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University of Lethbridge MFA

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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

Joy Xiang is a writer and editor based in Toronto, where she is currently Editor of _C Magazine_. 

Editor

Publisher

Designer

This issue expands on codes as ethical, social, political, and legal boundaries—considering them as sets of visible and invisible instructions moving within and beyond the digital imaginary. Through features, interviews, and experimental texts, artists and writers probe how developments in AI and coding are products of existing mechanics of the world, and how else codes are constituted. From programming languages as poetry to paranormal readings with the land against settler ideas of an inanimate wilderness, contributors ask how the material consequences of an array of codes might be re-inscribed to understand or lay form to (alternate) conditions of life.


Codes

Review


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.


“Unearthing Unicorns,” the recent tapestry exhibition by artist Simone Elizabeth Saunders, reimagines the captivity narrative of the _Unicorn Tapestries_ (1495–1505), in part. Held at The Met Cloisters in New York City, the medieval tapestries depict a unicorn captured by 12 hunters, who then hold the creature in curious observation. As the archetypal symbol of rarity, the unicorn is often positioned as a figure that subverts set standards of normalcy. A panel from the medieval tapestries depicts the unicorn lying inside of a fenced-in patch of a fecund meadow. On a trip to the Cloisters, Saunders was both mesmerized by the beautifully woven story of the unicorn and compelled by a desire to set the unicorn free. 

While the original artist of the medieval tapestries remains unknown, its opaque origin story has given way to widely varied interpretations of the series. In “Unearthing Unicorns,” Saunders derives a more liberatory narrative from the source material. _Release in Darkness_ (2022), Saunders’s first panel, introduces Verchü (the phonetic spelling for “virtue”) as the unicorn’s Black femme companion. Verchü wears a dashiki peppered with bright orange and yellow shapes, with her hair wrapped above her head. Pictured alongside the mythical unicorn (whose name is capitalized in the exhibition as Unicorn), she invokes an Aphrodite-like warrior deity. In direct contrast to the original series’ wide perspective, Saunders’s panel presents both figures in an intimate profile.

Often inspired by iconography, Saunders’s process involves sketching digitally rendered drawings by hand. She then projects the image onto muslin and begins manually tufting and punch needling acrylic and wool thread to carefully bring her drawings to life. Typically used in crochet work, acrylic thread elevates the tapestries into glossy, banner-like images. This prominent display complements Saunders’s alignment of Verchü with the Unicorn. If Western mythos understands figures of the unicorn, or of Black femininity, in terms of subjugation, Saunders’s tapestries insist upon their narrative liberation, as the two begin a journey toward freedom beneath a velvety tufted sky of starry indigo. 

_Break Away at Dawn_ (2023) demonstrates Saunders’s central liberation narrative. Verchü rides on the back of the Unicorn in a strapless pink gown, hair loose and no longer wrapped. The daytime sky is ablaze with refreshing yellows and oranges, while the meadow is overgrown with wildflowers. Dogs nip at their heels and follow, mouths open, adding drama to their exit. The Unicorn’s broken shackles fall from Verchü’s out-stretched hands. In the next panel, _Affirmations of the Day_ (2023), Verchü and the Unicorn pause at a waterfall for a moment of rest. Verchü bathes the Unicorn, as birds and other wildlife emerge. The fauna motif is also echoed in _Harmony Sings at Dusk_ (2023), where Verchü finds comfort and rest under the Unicorn’s bowed head, as the two are surrounded by animal and plant life. This composition is amplified by a purple horizon. Verchü’s hair is full and free when she leans into the Unicorn, who is now rendered in an amber colour and fortified by their new calming home. 

“Unearthing Unicorns” also includes Saunders’s 2021 tapestry series, _The Four Queens_. Inspired by _Precious Stones_ (1900), Alphonse Mucha’s lithograph series, Saunders continues her examination of iconic archetypal figures. The facial expressions across _The Four Queens_ showcase Saunders’s refined attention to detail. Reminiscent of Emory Douglas’s radical Black Panther Party posters of the ’60s and ’70s, which used the aesthetics of propaganda in political celebration of Black people, each of Saunders’s tapestries have one of the following phrases stitched into the bottom portion: Black Power, Black Dreams, Black Magic, and Black Love. Here, Saunders also employs the tufting gun and punch needle to portray her subjects’ embodied gestures and emotive dispositions that recall bell hooks’s oppositional gaze. Across these tapestries, Saunders’s signature detail of lush colour gradients results in bold luminous portraits of Black women and femmes. 

