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Unit/Pitt 1

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Casey House 1

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Eyelevel

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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.

Almanac

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Toronto’s most highly anticipated charity auction of contemporary Canadian art promises to be a fabulous evening of art and philanthropy supporting Casey House’s ground-breaking care for people living with and at risk of HIV. Art With Heart, presented by TD Bank Group returns to The Carlu, October 8, 2024. 


Art With Heart — Casey House

Review

Jayne Wilkinson is a writer, editor, and curator. She was formerly Editor-in-Chief at _Canadian Art_ and regularly contributes to art publications including _C Magazine_, _e-flux Criticism_, _esse arts + opinions_, _Momus_, and others. She holds an MA in Art History and Critical Theory from the University of British Columbia and is an occasional lecturer in Visual Studies at the University of Toronto.


This is not a normal review. The ongoing genocide in Gaza makes it impossible to consider contemporary art in any regular sense. How to assess aesthetics, impact, concepts, political positions, and the histories upon which art is produced when, as of this writing, Israel is in the midst of its invasion of Rafah, trapping more than one million people in a war zone, continuing to bomb hospitals, refugee camps, basic infrastructure, and producing widespread conditions of famine? It takes a lot of conceptual dissociation to consider a Biennale exhibition titled “Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere” on its own terms when Palestinians are being dehumanized, treated as “foreign,” othered, and killed in their own homes.

As an art writer, I want to always remember that we learn from artists first, that artists are our teachers. I never want to become jaded or think of art as secondary. I want art that reminds us of shared experiences, shared humanity, art that is more powerful than capital, that is never reducible to luxury. I want art that shows us how, at its very core, making art is what it means to be human. Palestinian artists, poets, writers, and their allies show us how to encourage critique alongside solidarity, how to imagine relationships, lives, and histories through aesthetics, how to build meaningful connections despite systems designed to isolate us. What follows is a brief survey of projects in Venice that offer connection and a sense of urgency in thinking through the role of art, even alongside military occupation. 

“South West Bank – Landworks, Collective Action and Sound” is the single official collateral exhibition of the Biennale to focus on art from Palestine. It gathers 20 Palestinian and allied artists and collectives in a small space to present what the title describes: land-based, sonic, and social-activist artworks from the southern West Bank. Curated by Jonathan Turner, the exhibition includes a mix of practices from collaborators of Artists + Allies x Hebron and Dar Yusuf Nasri Jacir for Art and Research in Bethlehem: Samer Barbari, Adam Broomberg, Duncan Campbell, Rafael González, Isabella Hammad, Shayma Hamad, Chris Harding, Baha Hilo, Emily Jacir, Sebastián Jatz Rawicz, Benjamin Lind, Jumana Manna, Michael Rakowitz, Mohammad Saleh, Vivien Sansour, Andrea de Siena, Dima Srouji, and other participants. Together their works make a powerful claim for how histories of cultivation, the tending and caring for and of the land, are practices of homemaking deeply rooted in Palestine. Adam Broomberg and Rafael González’s large-scale black-and-white photographs, _Anchor in the landscape_ (2022), sensitively show the gnarled limbs of hundred-and thousand-year-old olive trees, twisting ever outward to accommodate new growth, which become symbolic portraits of life as both precarious and grounded. Baha Hilo’s olive oil containers, _PRESERVE_ (2022–2024), are the result of the first harvest of Dar Jacir’s olive terraces, which are being repaired through companion planting and soil regeneration. Sari Khoury’s _Grapes of Wrath_ (2021) is a minimalist arrangement of wine bottles containing wine produced from grape varietals indigenous to Palestine, inspired by the long history of viticulture in the region around Bethlehem—where the domestication of wild grapes by Natufian civilizations began in the seventh to eighth millennia BCE. Among so many powerful works, Shayma Hamad’s dough-kneading installation (_Dough ball_, 2024) and publication on bread as a sustaining component of death rituals (_The Distance of Death from my Hands to my Mouth_, 2023) and Mohammad Saleh’s _Ardawa_ (2022–ongoing), video excerpts documenting the bioremediation of an urban farm burned by the Israeli army in 2021, both stand out as demonstrations of the beauty in connecting people to the land and each other.

