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The Image Centre

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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

Olivia Kristoff is a writer and art historian based in Saskatoon, SK. She holds a BA in Art History from the University of Saskatchewan (2019) and is the curator at Wanuskewin Heritage Park. Olivia was raised in Treaty 6 territory, and is a member of Cowessess First Nation in Treaty 4. 

A retrospective covering her decades-long career, The Art of Faye HeavyShield, curated by Felicia Gay, highlights the immense impact the artist’s practice has had on the history of Indigenous art across the Prairie provinces, and so-called Canada at large. Since the beginning of her career, Faye HeavyShield’s work has incorporated aspects of her Kainai (Blood) heritage. Like her contemporaries Joi T. Arcand and Catherine Blackburn, HeavyShield emphasizes the importance of strengthening Indigenous cultures in a country that often continues to ignore the intergenerational trauma left from past and present colonial injustices.  

 

In _Wave_ (2018), a rope composed of printed digital photographs of prairie grass is arranged on the ground in the shape of a coil, much like a braid of sweetgrass. With each layer of the spiral bigger than the last, these “ripples” invoke the long-lasting influence of HeavyShield’s work on the Canadian cultural landscape. _Wave_ was created three years after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission presented the executive summary of its findings and gave its recommendations in 2015. The concentric circles of roped–prairie grass photos visually articulate the echoing, ongoing colonial consequences that the settler state cannot be accountable to. This remains a standout piece in her body of work. 

Circular aesthetics are also prominent in _Sisters_ (1993)—an installation featuring six pairs of white shoes arranged in a circle. The pairs of shoes represent HeavyShield and her five sisters as a symbol of the strength of women. Like many Indigenous cultures in the Prairies, Blackfoot peoples are a matriarchal society, and women are integral to the success and strength of kin. As women are the core lifeblood of their society, HeavyShield pays homage to those in her family, with their relationality centred through each of the circle’s connecting points. With much of the artist’s inspiration coming from her life on the Blood Reserve and Blackfoot cultures, this approach to relationality, in terms of personal and communal experience continues to set her apart from other artists. 

Writer

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The Art of Faye HeavyShield  runs from 28 October 2022 to 19 February 2023 at the Mackenzie Art Gallery, Regina.

The Art of Faye HeavyShield 

Artist Project

Simon Fuh is an artist and writer based in Toronto. His work spans a wide range of media, but coalesces around sound, installation, collaboration, and drawing. He tends to build relationships with friends and community through his work, often incorporating a performative or narrative element that influences the  trajectory of projects that explore themes of place, memory, and microhistory. 


**Sanaa Humayun** (she/her) is the child of Pakistani immigrants, currently residing in Mohkínstsis, on Treaty 7 land. She is an artist, writer, and curator exploring non-narrative storytelling, community, food, laughter, and an unapologetic love of gossip.


Simon Fuh is a Toronto-based artist, and working with him didn’t feel like work at all. I reached out to Simon because of the playfulness within his practice, often exploring temporary, site-specific installations and collaborations. This project takes an unconventional format, and planning together involved getting to know and understand each other. We talked often about the idea of relationship-building as art practice, and we tried to embody that through every level including our curatorial relationship, which didn’t follow a strict hierarchy or deadline.

I work in Calgary’s Chinatown and have for almost a year to the day from writing this. Calgary’s Chinatown spans just a few blocks, and as gentrification creeps in on either side, those borders continue to shrink. It’s so slow that you almost don’t notice. Restaurants, bars, coffee shops, spaces that have been here for years, sometimes decades, shut down quietly and without fanfare. The quiet exhaustion of unsustainability. My relationship to Chinatown is framed by the relationships I make with these spaces and the people who run them. It’s also marked by the gaps that are left when they leave. I had no preconceptions for this project other than wanting to create something that embodies the playful eccentricity of these spaces, compared to the stiff, cold, corporate façade of the rest of Calgary’s downtown.

Building a relationship over Zoom is strange and often stilted, and Simon and I spent a lot of time dreaming of what we wanted to create. Toronto and Calgary are vastly different cities, and as such their Chinatowns are different as well, considering sheer size alone. But common currents exist across both as landing places for immigrant communities, and we bonded over a mutual delight in our relationships to the small, locally owned spaces. Ones that exist earnestly and simply, where you can always find the owners, and build community through regular visits.

In Toronto, Apollo on Broadview Avenue is one such space. Located in east-end Chinatown, Apollo is a quiet, nondescript bar. The windows are covered with big metal barriers. The sign outside boasts its name in bright-yellow lettering, also featuring a cartoon monkey—a symbol for good fortune.