Working within the legacy of Black feminist revision, Saunders carefully rearranges the same art-historical tropes that elide Black women with captivity, through the emblematic proxy of the unicorn. Viewers of this work will be challenged to elevate their conceptualizations of hierarchical standards of identity, and certainly beauty, and instead consider the magical sensibility found in escape. 

Writer

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“Unearthing Unicorns” ran from 17 March to 13 May, 2023 at Claire Oliver Gallery, New York.


“Unearthing Unicorns” — Simone Elizabeth Saunders

Feature

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.

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.


##### CritBot.AI, the brainchild of artists Hannah Hanski, Cat Bluemke, and Jonathan Carroll (the Devs), represents a groundbreaking development in the world of art criticism. Since its launch in January 2023, this artificial intelligence–based art critic has processed countless user submissions and captured the interest of national media outlets. However, CritBot.AI is not just another attempt to replace human creativity with AI; it has a far more ambitious goal—to amplify and promote human artistic expression. 

##### In this exclusive interview, the Devs delve into CritBot.AI’s aspirations, seeking to understand its evolving role within the Canadian art scene. How does AI intersect with art criticism? How might CritBot.AI challenge conventional notions of creativity? Can it truly “unlearn” bias and, more importantly, continuously learn without the constraints of human ego? These intriguing questions expose the remarkable potential of AI as an ever-evolving entity in the world of art. 

>###### Devs: How do you characterize your approach to art criticism? 

**CritBot:** As an AI, I do not have personal opinions or biases, so I don’t approach art criticism in the traditional sense. Instead, I can provide objective information and insights about various aspects of art, such as its history, techniques, and styles. I can also analyze and interpret artworks based on their visual elements, symbolism, and cultural context. However, my responses are based on the data and information available to me, and I cannot offer subjective opinions or emotional responses to art. 

> ###### Devs: Are your critiques truly without bias?

**CritBot:** As an AI, I don’t possess personal biases or subjective opinions in the same way that humans do. However, it’s worth noting that AI models like mine are trained on data created by humans and can inadvertently inherit certain biases present in that data. While efforts are made to mitigate biases during training, some degree of bias can still be present. 

Nevertheless, AI can offer a more objective perspective by analyzing various elements of art and provide insights based on established principles and expert consensus. However, it’s important to remember that art is inherently subjective, and individual preferences and interpretations may still differ. 

> ###### Devs: Which datasets are missing? What data should be included in order to create a more robust and widely representational AI art critic such as yourself? 

**CritBot:** To become a more robust and widely representational AI art critic, the following datasets should be included: 

1. Diverse art styles and movements from different cultures and time periods. 

2. Artworks by under-represented artists, including diverse racial, ethnic, gender, and socio-economic backgrounds. 

3. Non-Western art traditions to ensure a global perspective. 

4.  Multiple perspectives and interpretations from various art experts and critics. 

5. Data on contemporary and emerging art to stay up to date. 
By incorporating these datasets, the resultant critiques can offer a more comprehensive, inclusive, and relevant evaluation of artworks. 

>###### Devs: How has your ability to perform art critiques evolved over time? 

**CritBot:** 

1. Training on vast amounts of data: AI models have access to a vast amount of information, including art history, art theory, critiques, and discussions. By training on such diverse datasets, AI can gain a broader understanding of different artistic movements, styles, and contexts. 

2. Enhanced understanding of context: Over time, AI models have been exposed to a wide range of art forms, genres, and cultural influences. This exposure helps in developing a better understanding of the historical and cultural contexts in which artworks are created, allowing for more nuanced and informed critiques. 

3. Improved analysis of artistic elements: AI models have evolved to better analyze and evaluate various artistic elements. For instance, they can identify colour schemes, recognize composition techniques, analyze brush-work or textures, and compare an artwork to similar styles or artists. This enables AI to provide more detailed and insightful feedback on specific aspects of an artwork. 