At Fondazione In Between Art Film, Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme’s _Until we became fire and fire us_ (2023–ongoing) is an emotionally affecting multiscreen and multimedia installation that takes the land and life of Palestine as its locus. Although part of the group exhibition “Nebula,” it functions very much as a solo presentation, spanning six rooms that increase with visual and sonic intensity as one moves through. The first rooms are quieter, with a series of monolithic steel-panel sculptures presenting images and short notes, almost desktop-like, alongside drawings of Jerusalem created by Abou-Rahme’s father in the ’70s and ’80s. In his drawings, lone figures are shown against cityscapes, and the inverted use of white on black produces a visual effect akin to photographic negatives. As focal points amid more abstract hanging textiles and floods of pink light, the drawings suggest a personal form of historical documentation and offer a moving gesture of connection between two generations of artists. The sonic components are louder and the visual projections all-encompassing in subsequent rooms, producing a non-linear narration that travels and dances and flickers, flame-like, through accounts of indigenous plants, cactuses, ancient stones, song and protest, fire and regeneration—all emblematic of the stamina and resistance of life in Palestine. The effect induces an amnesiac’s memory: something is here that can’t be held on to, as though the end and the beginning are the same. The phrase “THOSE WHO CHANT DO NOT DIE” is a singular impression among many powerful onscreen phrases, an incantation that protest is never in vain. 

Of all the projects in Venice, what stayed with me most was the open-mic poetry readings at the Freedom Boat, which was docked alongside the Giardini vaporetto stop from April 18 to 19 and organized by Artists Against Apartheid, Bidoun, Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG), and Kamel Lazaar Foundation. Visitors could listen or sign up to read from _Gaza Reader Vol. 1: Poetry_, a specially compiled chapbook that features writing by Palestinian poets, journalists, and at least three recently martyred writers. Maritime flags designed by artists Nicole Eisenman and Rosalind Nashashibi—one with the Palestine flag and the other with the keffiyeh pattern painted over the civic flags of Venice—framed the speakers. With the late afternoon light reflecting off the sea’s surface, and the readers’ voices mixing with the sounds of gulls caught in the wind overhead, the overwhelming power of words to articulate experience in all its horror and beauty, trauma and joy, pain and strength, was transformative. To be connected through poetry did not act as performance but solace. 

“Now is the time for art and poetry. For art that rejects the logic of prevailing power. For poetry that resists the totalizing narratives that fuel the killing machines of the perpetrator. Art is inherently political— in its message, production, and presentation. It engages with society, assuming a role either in complicity or resistance.” This short excerpt is from “WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF ART? A manifesto against the state of the world,” a widely distributed poster that functioned as part of a de facto Palestinian Pavilion. To keep thinking about what art does, even in the face of genocide, is to continue to follow the artists who are leading us, in art and in poetry, in words and images, through ideas that can’t be shot down, buried, ignored, bought, or owned. The last line reads: “Palestine is the world in its future tense.” There is no room for complicity in such a world. 


Writer

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“South West Bank – Landworks, Collective Action and Sound” included work from Artists + Allies x Hebron and Dar Yusuf Nasri Jacir for Art and Research in Bethlehem: Samer Barbari, Adam Broomberg, Duncan Campbell, Rafael González, Isabella Hammad, Shayma Hamad, Chris Harding, Baha Hilo, Emily Jacir, Sebastián Jatz Rawicz, Benjamin Lind, Jumana Manna, Michael Rakowitz, Mohammad Saleh, Vivien Sansour, Andrea de Siena, Dima Srouji, and other participants. It was shown from 20 April to 24 November 2024 at the 60th Venice Biennale.


“South West Bank – Landworks, Collective Action and Sound” and Other Projects at the 60th Venice Biennale

Robin Alex McDonald is an independent curator, arts writer, and academic based in amiskwacîwâskahikan/Edmonton, AB.

