectural equivalent of chop suey.[^2] Certain stereotypical Chinese architectural features have been recombined using whatever ingredients were available, with a total disregard for Western notions of authenticity. The result is an assortment of many different elements, neither wholly one thing nor another. 

Today, this architectural approach is met with mixed reactions across the intergenerational Chinatown community. In the wake of displacement, gentrification, and anti-Asian racism, there is a weariness toward the rationale that, more than a century later, strategic self-orientalization is still necessary and expected. Whereas a form of commodified “Disneyfication” was once a productive strategy for survival, it is now seen by many as a trap: what will happen if Chinatown’s architectural motifs survive without its long-time residents and businesses? Efforts to “protect” Chinatowns have embraced the need for preservation, such as the extension of heritage protection to the neighbourhood’s Chinese-character signage. But new forms of resistance, anchored in contemporary critiques of the ubiquity of Western modes of thinking, could be another way to make the space less centred on the appeasement of a white audience. 

South Korean–born German philosopher and cultural theorist Byung-Chul Han illustrates the fundamental differences between Western and Eastern thought through the notion of shanzhai, a Chinese neologism meaning “fake.” Han explains that “contradiction is not a Chinese concept. Chinese thought tends more towards ‘both-and’ [rather] than ‘either-or.’ The anti-essentialism of the Chinese thought process allows no fixed ideological definition.”[^3] He explores this difference through Eastern and Western approaches to painting. A Western painting is signed only by its author and dated, giving it a material and temporal origin. Reproductions challenge its essence. In contrast, Chinese landscape paintings are never dated. Instead, each successive owner adds their own signature with a steel stamp and sometimes a poem. These added elements do not detract from the painting but are considered part of its essential becoming, which is not linked to a discrete historical moment. As Han argues, “The Chinese idea of the origin is determined not by a unique Act of Creation, but an unending process, not by definitive identity but by constant change.” [^4]

The philosophical push-and-pull between the specificity of an image’s origin and the richness of becoming over time forces us to consider the limits of representation: what is captured by images, and what is deliberately excluded or simply unrepresentable, especially when we consider how Chinatown’s past has been recorded (or left unrecorded), its present represented, and its future projected. Indexical media such as physical casts, photographs, and 3-D scans all promise unmediated representations of reality, almost “the thing itself.”[^5] In historical preservation, 3-D scanning techniques like photogrammetry are charged with authentically recording and depicting place. This practice relies on triangulation and the averaging of hundreds of images to create a point cloud.[^6] This point cloud then creates a “final” image that is used to represent a space, often in the service of building, reconstructing, or renovating a structure. Designed for modelling static objects, the excision of the extraneous details at the heart of photography’s “reality effect” is written into photogrammetry’s algorithms. Moving people, waddling pigeons, flashing neon signs, or passing cars are all “averaged” out. Likewise, contingencies (strangely reflective, absorptive, or flat and evenly coloured materials) can still undermine the supposed exactitude of the resulting scan, producing unexpected shapes, forms, and even characters within it. 

Applied to photogrammetry, the concept of _shanzhai_ can productively challenge existing heritage practices to embrace “both-and” rather than “either-or.” There is something ineffable that escapes our capacity for digital representation, and within this gap, _shanzhai_ becomes operative and valuable. Each time an original 3-D scan is collaged, it is akin to adding another poem to a Chinese landscape painting. If the initial painting is a 3-D scan of Toronto’s West Chinatown during the first COVID lockdown, for example, each visualization of the space is a rewriting of the future of Chinatown in relation to all its previous iterations. By embracing multiplying indeterminacies, collaging photogrammetry is a counter to photography, which freezes Chinatown in a singular moment in time and a singular configuration in space. Instead, a _shanzhai_ approach to photogrammetry reinforces Chinatown as a space of excess—a haunting surplus—something that does not yet fit into Canadian society, and in so doing, will always challenge each of us to be more expansive in our thinking. 

Writer Helen Ngo shares in the short documentary film _Chinatown 2050_, “Neither my Dad nor I have ever been to China. I learned how to be Asian by being in Chinatown.”[^7] Ngo’s observation reflects how the complex associations elicited by Chinatown’s contentious iconography are available for reclamation by a new audience and can hold new meanings. In the face of racism and exclusion, the self-orientalizing model of pagoda rooflines and paifang gates was strategically chosen by Chinatown’s elders, a choice that remains a radical act of resistance, broadening who is allowed to occupy civic space. But embracing a non-essentialist approach to these spaces creates an alternative to this kitschy model minority architectural style and the tendency to “reduce an entire culture to one symbol.”[^8] Viewed in the context of _shanzhai_, Chinatown is singular _in its plurality_—its only certainty is its mutability.