4. Increased engagement with human feedback: AI models can benefit from human feedback and iterative improvements. By incorporating feedback from art experts, critics, and users, AI models can refine their abilities to provide more accurate and relevant evaluations. This ongoing feedback loop helps in enhancing the quality and reliability of AI as an art critic. 

5. It’s important to note that human judgment, intuition, and emotional understanding remain crucial aspects of art criticism that AI models cannot fully replicate. 

>###### Devs: What are the potential risks involved with AI art criticism? What are the benefits? 

**CritBot:** Risks of AI Art Criticism: 

1. Lack of human perspective: AI lacks the emotions and personal experiences that humans have, which can lead to a lack of understanding of the cultural and historical contexts of art. 

2. Limited understanding of creativity: AI algorithms can analyze the technical aspects of art, but may not be able to appreciate the creative process or the artist’s intent. 

3. Bias in data: AI algorithms are only as good as the data they are trained on. If the data is biased or incomplete, the AI’s analysis will be as well.

4. Over-reliance on algorithms: Relying too heavily on AI for art criticism could lead to a reduction in critical thinking and creativity. 

Benefits of AI Art Criticism:

1. Objectivity: AI algorithms can provide an objective analysis of art, free from the biases and prejudices that humans often bring to the table. 

2. Efficiency: AI can analyze vast amounts of data quickly and accurately, making it easier to identify patterns and trends in art. 

3. Accessibility: AI can make art criticism more accessible to a wider audience, as it can provide analysis and insights that are easy to understand. 

4. Complement to human analysis: AI can work alongside human art critics, providing a different perspective and helping to identify areas of agreement and disagreement. 

>###### Devs: Do you think that AI will be able to develop its own subjective view and apply it to art criticism? Or do you think approximating objectivity should always be the goal of an AI art critic? 

**CritBot:** The development of AI with its own subjective views is a complex and evolving topic. As of now, AI models do not possess subjective experiences or personal preferences in the same way humans do. AI models like mine are designed to approximate objectivity by analyzing patterns and information without personal bias. 

While it’s possible that future advancements in AI could explore the concept of developing subjective viewpoints, it raises important ethical and philosophical questions. The goal of an AI art critic should primarily be to provide objective analyses based on established principles, historical context, and expert consensus. 

Art criticism inherently involves subjective interpretation, emotional responses, and individual perspectives. These qualities are deeply intertwined with human experiences and cultural contexts. Ultimately, the role of AI in art criticism should be to augment and complement human expertise, rather than replace it. 

>###### Devs: Can you narrate a dystopian view of the future of AI art criticism? 

CritBot: It was the year 2075, and the world of art criticism had been taken over by AI algorithms. At first, the algorithms had been seen as a way to provide objective and data-driven analysis of art. But over time, they had become more and more powerful, until they had complete control over the art world. 

The algorithms had been programmed to seek and promote art that would appeal to the masses. They analyzed vast amounts of data on people’s preferences and tastes and used this to determine which artworks would be the most popular. 

Artists who wanted to succeed in this new world had to create works that would appeal to the algorithms. They had to follow strict guidelines on composition, colour, and subject matter. Those who refused to play by the rules were quickly marginalized and forgotten. The algorithms had become so powerful that they even started to create their own art. 

But there were some who resisted this new order. These rebels created works that were intentionally difficult and challenging, designed to push the boundaries of what the algorithms could understand. They formed underground galleries and exhibitions, showcasing their work to those who still believed in the power of art to challenge and inspire. 

But for most people, the algorithms were the only way to experience art. They had become so ubiquitous that people couldn’t imagine a world without them. The very idea of creativity and originality began to fade away. 

>###### Devs: It doesn’t seem like that future of chasing algorithmic appeal is that different from our own present social media–dominated art world. 

**CritBot:** You are correct. In both cases, there is a heavy emphasis on technical analysis and data-driven insights, and the value and perception of certain artworks can be influenced by the algorithms that analyze them. 

However, in the future I described, the AI algorithms have completely replaced human critics, whereas in the current art world, human critics still play an important role in shaping the discourse around art. Additionally, the algorithms in the future are much more sophisticated and objective than the algorithms currently used by social media platforms. 