Four one-eyed and claw-armed figures form a receiving line to welcome visitors to FASTWÜRMS’s most recent exhibition. Painted with Endura on large sheets of pebble aluminium and installed along a corridor leading to the main exhibition space, the artist duo’s alienesque _BIRCH GIRLS_ (1992) take seriously their role as ambassadors. The sashes they don, which read “JUSTICE,” “LIBERTY,” “FREEDOM,” and “ÉGALITÉ,” respectively, are more than ceremonial garb; they are a pronouncement of the founding principles of the utopian world that “#VOLCANO_LOV3R” enacts. Across the corridor, QU33R DYN457Y(2015)—a text-based work that includes a pentagram drawn with measuring tape affixed to a steel pegboard—further extrapolates this utopic world order. In pink, purple, and neon-yellow alphanumerics, the work declares: “LOV3 1S TH3 L4W.” 

At the end of the corridor, the Eastman Gallery erupts into colour and texture. Multicoloured beanbags line sections of the floor’s perimeter. Painted and tufted images of rainbow-spurting volcanos adorn every wall. In the centre of the gallery, a snake head, cat head, human skull, ovoid, three conical volcanos, and several spherical sculptures that the artists refer to as Witch Balls shine lustrously, as if carved from obsidian. These works (as well as a second row of volcanos and Witch Balls, which sit side by side on a long, shallow table against the far gallery wall) are raku ceramics. To create them, the artist-alchemists used a technique known as “ukaru,” which, like the metamorphosis of magma into lava into volcanic rock, combines heating (specifically, the use of post-firing reduction fires stoked with pine needles and witch hair) and cooling (rapidly, with spritzes of well water). 

As made clear by its doting title, the exhibition constitutes a kind of love letter to volcanos and the queer world-building potential they possess. Although volcanos are notorious for their destructive capacities, volcanic activity also participates in the formation of new land masses and topographies, creates nutrient-rich soils, and plays a critical role in the Earth’s water cycle. Volcanos may be volatile, but they are also profoundly transformative. Similarly, “#VOLCANO_LOV3R” is itself a revolutionary call for the end of the world as we know it and a vibrant envisioning of another—more colourful, more just, more anti-capitalist, queerer, witchier—way of being. 

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"#VOLCANO_LOV3R" runs from 25 May to 22 September 2024 at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery.

_C Magazine solicits online review pitches for publication in C Online on an ongoing basis. We welcome reviews from across Canada and internationally, and are especially keen on reviews that engage with art outside of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. C Magazine offers competitive compensation to our writers. Email your review pitches to pitches@cmagazine.com._

“#VOLCANO_LOV3R” — FASTWÜRMS

Feature

Kira Xonorika (b. 1995) is an interdisciplinary artist, author, and futurist. Her work explores the connections between sovereignty, techno-science, temporality, world-building, and magic.

A year before the word “gender identity disorder’’ was officially removed from the World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Classification of Diseases, trans activists, policymakers, and artists from around the world gathered in Buenos Aires with a common purpose: to strategize around depathologization. The year was 2018, and the atmosphere at the World Professional Association for Transgender Health Symposium was as tense as the realm of policy-making can get. This was a decisive moment for trans advocates. It was also a moment that took its toll on the bodies of the activists, and the many trancestors who, in proving their humanity, got too close to the systems that perpetuate wounding. 

It was at this gathering that I met Fran Demétrio—a brilliant decolonial philosopher who has since passed away. Fran, who is Black Brazilian, was the first trans woman professor at the Federal University of Recôncavo da Bahia. Not only was Fran wise beyond her years, but she was also a lovely and caring human. We met, of course, while smoking at the corner of the Hilton with Lua Stabile—an activist focusing on decolonial trans liberation and the decriminalization of sex work in Brazil. In a gesture of camaraderie, we called ourselves _travestis fumadoras da esquina do Hilton._

I remember attending a panel where Fran addressed the importance of considering epistemic rights both within and beyond juridical frameworks. At the time, the notion of epistemic rights was a new concept to me, but I instinctively understood what she meant. Colonization in the Americas involved European powers forcing ideologies based on empiricism and reason onto colonized peoples. [^1] The violent universalization of medieval Europe’s separation between science and magic has contributed to the demise of Afro-Indigenous spiritualities deemed demonic and anti-Christian. 