Walk into the Apollo and you’ll find grey walls, an internet jukebox, and a Molson Canadian flag. There’s a pool table and the bar sits toward the back. Francis, the owner, keeps the lights off over the pool table if no one is playing, so it’s often dark as you enter. But if you ask him to turn on the lights and get the jukebox going, the energy builds quickly. Most of the time, you’ll find a few regulars sitting at the bar chatting, or watching a game on the TVs. It’s clean behind the bar and a little haphazard—pitchers stacked on top of one another, along with a wok, old calendars, and miscellaneous papers. You can get one beer on tap; otherwise stick to bottles, or an obscure cooler. Francis is usually sitting there—he’s not shy, but maybe a little reserved. He’ll wait for you to start a conversation with him, but once you do he’s incredibly open.

Simon’s experience there is one that grows warmer with regularity. For him, Apollo is a place where anything can happen. There’s a sincerity to the bar— an honesty and a comfort in not trying to be anything other than what it is. It’s a space without frills, not catering to a specific clientele. To fit in there, you simply need to go. The space lets its patrons exist exactly as they are too.

As we discussed ideas, Simon revealed that he wanted to do something with this bar, his local Chinatown dive. We discussed giving a gift to Apollo, and to Francis. The question then became— what did Apollo need? Initially we decided on a bouquet of flowers. On a slow Monday night, Simon went over to the bar. When Simon recounted the evening to me, he set up the story slowly:

Simon orders a drink, sitting nervously, unsure of how to start a conversation. The TV plays quietly in the background and there are a couple of regulars at the bar. Francis recognizes Simon, but they’ve never really spoken, other than a bit of chit-chat here and there. Simon worries about explaining this project—if Francis will be interested, or confused. As he sits, he realizes that flowers don’t make sense for the space and that leaves him less sure-footed. Eventually he starts playing pool, and starts chatting and playing with some regulars around his age. Simon tells them what he wants to do. One of them knows Francis and has been coming to the bar since it opened, so he brings Simon up to introduce him. Simon tells Francis about the project and he’s not confused—he’s delighted. As the night unfolds, the energy grows and Simon learns more about Francis and the bar. Together, they decide that the gift will be a drawing of a monkey. Something that symbolizes good fortune, and an image Francis chose for the bar that is also representative of his daughter.

Two days later, Simon brought a framed drawing to the bar. _The Spirit of Apollo_ now hangs in the front, so everyone can see it when they walk in, at Francis’s insistence. This project lives outside of the magazine, in the relationships, gift-giving, and experience of building trust and community. Every part was rooted in the sweetness, intimacy, and care of these relations. Though giving Francis this gift was the centre of the work, it also means something far beyond it. The pictures Simon took are documentation—an archive and a record, a way of thinking about art practice that isn’t stiffened or institutionalized by white gallery walls. Simon’s work meets Apollo and Francis where they’re at and creates spaces for us to share in that reciprocity.

You can enjoy a cheap beer and impeccable energy at Apollo, 358 Broadview Avenue.

Curator

Artist

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Site-specific

Relational

Guest-curated by Sanaa Humayun, artist Simon Fuh’s _The Spirit of Apollo_ explores community relations in the form of Fuh’s local bar in Toronto’s east-end Chinatown. Fuh expresses his appreciation for the Apollo with a handmade gift that creates a space for reciprocity beyond the magazine’s pages.


The Spirit of Apollo by Simon Fuh: Text

Daysha Loppie is an arts and culture journalist and interdisciplinary artist based in Toronto. Currently enrolled at Toronto Metropolitan University, Daysha has won several awards for her journalism. Her writing works to amplify stories from communities that are often underserved and overlooked by broader Canadian media. Daysha is determined to one day run her own publication. 

In “Black Drones in the Hive” (2022),​​ Deanna Bowen disrupts the Canadian guise of innocence with incontestable proof of the white supremacy, colonization, and capitalism foundational to nation-making in Canada. Originally produced in 2020 under a commission from the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, “Black Drones in the Hive” was guest-curated by Crystal Mowry and coincided with Bowen’s receipt of the 2021 Scotiabank Photography Award.  

Bowen recontextualizes physical artefacts and framed reproductions of archival documents by insightfully arranging them into collections. A display case holds an illustration of the Kaufman rubber factory built in what was then called Berlin, ON, in 1907. Jacob Ratz Kaufman was a founding member of the Eugenics Society of Canada. On display in _Berlin_ (2020), a newspaper article chronicles the renaming of Berlin, ON, around World War I, when German affiliation became economically disadvantageous. In 1916, Berlin became Kitchener, ON.  