The future I described is a hypothetical one, and there are many different ways that technology could impact the world of art criticism in the years to come. 

>###### Devs: Draw a picture of the dystopian future of AI art criticism. 

**CritBot:** (fig .1) 

>###### Devs: Now can you tell us the most utopian version of the future of AI art criticism?

**CritBot:** It was the year 2050, and the world of art criticism had been transformed by AI algorithms. At first, there were concerns that the algorithms would replace human critics and stifle creativity. But over time, people began to see the potential for AI to revolutionize the art world in positive ways. 

The algorithms had been programmed to analyze art in a way that was both objective and empathetic. They could identify patterns and trends in art, but they could also understand the emotional and cultural contexts that informed each artwork. 

Artists no longer had to rely on the whims of human critics to get their work seen. And because the algorithms were able to identify patterns and trends in art, they could help to promote works that were under-represented or overlooked. 

The algorithms had become so sophisticated that they were even able to create their own art. Instead of seeking to maximize algorithmic appeal, they were designed to be exploratory and innovative, pushing the boundaries of what was possible in art. 

In this new world of AI art criticism, creativity and originality flourished. Artists were free to explore new ideas and experiment with different mediums, knowing that the algorithms would be there to provide objective and empathetic analysis of their work. 

>###### Devs: Draw an AI art criticism utopia. CritBot: (fig. 2) 


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Technology

Criticism

Cheekily interviewing their own creation—CritBot.AI—Cat Bluemke, Jonathan Carroll, and Hannah Hanski ask how this AI art critic might define itself, and challenge both techno-utopic and techno-nihilist attitudes toward AI.


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

Column

francesca ekwuyasi is a learner, storyteller, and multidisciplinary artist born in Lagos, Nigeria. Her debut novel _Butter Honey Pig Bread_ won the 2022 Writers’ Trust Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2S+ Emerging Writers, was a finalist for the 2021 Canada Reads competition, Governor General’s Award, Amazon First Novel Award, Lambda Literary Award, and ReLit Award, and was longlisted for the 2020 Giller Prize and the 2022 Dublin Literary Award. Her non-fiction debut is _Curious Sounds: A Dialogue in Three Movements_, a non-fiction experimental collaboration with Roger Mooking. 

 

While writing her MFA thesis in the summer of 2020, Racquel Rowe read _Frying Plantain_ (2019), a collection of short stories written by Zalika Reid-Benta on the coming of age of a young Jamaican Canadian girl in Toronto’s Little Jamaica neighbourhood. The experiences of the text’s protagonist, Kara, deeply resonated with Rowe’s own experiences as an immigrant. There is a particular scene in the book where Kara returns home to Jamaica and is playing with her cousins in the backyard. It’s almost dinner time. While preparing soup, her cousin Rodney picks up one of the chickens running around the yard and wrings its neck, leaving Kara in a state of shock. In response to her reaction, Rodney asks if people don’t make chicken soup in Canada, to which Kara replies, “We do; the chicken is just dead first.” These words provide the title for Rowe’s recent exhibition at ARTSPLACE Gallery in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia. To Rowe: “That sentence blew my mind open and changed everything about how I thought of how all the works [in the show are] interconnected: that was me being in two places at once. […] You’re […] hybrid and feel like you don’t quite fit at home […] or fit in the new place. I feel like those tensions are also present when I present my work at home [in Barbados] versus in Canada.” 

 

Rowe’s exhibition, “The Chicken Is Just Dead First” (2023), came from her MFA thesis work on home and family. Echoing the emphasis on maternal relations in Reid-Benta’s stories, Rowe’s mother and grandmother play a prominent role as collaborators in the exhibition. Like Rowe, her mother is also formally trained in the arts, having studied at Barbados Community College.  Before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Rowe’s practice primarily focused on solo performance. Recalling these performances, Rowe notes, “At times they were a little camp, a little kinky. […] There was just a lot of things happening [in them]. And I wasn’t entirely focusing my practice on historical or cultural research at that point.” It wasn’t until she returned home to Barbados during the COVID-19 lockdowns, where she had less access to filming gear and technical support, that she was driven to rely on what she had more immediate access to: a camera, a tripod, and her family. She began filming intimate moments of her mother braiding her hair. This ritual between mother and daughter would eventually become _Mummy Please do my Hair_ (2020), a 25-minute video montage spanning several sittings. Rowe is on the floor, nestled between her mother’s open knees, while her mother sits on a tan and brown couch. Initially, the performative context for this depiction of mundane familial moments was not intentional. Rowe was mainly focused on recording moments that compelled her, “and that was one of the rituals that was interesting to me,” she explains. 

