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

Editor

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

Associate Editor

Publisher

Designer

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

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

Almanac

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_C Magazine_ celebrates 40 Years! 

Art Toronto returns October 24-27, 2024 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, celebrating its 25th year. The most significant art event in Canada, Art Toronto connects collectors, curators, galleries and artists from across the country and around the world. Canada's art fair will feature over 100 galleries, as well as installations, exhibitions, and engaging programming. [Get your tickets today (https://arttoronto.ca/home/exhibitors/). The fair and it's programming run Friday to Sunday. On the evening of October 24, 2024 guests are also invited to Art Toronto Opening Night, a benefit for the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, which includes a VIP preview of the work on view through this year's exhibitors. 

This year's lineup includes galleries from cities across Canada, as well as New York, London, Amsterdam, Reykjavík, Buenos Aires, Seoul and more. In addition to these gallery exhibitors, Art Toronto  features it's annual Focus exhibition, the 2024 edition of which is curated by Rhéanne Chartrand. Titled "the place to which we return," it centres Indigenous, immigrant, and racialized artists complex relationships to home. Plan your visit by learning more about this year's exhibitors, and focus exhibition, plus check out the installations, talks, and fair tours led by artists, curators, and collectors, all included in Art Toronto's 2024 Programming. Visitor information and more is available at [ArtToronto.ca](arttoronto.ca/home)





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Art Toronto returns October 24-27 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, celebrating its 25th year.

Canada's Art Fair: Art Toronto 2024

Review

Julian Jason Haladyn is an art historian, cultural theorist, and Assistant Professor at OCAD University.

Bringing together four decades of the expansive and dynamic practice, “Shelley Niro: 500 Year Itch” is the first major retrospective of the Mohawk (Kanien’keha:ka) artist and filmmaker. This show at the Art Gallery of Hamilton consists of more than 70 works including many of her most famous series—expanding the first iteration of the exhibition at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in 2023. The curators Melissa Bennett, Greg Hill, and David Penney have done an extraordinary job organizing and arranging the works, which are presented thematically instead of chronologically.

Entering the exhibition, one is immediately confronted by a series of three large photographs of the artist, _Abnormally Aboriginal_ (2014–2017), presented on a dark-coloured wall. In each of these portraits we see Niro wearing a black shirt while posing in front of a similarly black background that contrasts with her brightly lit face. At the bottom of all three portraits are stylized images of a DNA strand. While the final photograph in the series displays only the DNA strand, the preceding two feature a profile of a First Nations person’s head beside the DNA. The first portrait is accompanied by the text “abnormally” and “aboriginal,” while the middle portrait features the words “normal” and “original.” As an introduction to the retrospective, _Abnormally Aboriginal_ captures key themes and practices—self-portraiture, identity, and Indigeneity, as well as ways of thinking through self and culture—that connect much of the work in the exhibition. 

Throughout her career Niro has consistently created conceptual yet playful self-portraits. In addition to _Abnormally Aboriginal, Waitress_ (1987) exemplifies this playfulness, as an early painting that shows the artist as a server in a restaurant who accidently spills wine on a white woman, while former prime minister Brian Mulroney and his wife Mila dance in the background. Discussing this work in her essay for the exhibition catalogue, Melissa Bennett notes the way Niro in this work highlights “how Indigenous Peoples were being ignored by those in power.” Niro’s act of making herself the waitress points to the very personal nature of the issues confronted, while also putting herself in the role of the contemporary trickster. She explores this directly in her celebrated series _This Land Is Mime Land_ (1992), which consists of 12 framed triptychs that include humorous images of herself. In one of these works, _500 Year Itch_—from which the retrospective gets its title—she playfully presents herself dressed as Marilyn Monroe on the left and photographed with a serious expression on the right. In the centre is a posed family photograph of Niro’s mother smiling. It was a real pleasure to see the entire _This Land Is Mime Land_ series, presented in a three-by-four grid, with repeated instances of the artist herself miming popular culture. 

Another of Niro’s well-known early series is featured prominently in the large central gallery: _Mohawks in Beehives_ (1991). Exploring portraiture once again, Niro’s hand-coloured photographs depict the artist’s sisters and mother posing for seemingly candid images capturing the everyday joyousness of the life of these Mohawk women—a reality purposefully elided in popular representations of Indigenous peoples. These framed works are all different sizes, arranged on a frees-tanding wall. On the top left is another triptych, _The Iroquois is a Highly Developed Matriarchal Society_ (1989), featuring her mother sitting under a bonnet hair dryer. Like the _This Land Is Mime Land_ series, these images were mounted on black matte board with a series of drilled holes that reflect traditional beading patterns. On the left side of the wall is _Standing on Guard for Thee_ (1991), one of several pictures of the artist’s sisters playfully posing in front of the Joseph Brant Monument in Brantford; here, politics and history are necessarily tied to the personal.