In the context of Guaraní populations—my peoples who live in the southern regions of South America—epistemicide and acculturation has resulted in our histories of gender expansiveness being denied, erased, and forgotten. Researchers trained in Eurocentric academic methodologies studying the gender of the Guaraní people who inhabit Paraguay often portray them as binary populations. I am wary of those who have studied anthropology but do not interact closely with Indigiqueer individuals. 

Despite the supernatural conditions of epistemicide and its surrounding infrastructures, Guaraní gender expansiveness managed to survive. Trauma isn't the only thing inherited across generations. There are still those strategies that help us recentre ancestral knowledges that colonialism could never fully suppress. Unexpectedly, I have been able to reconnect with the gender-expansive symbolic worlds erased in my culture through the process of creating images with AI. But to understand how such an AI-mediated reconnection was even possible in the first place, we need to consider magic. 

*** 

The year is now 2022. My life looks very different. I’ve shed some layers and am about to enter my Saturn return. I’m working at a non-profit impacting global policy in trans human rights. At the time, I love it. I have a sense of purpose. In the span of a year, I may hate it all. To the NGO, the only solution to colonial epistemicide seems to be philanthropic intervention—a framework that is utterly insufficient for the kind of ancestral recovery work I am interested in. And so, I make a major life decision: I'm heading to Tongva land. 

A month before moving, I came across the work of Edgar Fabián Frías, a Wixárika luminary, brujx, tarot reader, and multidisciplinary artist who was then based in San Francisco. I was drawn to a workshop Edgar led on art-making as a kind of spell-casting. Participants explored incantation across different mediums. The digital images I created in the workshop blended abstract atmospheres: bloomings, rivers, and moons, all in reference to the land and cosmos. Here, I was influenced by Edgar’s practice, where Indigenous futurity felt at once absolutely different from the current order of things, and still, incredibly close. 

I want to think with one work by Edgar: _Kïïka_ (2023). Exhibited as part of the “LIFELIKE” (2023) exhibition at Vellum LA, _Kïïka_ is a digital image that draws as much from internet archives as it does from plural cosmologies. Vibrant colours alongside Wixárika and popular iconography guide the eye in Edgar’s affective cartography. _Kïïka_ is alive, pulsating with images of altered states and hyperconnectivity to the cosmos. Edgar’s work follows a long tradition of Wixárika explorations of multiple dimensions, embracing transculturality to resist and (re)exist. In this way, Indigenous art senses the planetary. 

A month after attending Edgar’s workshop, I began to play with text-to-image AI applications. Six months later, the result was _Paradise_ (2022)—a series of images that were like postcards from a future world where the biosphere was a place absolutely conceived in coalition with the invisible. Most images include multicoloured and shapeshifting bodies interacting with each other in the landscape. Another series of images I created, _Cycles_ (2024), represents trans Indigenous bodies generated from the programming of a world instructed in Western origin stories. It follows that the imges I created through AI were already prediscursively tainted by the semiotics of colonialism. On this topic, scholar Mashinka Firunts Hakopian introduces the term “algolinguicism” to describe how the archives of the internet’s memory reflects the values of hegemonic cultures while simultaneously minoritizing others through language. [^2] English, for example, is the dominant language in AI usage, and often the entry to its code. How does one transcend such semiotic conditioning? The intention with which one writes the text prompt used by AI to create an image is fundamental. Intention carries the power to become data, and later, an algorithm. The role that words have in constructing systems of knowledge is vital. Words reverberate, echolocating with the threads of existence. Through metaphor, language functions by invoking and attracting what one seeks to communicate. This metonymic function of language, wherein we only arrive at meaning through approximation, highlights the inherent instability of colonial grammar. Under such language, Guaraní gender expansiveness is purported to no longer exist. And yet, through my text prompts, I was able to articulate Guaraní lifeways using the same colonial language that sought to eliminate them. In the era of AI prompts, words are road maps to brighter constellations: declarations are incantations. 