**The Chinatown 2050 project began as a speculative fiction writing work shop that prompted participants to reimagine what Chinatown Toronto could be in 30 years. Taking place virtually in April 2020 amid heightened anti-Asian violence and continued discrimination in Chinatowns across Canada, community writers were asked: Who seeks change? Who seeks to prevent change? Who seeks different kinds of change? Eleven stories from these workshops comprise the anthology _Reimagining ChinaTOwn: Speculative Fiction Stories From Toronto’s Chinatowns in 2050_.**

**Using the Chinatown 2050 short stories and a photogrammetric 3-D scan of Toronto’s west Chinatown streets captured via drone during lockdown in spring 2020, Linda Zhang (re)created 3-D collages of each story’s reimagined Chinatown. Applying a _shanzhai_ approach to photogrammetry, Zhang used a process of iterative mutation to turn raw 3-D scanned data into architectural 3-D worlds. This process challenges the normative practice in architectural heritage that values the raw 3-D scan as authentic and instead places value on _shanzhai_ reimaginations.  Applied to a space like Chinatown, this approach explores the limitations of its architectural forms and challenges the stability of images and places, as well as our tendency to reduce the latter to the former.** 

**Workshop facilitators:  
Erica Allen-Kim, Tyler Fox, Biko Mandela Gray, Maxim Gertler-Jaffe, Morris Lum, Philip Poon, Howard Tam, Lexi Tsien and Linda Zhang, Shellie Zhang** 

**Stories by community writers: 
Eveline Lam / “Interval”; Michael Chong / “New Hong Fatt BBQ”; Amy Yan / “Chinatown Island”; Amelia Gan / “C For ChinaCloud”; Helen Ngo /  “Hotpot Politics”**

[^1]: Mae N. Ngai, “Transnationalism and the Transformation of the ‘Other’: Responses to the Presidential Address,” _American Quarterly_ 57, no. 1 (2005): 63. 
[^2]: Chop suey translates approximately to “assorted mix.” On this North American culinary phenomenon, please see Ann Hui, _Chop Suey Nation: The Legion Café and Other Stories from Canada’s Chinese Restaurants_ (Madeira Park, BC: Douglas & McIntyre, 2019). 
[^3]: Byung Chul-Han, _Shanzhai: Deconstruction in Chinese_ (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017), 76. 
[^4]: Han, 11. 
[^5]: The equation of photo graphs with reality dates to the medium’s origins in the 19th century. On this subject, please see Peter Sealy, “Fragments and Fragmentary Vision in Nineteenth-century Architectural Photographs,” _Word & Image_ 37, no. 1 (2021): 99–116. 
[^6]: Edgar Hynes Thompson, “Review of Methods Indepen dent Model Aerial Triangula tion,” _The Photogrammetric Record_, no. 5 (October 1965): 72–79. 
[^7]: Co-directed and co-produced by Linda Zhang and Maxim Gertler-Jaffe, _Chinatown 2050_ features the stories, hopes, aspirations, and fears of five community authors as they reimagine what Chinatown could be in 2050. Each author’s story is presented as an animated virtual 3-D space created through photogrammetric recollage of a 3-D scan taken on May 2020 of West Chinatown Toronto during the city’s first COVID-19 lockdown. The five stories are part of a large anthology of 11 short stories entitled _Reimagining ChinaTOwn: Speculative Fiction Stories from Toronto’s Chinatowns in 2050_ edited by Zhang. 
[^8]: Fay Chew Matsuda, “So Long, It’s Been Good Pagoda,” _Village Voice_, September 5, 1995, quoted in Greg (“Fritz”) Umbach and Dan Wishnoff, “Strategic Self-Orientalism: Urban Planning Policies and the Shaping of New York City’s Chinatown, 1950–2005,” _Journal of Planning History_ 7, no. 3 (2008): 231.

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153Zhang_Sealy.pdf

Linda Zhang and Peter Sealy explore the architecture of Chinatown, arguing for a turn toward Eastern ways of thinking as a form of resistance using _shanzhai_, a term typically used to denote a copy or counterfeit.