Niro also presents another type of portrait—specifically portraits of the land as an other-than-human being. The first and last images in her series _The Shirt_ (2003) are pictures of just the landscape; _Ghosts, Girls, Grandmas_ (2004) includes portraits of people and the land framed with images of wampum belts. Niro presents a beautiful portrait of the moon in _The Moon and Me and A Celestial Tree_ (2010). In her multimedia work _1779_ (2017), a video of flowing water is seen under two toes of beaded boots and framed by a circular red mat with the date “1779” beaded onto it its surface. 

Text plays an important role in Niro’s practice, being used as both a mode of communication and a confrontation with the viewer-reader. In the six-panel photographic series _In Her Lifetime_ (1992/2018), pictures of the artist’s sister are accompanied by texts written in the third person—one image reads, “Native issues would never be resolved in her lifetime.” In _Passing Through_ (1993), a large series of landscape paintings are interspersed with photographs of urban scenes, with each of the photos featuring text like “Woodstock, the Friendly City,” “City Hall,” “Provincial Court,” “Private Parking,” and “Thank You Call Again.” Through these ready-made texts, Niro reminds viewers that the relationship between people and the land is part of our everyday lives.

Following this iteration at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, “Shelley Niro: 500 Year Itch” will travel to the National Gallery of Canada (June 21 to August 25, 2024), Vancouver Art Gallery (September 28, 2024, to February 2, 2025) and Remai Modern in Saskatoon (Spring 2025). This exhibition is accompanied by a substantive catalogue, on the cover of which is the work that has meant the most to me from the show, _Pandemic Moon (Post-Industrial / Pre-Colonized)_ (2023). This detailed photograph of the moon, taken during the COVID-19 pandemic and displayed in a circular light box, beautifully captures what for me is the most powerful quality of Niro’s practice: her ability to show us the world as it is and as it could be. 

Writer

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“500 Year Itch” ran from 10 February to 26 May 2024 at the Art Gallery of Hamilton.


“500 Year Itch” — Shelley Niro

Feature

Daniel Mack works in landscape restoration and embroidery. His background is in community organizing, collective care, collaborative arts, and victimless crime. As a settler with a heart of gold, he endeavours to “naturalize to place,” as described by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Currently listening to Jana Rush, Nicole Mitchell Gantt, and Olof Dreijer.

We invested her with our hopes and dreams, our needs and fears, and in return she kept, saved, and fortified us for battle. Whichever ignoble miracles got Émilie canonized in the first place: irrelevant; they’ve been supplanted. We stole her from the church and made her our own; we fattened her on cheap beer and emulsion, inks and thread, heartache and strife; we shouted her out across the city, proselytizing a cult in her name and causing D-list saints to spin in their reliquaries. 

The Ste-Émilie Skillshare was an autonomous community art space in Montreal’s Saint-Henri neighbourhood. Brainchild of LeRoi Newbold, it was founded in 2006 by a group of friends, occupying a two-floor apartment that was bordered by train tracks to the west and rue Sainte-Émilie to the north. The collective, by design, centred BIPOC, queer, and trans self-expression. At least one of these labels could be applied to each collective member, and we prioritized working with groups or individuals who self-identified along these lines as well. As such, we were able to practice organizational structures that made sense to people like us and draw from a coherent power base when seeking support or performing outreach. 

Collective members initially trained each other to use the different art-making tools that were slowly installed at the space. Once enough of us had acquired sufficient training and a curriculum could be crafted, Ste-Émilie began offering public workshops. Upon this sharing of resources, the Ste-Émilie became a hub for art-making, world-building, and anarchist praxis (theory in action). By each of us doing what we did best and asking for or receiving help when needed, we were quickly able to retrofit the residential apartment into a fully fledged artist studio, complete with a black-and-white darkroom, a start-to-finish screen-printing workshop, a sewing room, and a zine distro for selling self-published books on topics like self-care, anti-racist action, and disability rights. 

As a collective member, I felt obliged to model self-expression and help others do the same. What’s more, within the collective’s cocoon, I gained a sense of personal agency that I hadn’t known in over a decade. Through playing the part of a community artist, I became one, which came to gradually shift the way I practiced community organizing. 

I came to see the work that we were doing, and the work of movement building writ large, as social choreography. When I see an especially moving dance performance, it jerks my body in sympathy with the performers. I connect vicariously and can almost feel the boards underfoot. Like a marionette on strings, social movements draw me in to the action, but not just me. The affective allure can take hold of the world, spurring on international and decentralized grassroots organizing. We get caught up in the grace of it all. 