A month before travelling to Turtle Island, or even knowing that was the name of the land, I saw turtles and tortoises everywhere. When sea turtles hatch on beaches around the world, they embark on multi-year, epic migrations at sea. During these voyages, they navigate by sensing the invisible lines of the magnetic field; each part of the coastline has its own unique magnetic signature, which the turtles remember and later use as an internal compass. After sea turtles reach sexual maturity, they might come back, in about 15 years to lay their own eggs. This process is both laborious and ancestral. 

Like the sea turtle, Indigenous knowledges re-emerge across generations, despite colonial algorithms. Even when languages have been colonized and pushed underground, their pulsing persists underneath it all. After all, what returns to the earth has the capacity to re-emerge. Something happens when magic is activated; if you pay attention, you start seeing signs everywhere. 

“Technology” stems from the Greek “tekhnologia,” meaning discourse about skilled making. It combines “tekhnē,” the art and methods of creation, and “logia,” signifying a systematic study. Originally referring to the knowledge and skill behind crafting, “technology” now encompasses the application of scientific knowledge to create practical tools and machines. Returning to the originary etymology, storytelling is a kind of technology. Origin stories hold profound significance across cultures and civilizations. They are narratives that explain the beginnings of the world, providing insights into the cultural beliefs, values, and worldviews of a particular society. Think of the story of Adam and Eve, and how it might inflect the patriarchal and Abrahamic biases in contemporary algorithms that place woman after man, good before evil, and purity before sin. When the conditions of this biblical equation were unfulfilled, the result was land displacement. Most origin stories from the colonial West appeal to a history of dividing one against another. What would it look like for an algorithm to be informed by Guaraní storytelling, for instance, which values animacy, sensitivity, emotion, and circular knowledges that, unlike Western teleology and linear logics of progress, thinks alongside cycles of land? In creating with AI, I remembered the beings that inhabit the forest. I remembered how to create another world with them, and _we_ gathered. 

In Guaraní cosmologies, Tupã Tenondé is the deity of creation, often presented in symbiosis with the hummingbird. [^3] Hummingbirds, after all, are absolute cross-pollinators. The generative eros of the hummingbird is world-building. Put differently, before colonial knowledge is love. The hummingbird’s fecundity, like the act of communing in soil, facilitates future cycles of blooming. Here, I also think of the Guaraní word _tekoha_, which means “the place where we are who we are.” For Guaraní gender expansiveness, _tekoha_ is a sacred site where we have the right to be ourselves, with oxygen, water, and care. Any language I use to create AI-generated images will always be informed by this constant process of blooming, where mutualist ecologies allow for life to exist. 

[^1]: Scholar Viviane Vergueiro Simakawa, for instance, has written extensively about how Eurocentrism defines permanence as a sociocultural and institutional norm for understanding cisgenderness. See Viviane Vergueiro Simakawa, “Por inflexões decoloniais de corpos e identidades de gênero inconformes: uma análise autoetnográfica da cisgeneridade como normatividade” (master’s dissertation, Federal University of Bahia, 2015), [https://repositorio.ufba.br/handle/ri/19685](https://repositorio.ufba.br/handle/ri/19685)
[^2]: Mashinka Firunts Hakopian, “A New AI Lexicon: Algolinguicism,” AI Now Institute, October 21, 2021, [https://ainowinstitute.org-publication/a-new-ai-lexicon-algolinguicism-2](https://ainowinstitute.org-publication/a-new-ai-lexicon-algolinguicism-2)
[^3]: Kaká Werá Jecupé, _Tupã Tenondé: A criação do Universo, da Terra e do Homem segundo a tradição oral Guarani_ (São Paulo: Editora Peirópolis, 2001). 