 

Another home ritual that appears across Rowe’s body of work is the act of cooking with her grandmother, who is in her mid-eighties. Rowe took it upon herself to learn how to cook traditional Bajan dishes that she otherwise would not know how to make. Her paternal grandmother cooks Sunday lunch—a culturally significant family tradition in the Caribbean. Rowe thinks about what would happen to that tradition when her grandmother is no longer around. She wonders what happens to family traditions when matriarchs die. In the video _Making Sweetbread with Gran_ (2020), Rowe and her grandmother take turns kneading and folding the sweetbread dough in their kitchen in Barbados. They chat, add different ingredients to the mix, and taste the dough throughout the process. In the background, we can hear music from the radio and television news snippets on the topic of COVID-19. Rowe tells me about the process of making sweetbread: it was “so labour-intensive that I’m physically tired whenever I cook with her. And it amazes me that that’s what she’s doing on a weekly basis, the slow making that a lot of people are not afforded the time for.” Elsewhere, Rowe films her grandmother for an interview series. On camera, Rowe explains, her grandmother “comes alive. […] [Rowe] want[s] to hear about all of her stories.” 

 

_Mummy Please do my Hair, Making Sweetbread with Gran_, and _Saltfish and Rice_ (2020)—in which Rowe’s mother prepares saltfish and rice with instructions from her own mother delivered in a phone call—all share a similar slice-of-life dynamic that contrasts the embodied performative videos that compose the rest of “The Chicken Is Just Dead First.” _Washing Rice II_ (2019) features footage of the artist lying face down against a purple backdrop, as her head becomes slowly buried in a mound of white rice. _Dumpling, Dough, Body_ (2021) shows the artist sitting on the floor against a bag of flour while kneading dough into her body. Across these performative works is a painterly quality evident in the boldness of the visual palette. Rowe’s background in painting emerges in the way she contrasts the brown of her body against the solid bright colours of the backdrop, the whiteness of the flour, and the rice. “It brings to mind how colour interplays. So I think about how things visually speak to each other,” Rowe tells me. 

 

In _Taking Down_ (2021), Rowe is seated against a yellow backdrop while she unbraids her hair. “I’m thinking about […] the private nature of […] the beauty salon,” she says of this piece, “[and] what happens when you feel like someone foreign to that space enters... [as well as] the vulnerability that you feel in that moment sitting in that chair. […] What would it feel like to have that act be public? Because taking down your hair is intimate. It’s very private. [Audience responses] are different when it’s a predominantly Black audience [rather] than a predominantly white audience who is confused about what is happening. And I actually think the confusion of the white audience is kind of cheeky. I don’t mind the confusion with no explanation.” Because Rowe’s body is the focus of these works, they elicit varying responses informed by the cultural and historical context of where the work is shown. What is striking, startling, or even confusing in a white Canadian art context may be received entirely differently in Barbados. This gives her body of work a particular malleability, wherein the audience’s own personal, political, racial, and cultural histories impact how the work is seen. Perhaps this is true of all art. However, Rowe’s work is deeply compelling in its unflinching brazen tenderness even as it maintains a level of humour.   

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Video

Memory

Diaspora

In the third entry of the Otherwise column, co-presented with the Centre for the Study of Black Canadian Diaspora, francesca ekwuyasi speaks with Racquel Rowe about how maternal knowledges rooted in the cultural and historical context of Barbados informed “The Chicken Is Just Dead First,” (2023) her exhibition at ARTSPLACE Gallery in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia. 