I understand movement building (which I’m using interchangeably here with community organizing and activism) as an artistic and affect-driven practice that allows participants to collectivize their agency and adopt a larger, interdependent agency. In C. Thi Nguyen’s _Games: Agency as Art_ (2020), he positions games as a form of “agential arts.” [^1] Agential arts include those works that use, as their medium, “agency”—the sense of purpose and personhood through which we filter experiences and participate in the world. As Nguyen argues for the artistic merit of game design and gaming, so too does he provide a means for using the Ste-Émilie Skillshare to demonstrate the creative potential of community organizing. However, rather than depending on his framework to argue for the inclusion of movement building into agential arts, I come at the question through one of my favourite games: analogy. 

Looking at movement building over time, activism can be viewed as durational choreography. Are the various actors moving with elegance and intention? Oughtn’t we build more momentum before the next act(ion), or would a quieter moment here create sharper contrast (contradiction)? The flow of a public awareness campaign and the rhythm of a project’s timeline allow for tight or loose choreography, depending on circumstances and objectives. The vocabulary of movement, however, requires concision. Otherwise, tactics work at odds with one another and muddle the larger strategy. The intent of the work loses focus. 

Of Nguyen’s four criteria for agential arts, the final stipulation requires that one “actively pursue some goal, and then aesthetically attend to the pursuit of it.” [^2] There has to be an objective, and it has to be pursued beautifully, elegantly, extravagantly, thoughtfully. We must practice finesse, for here is where the art of it all comes into play. 

At the Skillshare, the collective and participants alike sought queer liberation, the dismantling of both white supremacy and patriarchy, and the death of the state, to varying degrees. We pursued these goals by actively nurturing mutual aid with other collectives across the city. Our gestures and theirs coalesced, taking the form of screen-printing soccer jerseys for No One Is Illegal, printing garbage bags with instructions for waterboarding as part of a public protest, fundraising for the legal defence of Shawn Brant and for the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal, programming events during the annual Festival of Anarchy, and co-ordinating the pink bloc (queer and trans contingent) for the International Day Against Police Brutality. We also actively engaged with our neighbourhood, co-hosting activities for the children of incarcerated people, running the Dennis Rodman Basketball League at a nearby park, and screening outdoor films during the summer. By supporting local initiatives and participating in broader sympathetic networks, the Ste-Émilie Skillshare played with agency, modelled world-building, and made more space and avenues for participants to practice agency in and on the world. The jerseys and fundraisers were lovely and important, but the behind-the-scenes work sparks as well. The imagination and coordination that made these manoeuvres possible still gets me emotional. The ways that people care so deeply, with each other, while being deeply within the world. 

Significantly, while agential arts require the pursuit of “some goal,” the goal itself is inconsequential. We were pursuing collective liberation, but it was our manner of approach that distinguishes it as a creative practice. The Skillshare itself was constantly in flux. This ceaseless creation allowed us to leave room for future input, customization, and any accessibility consideration that might develop. When one member became homeless for a number of months, we were able to shelter them over winter. If anyone familiar with the project needed to earn a bit of money, we could offer them space to teach workshops or print their own merchandise. Beautiful, no? To design with unity between mission statement and internal structure. Cowardice prevents many organizations from following through on their mission statements, from following them to their logical conclusions. Ste-Émilie took care of children, taught hairstyling, and hosted read-aloud clubs rather than hosting Molotov cocktail happy hours; like many anti-authoritarian service organizations in the city, we contributed to the dual power safety net that made possible more confrontational modes of activism. As such, we had access to that safety net, allowing us to take risks from which other organizations might have shied away. 

Still, maintaining Ste-Émilie’s elasticity, to prevent ossification, rigidity, or authoritarian structures, required deep work and planning. We relied on typical activist tools like consensus decision-making and rotating responsibilities so that power didn’t accumulate in any individual. It felt like there was so much to do (unknowingly, I endeavoured for there to be too much to do) that Tasha Zamudio and I began routinely meeting outside of the collective in order to pick up some of the slack, causing us to burn out. Looking into advice about preventing burnout, I find platitudes about self-care when what we really need are creative and relational solutions to designing a collective that doesn’t allow members to overextend themselves. When a dancer or piece of choreography lacks harmony, a body of literature centuries old can offer guidance. Zapatismo and Jineology, Black Power and Indigenous stewardship, AIDS activism and situationism have so much to teach us about community organizing across time and space, yet somehow we lack the pedagogy to apply their teachings in our day-to-day activism. What do these movements have to teach us about choreographing for the long haul? What does Ste-Émilie have to contribute? What does it mean to approach movement building as an artistic practice?