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Storytelling

Technology

Kira Xonorika uses magic as a lens to understand how an AI-mediated reconnection with Guaraní gender-expansive worlds is possible by exploiting the instability of colonial English grammar. 

AI Incantations for Sovereignty and Gender Expansiveness

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Nyssa Komorowski writes of how wampum belts and contemporary wampum creations carry forward ancient knowledges and living embodiments of relationships, to anticipate the future of Haudenosaunee and larger Indigenous sovereignties.

The Seashells That Saved the World

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

_C Magazine_ is seeking a new Executive Director/Publisher to serve as the strategic and visionary leader of the organization, sensitively, pluralistically, and energetically overseeing the publication of _C Magazine_ in its support of Canadian contemporary art. The Executive Director/Publisher role offers an exciting opportunity to lead a significant cultural organization within Canadian and international art publishing. The ideal candidate will have experience in managing charitable arts organizations, print and/or digital publishing, non-profit financial management, and organizational leadership. A deep understanding of contemporary art discourse is essential for this position. The incumbent will demonstrate exceptional skills in managing staff, board, community, and partner relationships. They will work collaboratively with our team to realize the organization's goals, enhancing and expanding _C Magazine_’s profile both locally and internationally, while fostering understanding and appreciation of contemporary art in Canada.

The Executive Director/Publisher is responsible for the day-to-day management and development of C The Visual Arts Foundation and _C Magazine_, overseeing the mandate and vision, and the publishing program in print and online. The Executive Director/Publisher is accountable for the strategic plan and operations of _C_, including finances, grant applications, fundraising, and human resource management. They also manage the distribution and sale of _C Magazine_, including its marketing communications, promotional events and circulation. The Executive Director/Publisher works collaboratively with the Editor to oversee the production and design of the magazine and ensure the content serves its readers and the Canadian arts community. This role is committed to upholding principles of anti-oppression and equity within the visual arts sector. The Executive Director/Publisher reports directly to the Board of Directors of C The Visual Arts Foundation and remains accountable to its authority.

Ensuring that C fulfills its mandate while meeting the standards, policies, strategic objectives, and priorities of the organization, the Executive Director / Publisher oversees and is accountable for the following key responsibilities:


- Works with the Board of Directors (BOD) to develop the mandate, vision, and strategic plan to guide the organization
- Acts as advisor to the BOD on all aspects of the organization’s activities
- Leads and participates in initiatives that establish C’s leadership in the arts sector
- Fosters effective teamwork between the BOD and the Executive Director and between the Executive Director and staff
- Maintains strong working relationships with Board leadership, providing timely, accurate, and transparent communication, and keeping the Board President apprised of all pressing organizational matters
- Establishes good working relationships with community groups, funders, and other organizations and stakeholders that support C’s mandate

Leadership and Governance

- Ensures the operation of the organization meets the needs of all stakeholders including community collaborators, partners, the BOD, and funders
- Identifies and evaluates risks to the organization’s people, finances, goodwill, and image, and implements measures to control risks
- Ensures that programs and services offered by the organization contribute to its mission and reflect the priorities of the approved strategic plan


Strategic and Operational Planning

- Prepares the annual budget in consultation with the BOD and Editor
- Monitors cash flow, anticipated expenditures, and reports regularly throughout the year, advising the BOD on financial matters in a timely manner
- Manages and maintains accurate bookkeeping including in-kind transactions
- Oversees the annual audit and files the charity return


Financial Management

- Responsible for the annual fundraising plan, directing and producing support materials for the annual auction, individual donor campaign, sponsorships, and other initiatives as required
- Researches and coordinates operational, marketing, and employment grants, including writing or reviewing, creating budgets, and directing staff involvement 
- Cultivates and stewards new partnerships, sponsorships, and collaborations that support C’s mandate and goals; negotiates contracts, and ensures benefits are delivered


Fundraising and Development

- Hires staff in accordance with policies and procedures, with the HR Committee as required
- Oversees the recruitment, training, and evaluation of staff, interns, and volunteers
- Ensures that personnel policies and practices are carried out, in accordance with the HR Employee Handbook
- Maintains a professional atmosphere in accordance with the Ontario Code of Human Rights, and ensures that fair practices are carried out in accordance with the Ontario Labour Laws 