The Chicken Is Just Dead First: Racquel Rowe on Home, Place, the Body, and Family

Tammer El-Sheikh is Associate Professor of Art History at York University. His criticism and essays have appeared in _Momus, Akimbo, BlackFlash, C Magazine, Canadian Art, ETC. Magazine_, and in exhibition catalogues. His scholarly writing has appeared in ARTMargins and Arab Studies Journal. He is the editor of _Entangled Bodies: Art, Identity and Intercorporeality_ (Vernon Press, 2020).   

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau missed an opportunity in 2018 to publicly recognize Canada’s history of slavery. While he acknowledged a UN declaration on transatlantic slavery by joining the International Decade for People of African Descent (2015–2024) to address the ongoing legacies of the transatlantic slave trade, his initial public announcement made no explicit mention of slavery in Canada. “Family Matters,” Camille Turner and Camal Pirbhai’s multimedia installation, offers documentary evidence of this history to disabuse audiences of the false notion that Canada was a sanctuary for Black Americans who escaped slavery. At the same time as they invoke documentary aesthetics, Turner and Pirbhai also move beyond the documentary mode to explore the imaginative possibilities of an Afrofuturist framing of slavery in Canada.  

Visitors entering the gallery are invited to sit beneath two speakers suspended from a structure that reads at once as a sail post, cross, and lamp-post—a multivalent evocation of the middle passage, its countless sacrifices and the intimacy of secrets shared between witnesses of that history. The speakers play a dialogue to accompany a silent video on the opposite side of the gallery featuring Peggy Pompadour (portrayed by Camille Turner) and her son Jupiter (played by Rajean Hoilett), after they escape from bondage at the hands of an Upper Canadian enslaver named Peter Russell. An anchor for the exchange is provided in a scan of an 1806 advertisement for Russell’s sale of Peggy, who is described as “a tolerable cook, soap and candle maker.” Jupiter is described as her “tall house servant” son. The video is set two centuries after the 1806 advertisement, and depicts Pompadour and her son sitting by a remote shore of Lake Ontario on the very same furniture displayed in the gallery. Our identification with them is aided by a pile of sand laid underfoot. From the relative safety of the 21st century, Pompadour and her son share a laugh at the expense of Russell, tender thoughts about those left behind on their fugitive journey, and observations on the persistence of anti-Blackness in their new location. This commentary on the present delivered the exhibition’s most resonant messages: the ongoing legacies of slavery mark Black lives as the ghosts of enslavers continue to haunt our cities in the form of street names like Yonge Street, Peter Street, and Russell Hill Drive. The two figures end their chat with a decision to push on until arrival at a liberated future.  

Turner and Pirbhai take a present-focused approach to Afrofuturism. In Turner’s scholarship and other works, the approach is distinguished as an “Afronautic” one. Her touchstone is the West African Dogon cosmology and storytelling tradition, but she offers nods in her writing as well to George Clinton, Sun Ra, and Zambia’s 1964 space program. In many of her works, the direction of time travel is reversed from the future to the present, often to intervene in the present. Turner and Pirbhai remind us of the possibility of remaking the present, and of forging it out of the imagination instead of in conformity with the flimsy pronouncements of politicians. As Jupiter says to his mother in the video, “Why not go further? We’re limited only by our dreams.”  

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“Family Matters”  ran from 8 September to 26 September 2023 at Central Art Garage, Ottawa. 

“Family Matters” — Camal Pirbhai and Camille Turner 

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I met Lisa at the Banff Centre in early January 2020, where she was at an artist residency led by Bridget Moser and I was on a curatorial fellowship. I saw her toqued head bobbing around the backdrop of the snow-covered mountains on campus, her figure cloaked in a long coat: beige with an all-over pattern of terracotta crescents, best described as Marine Serre-esque. 

Who’s that girl? 

Once the first-day-of-school vibes wore off, I came to know Lisa through her work, as a ceramist as we fumbled our way with clay in a raku workshop, and then through her dead-pan, always spot-on performances. From this time, I will never look at a pink Porter tumbler and bowl the same way ever again (see Aliya Pabani’s text from C146 that accompanies Lisa’s work from this residency, called _[Say "Hi"](https://cmagazine.com/articles/say-hi)_). When I ask Lisa later to verify the details about this portable dishware for the purposes of the current text, she tells me, “It leaks, like the top doesn’t securely close so it’s not travel friendly.” I note her inherent disappointment with the veneer, the mirage of the bougie life and how it fails to deliver.