Resisting Either/ Or: _Shanzhai_ Photogrammetry 

**Peter Sealy** is a historian who studies the ways in which architects constructively engage with reality through indexical media such as photography. Current projects include a history of photography’s remediations and a study of the Berlin Wall as it appears in films. He is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto. 


**Linda Zhang** is an architect, drone pilot, and educator whose scholarly and artistic practice studies memory, cul tural heritage, and community identity as they are indexically embodied in matter, emergent technologies (including VR, AR, and AI), and material processes. She is an Assistant Professor at the University of Waterloo. 


Godfre Leung is a critic and curator.

His writing has recently appeared in _ArtAsiaPacific_ and _ReIssue_, and his recent exhibitions include “Offsite: Christopher K. Ho” (Vancouver Art Gallery, 2022) and “TJ Shin: The Vegetarian” (The Bows, 2022). He is the Curator at the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver, the unceded territories of the xwməθkwəyə̓ m, Sḵwxw̱ ú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ Nations.

Vancouver Photohistory and the Politics of Disappearance

**Cheryl Wing-Zi Wong** is an artist and trained architect based out of New York City. Her creative practice lies at the intersection of art, architecture, and the public realm. Through site-specific architectural interventions, she creates experiences that activate forgotten or unused spaces, and that can spark people to encounter each other in unexpected ways.


 Linda Mae’s: An Architectural Past Life

**Tak Pham** is a curator and critic who graduated from OCAD University with an MFA in Criticism and Curatorial Practice. He has curated exhibitions for the MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina (2019– present); Contemporary Calgary (2022); Varley Art Gallery, Markham (2020); Nuit Blanche Toronto (2017); Pari Nadimi Gallery, Toronto (2017); Xpace Cultural Centre, Toronto (2017); and Y+ contemporary, Scarborough (2016), among others. His writings and reviews have appeared in _Canadian Art, Espace art actuel, esse arts + opinions, Galleries West, Studio magazine, ArtAsiaPacific_, and _Hyperallergic_, and he currently works as Associate Curator at the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina, Canada. 


AKA and Jin Jin Cuisine

Charlene K. Lau is an art historian, critic and Curator of Public Art at Evergreen Brick Works.
She has held fellowships at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity; Parsons School of Design,
The New School; and Performa Biennial. Her writing has been published in _Art in America_,
_Artforum_, _TheAtlantic.com_, _The Brooklyn Rail_, _frieze_, _Fashion Theory_, and _Journal of Curatorial Studies_, among others.

The Spatial Imaginaries of Karen Tam 譚嘉文

**Shellie Zhang** is a multidisciplinary artist. She creates images, objects, and projects in a wide range of media to explore how integration, diversity, and assimilation are implemented and negotiated, and how manifestations of these ideas relate to lived experiences.


**Michelle Bui** is a Montreal based artist working in photography and sculpture. Her research lies in the use of material culture as a creative modality. Looking for points of combustion between objects, Bui elicits an array of physical feelings that conjure both pleasurable and confounding sensations, offering a space where sensory identity can unfold. 


Artificial Artifacts

Artificial Artifacts: Michelle Bui and Shellie Zhang in conversation 


Aamna Muzaffar collaborates on space, text, and moving image projects with artists and arts organizations as an independent creative director and technical supervisor. Based in Toronto, she is the Assistant Curator at Mercer Union, a centre for contemporary art.

Golden Jubilee: An interview with Suneil Sanzgiri

Tilling: Permanence for Black Diasporic Art in Canada 

Composition: Transplant Collaborations

Nadine Khalil is an independent arts writer, editor, researcher,  
and curator. After a decade-long stint in art publishing, she is currently advising art institutions such as the Ishara Art Foundation and Goethe-Institut on programming and editorial  
strategy. She is former editor of Dubai-based contemporary art magazine Canvas (2017–2020) and her writing can be found in art-agenda, Artforum, The Art Newspaper, ArtReview Asia, Artsy, Broadcast, The Brooklyn Rail, FT Arts, Ocula, and the Women’s Review of Books.

Ebb and Flow / Moving Through Mourning

##### CODES
##### C155—Autumn 2023 
##### Accepted until: 1 April 2023

What codes do you follow and why? Where do codes come from? At their most basic, codes are transfers between systems of communication; they imply movement between at least two points, a translation between _A_ and _B_. There are ethical codes, social codes, policies, and law. There is code-switching, secret meanings, and citational practices designed only for those “in the know.” In computation, coding creates commands for machines based on human desire. In new media art, early codes were initially used to rebel against systems like capitalism before the medium, too, became subsumed by it. Yet this innately digital art is still used to imagine various futurisms or reconfigure the socio-political codes of what we know. New media, old problems.