One of Ste-Émilie’s secrets of success was the wide pool from which we sourced our tools and ingredients. The name itself was site-specific; our logo was an adaptation of a graffiti stencil made by Mike Baugh, one of our members, based on the movie _Tamala 2010: A Punk Cat in Space_ (2002); our politics were largely anti-colonial and anti-authoritarian; we pursued calculated risks that took into account potential legal consequences; in our own lives, many of us practiced modest but regular amounts of crime, for survival and pleasure; _what can we get away with_ was a guiding principle. We were doing political work artistically rather than artistic work politically. Using our lives as fodder and source material while working to address systemic issues, we were able to engage with loose, limber minds. Rather than apply activist tools whole-hog in a manner that has become rote and ritualistic at times, we could instead work to bend reality to our whimsy. Mythologizing our own practices as well as the legacies into which we collaged a mission statement, we crafted a collective agency that was nimble, minutely articulated, and robust enough to sidestep many of the limitations that other organizations might have accepted at face value. By the grace of Ste. Émilie of the Gutter, we were able to practice a form of community organizing that felt transcendent and practical and banal all at once. May her grime continue to shine on liberatory movements for aeons to come. 

[^1]: C. Thi Nguyen, _Games: Agency as Art_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020). 
[^2]: Ibid., 147. 

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Activism

Collective

Social

Daniel Mack explores collective-centred queer liberation, self and community agency, and the dismantling of oppressive systems through theory in action in his consideration of the Montreal-based autonomous art space and collective Ste-Émilie Skillshare.


The Grace of It All: Movement Building as Durational Choreography

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


Roundtable: Mind Pool, Memory Spring

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

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

Our Third Sun

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

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

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

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

Hard Limits, Soft Landing

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

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

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

One Thing: Tracing Fragments of Queer Desire


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


Sinister Pleasure: Interview with Ja'Tovia Gary

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

A Good Animal on Wet Sheets: Disobedient Gasps in Subspace

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

Composition: give up your own

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

What is the Safe Word?

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


_proxy_ by Mo Glitch: Text

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

Weaving Through the Binary: Qualeasha Wood's Textile Inheritances

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


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

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


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


Marking Time Spent Absurdly

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


Love Made Object

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


_Exploratory Touch_ by Trevor Novak: Text

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


The Moon and Material Kin: Interview with Akash Inbakumar

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


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


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

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


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



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

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

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



Untangling Beauty from the Elite

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


You Only Live Twice

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

Petal by Petal: Feminine Desire as a Conduit for Home

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

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

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


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


masus wəλəɫəʔos? we hear the brook

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


spirit-flesh-soul-icon

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

Joyful, Poetic Microworlds

##### Call for Pitches for EXTRA LIFE

##### C160—Spring 2025

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

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

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

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

Call for Pitches for EXTRA LIFE

Call

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

Call for pitches for EXTRA LIFE

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

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

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

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

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

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

Call for Letters: Almanac

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

We're celebrating 40 years of _C Magazine_! **Join us at Top Top Projects on October 26, from 8 to 11 PM** for an evening of music, drinks, and snacks in honour of our collective achievement. Guests will also have the opportunity to preview this year's special anniversary auction collection. The 20th Annual C Magazine Contemporary Art Auction runs from October 26 to November 4, 2024 at waddingtons.ca.  

Since 1984, _C Magazine_ has facilitated the critical and imaginative discourse contemporary art needs to thrive, emphasizing art’s capacity to deepen and complicate our understandings of the world. _C_’s present vitality reflects the investment of a uniquely dedicated community, and in reaching this milestone we are profoundly grateful—for the wisdom of past boardmembers and staff, the longtime support of our readers, and the immeasurable contribution of thousands of artists and writers. We couldn’t have done this without you!

For half its history, _C Magazine_’s financial stability has hinged significantly on the generosity that artists, buyers, and other donors demonstrate during our annual auction. Our 20th Annual _C Magazine_ Contemporary Art Auction includes a special anniversary collection featuring works by artists connected to the magazine. Representing acclaimed and promising practices across disciplines and media, these works demonstrates _C_’s essential contributions to the past, present, and future of Canadian contemporary art.

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

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

**Plus, seven experience lots:**

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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Roundtable: Mind Pool, Memory Spring

C Mag

The Latest

C Magazine celebrates 40 Years!

Canada's Art Fair: Art Toronto 2024

“500 Year Itch” — Shelley Niro

The Grace of It All: Movement Building as Durational Choreography

Issue 158

Almanac

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Call for pitches for EXTRA LIFE

Call for Letters: Almanac

C Magazine's 40th Anniversary Auction and Celebration

Call for Indigenous Art Writing Award