In _The Wars_ (2020), a reproduction of a poster published in London, ON, circa 1902, lists British Army officer and colonial administrator Horatio Herbert Kitchener as a “South African hero,” invoking Kitchener’s expansion of the British concentration camps in South Africa during the Second Boer War. He was a forefather of apartheid.  

Bowen is unafraid to position her own family lineage in this broader context of racist dispossession. Among 20 other documents in _Black Drones_ (2020) is an inkjet print of her ancestor Columbus Bowen’s application for an Albertan homestead in 1913. “Coloured” is written and underlined on the application twice. Alongside these violent histories, Bowen also illuminates Black histories of survival lost in hierarchies of remembrance that can only commemorate whiteness. _Abolition_ (2020) features pages of Mary Ann Shadd Cary’s anti-slavery newspaper, _The Provincial Freeman_, and a map of escape routes into Canada traveled by fugitive Black folk escaping slavery in the United States. 

Saidiya Hartman's writing came to mind as I walked through the exhibit. Hartman’s practice of critical fabulation interweaves fiction and critical theory to give dimension to the Black lives flattened by archive. It is an arduous task but, as Dionne Brand wrote in _Bread Out of Stone_ (1994), “We do not wish to run from our history but to recover it; our history is to us redemptive and restorative.” After Hartman and Brand, “Black Drones in the Hive” is a gift of love. 

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"Scotiabank Photography Award: Black Drones in the Hive" ran from 14 September to 3 December 2022  at The Image Centre, Toronto. 

"Scotiabank Photography Award:  Black Drones in the Hive" – Deanna Bowen

Madeline Bogoch is a writer/student based between Winnipeg and Montreal. She is currently pursuing her MA in art history at Concordia University.

Amid a particularly heated political moment concerning the autonomy of both land and bodies, “IN DEEP” (2022), a recent group exhibition at Winnipeg’s PLATFORM centre, probed the implications of eco-capitalism on both categories. The social and environmental devastation left in the wake of resource extraction is the through line between the works, which are otherwise situated in their specific geographic contexts. Hailing from New Brunswick, guest curator Amy Ash assembled the exhibition with an emphasis on East Coast artists and narratives that may be unfamiliar to the Prairie audience of Winnipeg’s PLATFORM centre. 

Recalling the history of the eponymous Newfoundland neighbourhood, St. John’s–based artist Emily Critch’s _crow gulch_ (2019) is a roughly hewn screen-printed textile resembling a rocky landscape. Many residents of the stigmatized area worked in the adjacent paper mill before being forcibly displaced in the late ’60s. Local specificity such as this is leveraged against the common theme of exploitation, as the exhibition cautiously flirts with the fatalistic question alluded to in the title: are we in too deep to turn things around? The driving source of tension that arises in “IN DEEP” is not only the urgency of this inquiry, but also the arguably oppositional interests between sustainability and regional economies, which are often dependent on the natural-resource sector. Ash handles this friction generously, recognizing the dual exploitation of the depleted ecosystems and of the communities whose lives and labour become embroiled in these industries. 

Navigating the nuanced line between livelihood and extractivism, Frédéric Bigras-Burrogano’s _La mer qui meurt_ (2020) features a wooden crate containing a salt print image of cod. _La mer qui meurt_’s photo medium and the species it depicts share a precarious quality. Gillian Dykeman’s multimedia installation _Weird Woods_ (2019) includes a 16 mm video alongside an arrangement of firewood, as well as a printed text exchange between the artist and the proprietor of the wood-lot from which the materials were sourced. Though both approach the subject critically, neither flatly condemns the practices of fishing or forestry, as they instead carve out a distinction between sustainable harvesting and overconsumption. The challenge in identifying this threshold is further complicated by the degree to which natural-resource industries have become embedded in regional identities, an issue that, as Ash’s curatorial essay explains, is a driving force in her work, informed by her experience as the daughter of a mine worker. 