Codes are rituals, instructions, practices written and unwritten; they are a set of beliefs, etiquette, ceremony, and language. Can a recipe—a container of living and knowing passed through generations—be a code? How does this code differ from that of AI, gradually learning the mechanics of human concepts and feelings? What are the codes of your being and how do you access or adapt them to be in intimacy with others? What does it mean to break the code? We encourage pitches on artistic practices and creative criticism to think specifically and expansively about what codes are, and can be, from a multitude of perspectives.
 

Thematic feature, artist project, and column pitches accepted until April 1, 2023. We suggest pitching early to avoid disappointment. Review pitches, which are not required to be thematic, are accepted on a rolling basis.

Send pitches to pitch@cmagazine.com, with a subject line that starts with the word PITCH and goes on to indicate 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 your CV—and one or two writing samples (ideally ones written in a style similar to your pitched piece). Submitted work must be original; we do not publish reprints nor adaptations of any kind.

Thank you for understanding that we are unable to reply to unsuccessful pitches.

Please see our [submission and writer’s guidelines](https://cmagazine.com/opportunities/write) for more information.
 
Note: we do not accept pitches from platforms regarding their own programming.


Call for Pitches for CODES

Call

Thematic feature, artist project, and column pitches accepted until April 1, 2023.

Now in its 14th year, the [C New Critics Award](https://cmagazine.com/programs/c-new-critics) is designed to help identify, develop, and promote the work of emerging art critics. Writers are invited to submit an 800-1,000 word review of an exhibition, performance, publication, or moving image work, by May 30, 2023. The winner will receive $750, editorial support to prepare their article for publication in the Winter issue of _C Magazine_, and a two-year subscription. All participants will receive a one-year subscription.

For the purposes of the award, an emerging writer is defined as anyone who has not published more than one piece of writing in a recognized print or online publication, exclusive of student-run journals and magazines. The competition is open to anyone residing in Canada, regardless of citizenship status, and to Canadians living abroad.

Exhibition and performance reviews must address work that occurred no earlier than January 1, 2023, whereas book and moving image work reviews must address work made in the past two years. See our [submissions](https://cmagazine.com/about/submissions) page for more information for writers. 

One submission per person. Upload your submission here at [award-submission.cmagazine.com](https://award-submission.cmagazine.com). Mail or fax submissions will not be accepted. Please let us know of any accommodation we may provide during the application process. Note that measures are taken to ensure that the identity of entrants remains unknown to adjudicators. If you have questions please direct them to [editorial@cmagazine.com](https://mailto:editorial@cmagazine.com)

The submissions will be assessed by Joy Xiang, Editor at _C Magazine_, and two external jurors.



—

##### 

2022 C New Critics Award winner: **Shaneela Boodoo**

  
For her review of  "begin to be; have become" (2022), published in C153 “Chinatown” (Winter 2023). 


**Shaneela Boodoo** (she/her) is a graduate of the University of Manitoba with a BFA (Honours) in Design and is also a recent graduate of the University of Winnipeg with an MA in Cultural Studies. She is a second-generation Indo-Caribbean immigrant, born and based in Winnipeg, MB. As an emerging artist, designer, and curator, Boodoo explores the entanglements of themes such as colonialism, displacement, and womanhood.

  
_C Magazine_ would like to thank all those who submitted their writing to the competition, as well as the 2022 award jurors Maandeeq Mohamed, Hagere Selam “shimby” Zegeye-Gebrehiwot and Nataleah Hunter-Young.

[More information](https://newcritics.cmagazine.com)

Call for C New Critics Award 

Now in its 14th year, the C New Critics Award is designed to help develop and promote the work of emerging art critics. This program gives _C Magazine_ the opportunity to identify and support promising new writers, who often become regular contributors. Writers are invited to submit an 800-1,000 word review of an exhibition, performance, publication, or moving image work by the annual deadline. The winner receives a financial award, editorial support to prepare their article for publication in the forthcoming issue of _C Magazine_, and a two-year subscription. All participants receive a one-year subscription. 