Human Resources Management

- Develops and coordinates a communications and marketing plan that includes social media and print (with other staff when applicable) for audience development, magazine content, fundraising, events, and programs 
- Coordinates promotional events with staff assistance, including the participation of _C Magazine_ at art fairs 
- Oversees the Advertising Representative contract, media kit development, and advertising strategies



Marketing and Advertising

- Manages operational contracts including office lease, office equipment, and insurance, and maintains a physical space
- Liaises with the printer concerning publication dates and deliverables
- Oversees the production schedule, editorial budget, and issue-related information with the Editor
- Maintains the physical and digital archives of _C Magazine_


Office and Magazine Production Management

- Manages distributor contracts and placements, develops new ones, and oversees distribution in a timely manner that meets the publication date
- Evaluates distribution data and strategies and develops plans to enhance distribution and visibility
- Maintains a secure subscriber database, ensuring correct data input and extraction 


Distribution and Circulation

Roles and Responsibilities

- Master’s degree in arts management, non-profit management, publishing, or another relevant discipline, or a closely related field in the Arts, Humanities, or Social Sciences; or equivalent education, training, and experience relevant to the role
- Knowledge and understanding of anti-oppression with demonstrable commitment to equity, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility in past work 
- Demonstrated success in grant writing and knowledge of arts funding structures
- Demonstrated success in fundraising, and knowledge of related ethics and standards
- Experience developing careful and productive working relationships with partner organizations, donors, sponsors, artists, writers, and other stakeholders, locally and internationally
- Experience in charitable financial management, full-cycle accounting and audit preparation
- Experience overseeing and motivating a team, including recruitment and hiring


Required Education and Experience

- Proven ability to effectively communicate effectively in a professional context related to art and culture 
- Attentive to detail, with advanced project management, planning, and organizational skills
Strong systems thinking and proficiency in using and leveraging software and technology to build organizational capacity and efficiency
- Demonstrable ability to work enthusiastically, respectfully, and sensitively as part of creative collaboration
- Training in conflict resolution, anti-racism, or anti-oppression
- Computer skills: MS Office, Adobe apps, Google apps, Dropbox, Slack, and cloud-based business applications; C currently uses FileMakerPro (legacy), Pelcro, Strapi CMS, Mailchimp, Stripe, Paypal


Abilities

- Experience in policy development and risk management
- Experience in print or online publishing is considered a major asset
- Experience managing CMS, CRM, marketing and social media platforms and accounts 
- Experience in database management, including data integrity, mapping, export, and import
- Experience in marketing and communications: planning, coordination, and writing a variety of materials, including e-newsletter and social media posts
- Knowledge and commitment to contemporary art and its concerns, with well-developed networks within the national (and ideally international) contemporary art community
- Knowledge of editorial ethics, journalistic integrity, industry standards, copyright


Assets

- Available for occasional evenings and weekend commitments, including meetings and attendance at events, online and in Toronto
- Ability to lead a team effectively in a remote environment
- Responsible, ethical, and accountable,, with an engaged, hands-on, and constructive approach
- Driven to advance _C Magazine_'s mandate and vision

Additional Requirements

Qualifications

Additional Information

How to Apply

Information for Applicants

Job Details

C Magazine seeks a new Executive Director & Publisher 

_C Magazine_ is seeking a new Executive Director/Publisher to serve as the strategic and visionary leader of the organization, sensitively, pluralistically, and energetically overseeing the publication of _C Magazine_ in its support of Canadian contemporary art. 

Job Opportunity: Executive Director & Publisher 

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

Call

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.

Presented by C Magazine and the [Indigenous Curatorial Collective / Collectif des commissaires autochtones (ICCA)](https://icca.art/)

We’re excited to launch the 3rd annual Indigenous Art Writing Award, an initiative created to support, compensate, and platform three standout individuals who are advancing critical and creative thought about Indigenous contemporary art. 