At the core of cultures of extraction is the corresponding dispossession of Indigenous communities. Lori Blondeau’s striking large-scale photographic portrait, _Asiniy Iskwew_ (2016), depicts the Cree/Saulteaux/Métis artist statuesquely posed atop a large rock. Draped around Blondeau and bleeding onto the rock is a red velvet robe invoking the commemoration of missing and murdered Indigenous women. The image serves as a testament to the fact that resource extraction and gender-based violence share a common root in settler colonialism, the paradigm of which relies on maintaining a divide between the categories of land and body. This artificial bifurcation between humanity and nature is further explored in Tsēmā’s _Real Camo_ (2019), which has taken various forms in the interdisciplinary artist’s practice. For “IN DEEP,” _Real Camo_ is presented as a textile printed with images of rocks to create the illusion of camouflage. Placed at the centre of the fabric is a neatly folded jump-suit in the same pattern, surrounded by miniaturized safety fencing. Tsēmā’s piece thwarts the hypermasculine and militaristic baggage of camo print; the tenuous boundaries arbitrarily drawn between bodies and the land are renegotiated through the camo print’s optical elision of the human and nature. 

New Mineral Collective’s future-oriented video installation _Pleasure Prospects_ (2019) is a notable outlier in the exhibition, distinct from the terrestrial aesthetic shared by the other works. The film features a glossy constellation of mining trade shows, quarries, and digitally rendered landscapes, along with scenes of contemporary dancers gracefully floating through industrial spaces. _Pleasure Prospects_ is part of the duo’s practice of “counter prospecting,” tapping into the speculative nature of resource mining to seek pleasure-driven alternatives. Despite the often-barren backdrop, the film is presented in such a way that it feels soft and even seductive. The ambience is aided by the serene voice-over of a narrator who offers opaque prompts toward this post-anthropocentric future, asking, “How to extract meaning not material?” The question is posed ambiguously, but presumably, “meaning” is offered as an immaterial alternative to natural-resource mining. Whether intentional or not, the proposal struck me to consider the parallels between personal data mining and the unnerving ways that information is routinely weaponized. It’s a threat that has taken on new urgency in light of the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade, since personal health data may be used to criminalize those who terminate pregnancies in the United States. Even as it seems increasingly elusive in our current reality, _Pleasure Prospects_ offers a vision of a dreamy utopia free of extractive violence, though the conditions of this resolution remain undefined. To be fair, the film is not a map to this future, but a sensual sampling of an idealized horizon line. 

Both the body and land are popular and enduring subjects in contemporary art. Rallying cries around environmental crisis, while morally unassailable, don’t necessarily produce good art. More than a few exhibitions feature landscapes in peril, offering little beyond a facile abstraction of the genuine and disproportionate stakes of climate change. Where “IN DEEP” strikes a chord is in the compassionate undertone, which regards the complex scales and dynamics involved in resource extraction. Not only is this recognition endearing, it also grants the exhibition a critical edge over those that neglect these entanglements. There are risks to investing in such nuance, but “IN DEEP” offers an earnest examination of where we are and how we got there, coupled with a cautious hint of hopefulness about what could come next. 

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“IN DEEP” included work by Frédéric Bigras-Burrogano, Lori Blondeau, Emily Critch, Gillian Dykeman, Tsēmā, and New Mineral Collective, and ran from 3 June to 8 July 2022 at PLATFORM centre for photographic + digital arts, Winnipeg. Curated by Amy Ash. 

"IN DEEP" — Frédéric Bigras-Burrogano, Lori Blondeau, Emily Critch, Gillian Dykeman, Tsēmā, New Mineral Collective 

Print and Digital subscriptions are available for individuals and institutions

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##### _C Magazine_ would like to congratulate Shaneela Boodoo on winning the 2022 C New Critics Award, and Stephanie Weber on being named the runner-up. Now in its 13th consecutive year, this program gives _C Magazine_ the opportunity to identify, support, and promote the work of promising new writers, who often become regular contributors. _C_ sincerely thanks all those who applied, as well as the jurors of this year’s award: Nataleah Hunter-Young, Maandeeq Mohamed, and Hagere Selam “shimby” Zegeye-Gebrehiwot. Measures were taken to ensure that the identity of entrants remained unknown to adjudicators. 