For the purposes of the award, an emerging writer is defined as anyone who has not published more than one piece of art criticism in a recognized print or online publication, exclusive of student-run journals or magazines. The competition is open to anyone residing in Canada, regardless of citizenship status, and to Canadians living abroad.

Submissions are assessed by _C Magazine_ editors and external jurors, announced each year. Note that measures are taken to ensure that the identity of entrants remains unknown to adjudicators.

Submission deadlines vary from year to year. Exhibition and performance reviews are expected to address recent work. Timeframes are specified each year (2023 submissions will have to address work that occurred no earlier than January 1, 2023). Reviews of book and moving image work must address work made in the past two years.

Submissions are restricted to one per person. Upload your submission here at [award-submission.cmagazine.com](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfmdQtEJQBWkGhRk_0tfc7d--3DYdLYqMeiO6VN9WcrKpeEYA/viewform). Mail or fax submissions will not be accepted.

Please let us know of any accommodation we may provide during the application process. More information for writers is available on our [Write for Us page.](https://main.d2v45yttl0ocvf.amplifyapp.com/opportunities/write)



Submissions

C New Critics Award

Program

C New Critics Award 2023  
Winner will be published in issue 156

Program information

Shaneela Boodoo's review of "begin to be; have become" (2022) will be published in C153 “Chinatown” (Winter 2023).  
  
In her review of "begin to be; have become" (2022), a group exhibition at TakeHome BIPOC Arts House in Winnipeg, Shaneela Boodoo generously reflects on the exhibition's engagement with world-structuring categories like race, gender, memory, sexuality, and labour. Through evocative prose, readers access lush descriptions of the work from the unique vantage point of Boodoo's curious and attentive gaze: a flicker of a candle, the way sunlight is filtered through fibres of suspended textiles. Boodoo offers readers a kind of ekphrastic art writing concerned with form. Her interpretive moves are consciously, beautifully, descriptive, in order to broach the new practices of looking called for by the exhibition's exploration of "what we [can] become outside of colonial violence."

2022 C New Critics Award Winner

The C New Critics Award is designed to help develop and promote the work of emerging art critics. This program gives _C Magazine_ the opportunity to identify and support promising new writers, who often become regular contributors.

Now in its 14th year, the C New Critics Award is designed to help develop and promote the work of emerging art critics. 

_C Magazine_ employs one publishing intern to assist with the production of one to two issues and related educational and fundraising events. As valuable members of _C_’s team, interns play an important role in promoting and nurturing critical engagement with and knowledge of contemporary art, while gaining practical experience in the field of publishing. Publishing interns will develop their skills in writing, communications, data management, online content management, online and social media marketing, event planning and logistics, volunteer management, donor relations, sponsor development, and grant writing. _C Magazine_ is committed to ensuring an enjoyable, educational, and rewarding experience.


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Work periods and application cut-off dates: Given that the most common arrangement for this internship is academic credit, the work periods typically align with the academic calendar (Sept-Dec, Jan-April, May-August), but are subject to variation. 

Applications are received on a rolling basis until the following dates:      
September start—July 15                                                                  
January start—October 15                                                  
May start—March 15                                                      

Please submit your CV and a brief cover letter, indicating the internship dates you are applying for, your current interests as well as related experience, to Sara Knelman, Publisher by emailing hr@cmagazine.com.


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Publishing Internship

Education

_C Magazine_ accepts applications for part-time academic and volunteer internships, typically three times per year. As members of _C Magazine_'s team, interns play an important role in promoting and encouraging critical engagement with and knowledge of contemporary art while gaining valuable experience in the field of publishing. Internships are focussed around key areas of our operation, and recurring opportunities are available for editorial, communications, and publishing positions. Descriptions and application information specific to each internship are available with the positions listed on this page. 

C Internships

Please note that we are currently operating with reduced internships. For specific information, including current opportunities and application details, please select the position you are interested in (under related events).                   

We are also interested in hearing from those who would like to get involved with _C_ by volunteering occasionally and in a specific capacity.


Positions and Applications

As members of _C Magazine_'s team, interns play a key role in promoting and encouraging critical engagement with and knowledge of contemporary art, while gaining valuable experience in the field of publishing.  



We are currently accepting applications for three publishing internships per year. Applications are received on a rolling basis until the following dates:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     September start—July 15                                                    
January start—October 15                                         
May start—March 15                                       


Apply

C Magazine employs one publishing intern to assist with issue production, circulation, and fundraising and educational events.  

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