Indigenous writers are invited to submit a single non-fiction text about an artist, project, exhibition, performance, event, initiative, theme, and/or phenomenon therein. Suggested length for submissions is between 1000-2000 words.

The winner will receive $1500 CAD; editorial support to prepare their article for publication in a future issue of _C Magazine_; and a two-year subscription. Each of the two runners-up will receive $1000 CAD; an open invitation to develop a pitch for a different text to be published in _C Magazine_; and a two-year subscription. All participants can request feedback on their submitted work, and will receive a one-year subscription.

Applicants must identify as an Indigenous person. There are no geographical restrictions, although we strongly encourage those based in Canada to apply. Submissions should primarily be in English, but may include non-English words or phrases. For submissions entirely in another language, we ask for translations. The award will be adjudicated by ICCA staff, _C Magazine_ editors, and an external juror. 

There is one submission per applicant. Please note that submissions must not be previously published or slated for future publication elsewhere. Complete the [submission form](https://forms.gle/wBGeNxC3R4vxRAke9) by **November 22, 2024.**

Please write to [editor@cmagazine.com](mailto:editor@cmagazine.com) if you require any accommodation during the application process. Note that measures will be taken to ensure that the identity of entrants remains unknown to adjudicators. More information about the kind of writing _C Magazine_ publishes can be found on our [Submissions page.](https://cmagazine.com/about/submissions)

Partners

Call for the 3rd Annual Indigenous Art Writing Award

The Indigenous Art Writing Award is an initiative created to support, compensate, and platform standout individuals who are advancing critical and creative thought about Indigenous contemporary art. The award is presented by _C Magazine_ and the [Indigenous Curatorial Collective / Collectif des commissaires autochtones ](link)(ICCA).

Indigenous writers in the first decade of their career are invited to submit a single text up to 2,000 words in length about an artist, project, exhibition, performance, event, initiative, theme, and/or phenomenon therein.

Applicants must identify as an Indigenous person. There are no geographical restrictions, although we strongly encourage those based in Canada to apply. Submissions should be primarily in English, but may include non-English words or phrases. For submissions entirely in another language, we require translations. It is free to make a submission. Please note for the purposes of this award, submissions must not be previously published or slated for future publication elsewhere.

The award is adjudicated by ICCA staff, _C Magazine_ editors, and an external juror. The winner receives a cash award and editorial support to prepare their article for publication in _C Magazine_, and the runner receives a cash award. All participants receive a subscription to _C Magazine_.

The 2022 winner was awarded the Momus Emerging Critics Residency, supported in part by [Momus](https://momus.ca/), together with the presenting partners.

Submission

Indigenous Art Writing Award

Program

Applications are currently closed, stay tuned!

Program Information

Lois Taylor Biggs' feature [_Archives, Bones, and Polaroids_](https://cmagazine.com/articles/archives-bones-and-polaroids) is published in C151 "Greif" (Spring 2022). 

The winner of our inaugural Indigenous Art Writing Award, co-presented with the Indigenous Curatorial Collective, focuses on the late artist Kimowan Metchewais, who sought to build a personal photo archive toward his “imagining of a post-[Edward] Curtis world, without ‘ethnographic baggage.’”     

2022 Indigenous Art Writing Award Winner

Presented by _C Magazine_ and the Indigenous Curatorial Collective / Collectif des commissaires autochtones. The Indigenous Art Writing Award is an initiative created to support, compensate, and platform standout individuals who are advancing critical and creative thought about Indigenous contemporary art. 

In partnership with the Indigenous Curatorial Collective / Collectif des commissaires autochtones, we are now accepting applications for the 2nd annual Indigenous Art Writing Award.




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The Seashells That Saved the World

C Mag

The Latest

Art With Heart — Casey House

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Issue 158

Almanac

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Upcoming

Job Opportunity: Executive Director & Publisher

Call for Letters: Almanac

Call for Indigenous Art Writing Award

2024 C New Critics Award Winner: Louis-Philippe Savard