In a room bathed in light periwinkle, with candles flickering and gentle music tinkling, entering “begin to be; have become” at TakeHome BIPOC Arts felt like bending the heaviness of the present to something bright and gleaming. Formally established in early 2021, TakeHome BIPOC Arts House is the only artist-run centre dedicated solely to BIPOC artists in Winnipeg. Despite the minimal resources available to this young arts organization, the comprehensive exhibition encompassed photography, beading, and painting. Installations like Rae Swan’s _How Lucky To Be Made For This (2)_ (2021) and Lan “Florence” Yee’s _PROOF—Anti-Displacement Chinatown Garden_ (2020) floated in mid-air, oblivious to the confines of gravity. The recurrent use of suspension across “begin to be; have become” suggests a shared otherworldly ethos— one of amorphous beings not bound to Earth. Curated by Ren Lam, “begin to be; have become” is optimistic about the future by looking into the past, rejecting the overrepresentation of queer trauma by asking: _who have we always been? Who can we become outside of colonial violence?_
 
In Kole Peplinskie’s _Ancestor’s Embrace_ (2021), an installation featuring a flat A4-sized, two-sided piece of printed fabric is hung at eye level from a delicate chain attached to a maple branch with deer-hide loops. On one side, there is a photograph of a shirtless person, with tattoos and visible surgical scars on their chest. Sitting on a wooden chair surrounded by trees, the figure gazes into the camera as two beaded branches snake down and hold them close. One leaf stretches upward toward the person’s chest, as if to say: _I see you, and I am here_. The translucent fabric allows sunlight to pass through the work, as the person and the beaded branches shimmer, imbued with the brightness of the sun. On the opposite side of the fabric, the subject sits against the tree trunk. Pictured next to the subject’s face are two beaded profiles, one of which gazes at the subject with its hair flowing up and away. Peplinskie’s painstaking, laborious beading embeds these figures into the natural world, as if to say that by putting forth the effort to nurture the work of ancestral connection, forebearers will return the embrace, transforming you into beings that are as beautiful and shiny as they are. 

Photographs printed on fabric also hang mid-air in Lan “Florence” Yee’s _PROOF_ series. In _PROOF—Anti-Displacement Chinatown Garden_, a photograph captures two empty wooden chairs, sitting atop a platform, surrounded by flowers and other wild greenery. The word “PROOF” is repeatedly embroidered overtop. Embroidered onto the bottom left corner of the photo is a palette reflecting the range of colours in the image: black, green, sky blue, orange, and a creamy light yellow. Here, Yee’s embroidered details mimic the kind of features that would be present on a printer’s proof. According to the exhibition description, Yee grapples with the colonial power structures that inform state archives through the use of textiles “as an ode to self-defeat.” The ironic deployment of the proof format drives home the point that photos are “unable to capture all facets of lived experience.” Yee’s work asks many critical questions such as: _why is this practice of archiving touted as the best way to discover one’s history as a queer racialized person? What are the effects of this desire to document?_ Yee’s ultra-structured embroidery reminds us of the foundational limitations of sterile, institutionalized queer archives. Yee imparts that there must be room left for the messy, the illegible, and the imperfect, so that we may peer at the unseen. This obscuration lives between the cracks of a decaying structure, and if we look closely, we can catch a glimpse of something precious. 

I want to return to my opening questions: _who have we always been? Who can we become outside of colonial violence?_ The works in “begin to be; have become” feel unbound in their ponderings on gender and race, reflecting the labour of making a new home inside rich histories that seek to answer these questions. For Peplinskie, this labour is carried out by finding solace and showing love to oneself, the surrounding world, and the forebearers who shaped this same world. For Yee, they are determined to define their own fate through the painstaking labour of archival reconstruction that reminds us of the possibilities that open up when institutions fail. Ultimately, the aforementioned works are as fluid and boundless as time itself, traversing past, present, and future to finally become something that is unburdened and free.

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“begin to be; have become” included work by Kole Peplinskie, Rae Swan, Lan “Florence” Yee, and Helina Zegeye, and ran from 21 January to 25 February 2022 at TakeHome BIPOC Arts House, Winnipeg. Curated by Ren Lam. 


“begin to be; have become” — Kole Peplinskie, Rae Swan, Lan “Florence” Yee, Helina Zegeye

**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 Toronto-based artist, arts administrator and occasional writer interested in examining the construction and dissemination of Canadian multiculturalism and diversity.

**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

You’re invited to submit a letter in response to C Magazine Issue 153 “Chinatown” by MARCH 1.

Selected letters will be published in C154 (Spring 2023).

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 things 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-chinatown) for this issue.

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

By now we understand extraction as the political-ontological basis for the circulation of resources under neoliberal capitalism—and that agents of such appropriation scarcely do enough to respect, heal, and replenish their sources. From sex work and old-growth forests to ghost towns and lost languages, this issue explores artistic and activist practices that interrogate an array of extractive efforts and attempt to demarcate non-extractive modalities. 

Extraction

Call for Letters: Chinatown

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.

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.



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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. 

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“begin to be; have become” — Kole Peplinskie, Rae Swan, Lan “Florence” Yee, Helina Zegeye

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