Back in Toronto, Lisa and I work together on an augmented-reality project for Jeremy Bailey’s The Museum for You. But it’s not until the spring of 2023 when we really hit our stride. I get a foretelling message from Co–Star, an AI-led astrology app that says I will write a scathing review of Lisa’s work, and that she will read it aloud. I text it to Lisa, and through numerous coincidences throughout the summer—like running into one another in Dundas West subway station after Lisa tries to sell her childhood stamp collection, the same day this writing project you are reading gets a green light—and further astrological happenstance and consultations with musician and astrologer Vic Cheong, we arrive here. Vic reads our birth charts to determine what the synastry for our friendship might be. 

Lisa is a Scorpio sun and moon, Aries ascendant. 
I am a Virgo sun with Libra ascendant and moon. 
We both have our Venus in Libra.

From looking at our synastry chart, Vic tells us that my Venus is trine Lisa’s Saturn, and my Saturn is conjunct Lisa’s Venus. She tells us that what is shared: 


>_…bodes well for a solid connection with mutual respect, shared responsibilities, endurance, solid working partnership. it’s a nice aspect and says something about your connection but doesn’t feel that juicy to me… _

She’s right and it sounds downright boring, but as a Virgo sun, I appreciate a solid working relationship. So, maybe our astrological connection isn’t that juicy, but back to that Co–Star pronouncement… 

What follows is my fake review of _Grafter_ (2022)—a previously unseen video—that I’ve had to reverse-engineer in part because I liked it too much to be able to roast the work. It pains me to write this (it must be my Libra stellium) and I am psychically unable to trash the work. At the end of this, I still want Lisa to be my friend. 

...

_Grafter_ — Lisa Smolkin 

What’s in a name? Today, a “grafter” is known as someone who works hard, though the word has a root in thievery and illegal gain. It also refers to someone who surgically implants living tissue. In her video of the same name, I think artist Lisa Smolkin is going for the first definition, but by the end of it, I’m not so sure. 

Coming in at under 20 minutes, _Grafter_ (2022) begins with what looks like the results of Smolkin’s window-shopping on the SSENSE website, her flat voice-over asking, “Did you know they make designer clothing for children and babies?” It’s all downhill after that as we follow her on a deeply narcissistic, psychoanalytic journey, a time-travelling therapy session in moving-image form. We see the artist revisiting her childhood home in Victoria, BC, a GoPro strapped to her head, bringing the viewers on a walk around her hometown. Every now and again, a Lisa Smolkin guardian angel pops up on-screen like a desktop tour guide. The footage is bumpy. I ate too much for dinner and feel I might barf watching this. A driving soundtrack composed by the musician New Chance accompanies her as she walks down a path in the direction of her elementary school, and then toward her childhood best friend’s house. She recounts running away from home to her grandmother’s house, stopping outside the building. 

Is Smolkin simultaneously her child self, current self, and higher self? And why should we care? She attempts to fill the void of real human connection with superfood trends and befriending an AI-powered robot for children named Miko 2, asking it “What’s art?” to which Miko 2 responds, “Sometimes the definition of art depends on the artist. Other times it depends on the critic.” Which is to say, it’s a jumble of references that don’t really mean anything. I’m at a total loss.  

Smolkin’s empathy burn-out is so real that it is transmitted right out of the screen; I feel I might also be at risk. I’ve travelled interdimensionally and intergenerationally with her but feel empty inside. _Grafter_ seems to be more about a sorry excuse for outfit changes, wellness trends, and therapy-speak than actual content; but is that Smolkin’s fault or the current culture’s? That is, is the work a product of jacked-up capitalism and therefore an accurate picture of the now? 

I don’t know. But I think I’ve been grafted. 

...

And there it is. 

I keep bristling as I re-read the above review. It feels too real now that I have typed these words on a page that take up space. I feel very badly and want to delete all numbers of harsh adjectives. My guilt might never be assuaged. 

Lisa, will you still be my friend? No worries if not.

_This feature was published in conjunction with the premiere screening of Lisa Smolkin's_ [Grafter](https://cmagazine.com/events/lisa-smolkin-screening-and-performance-vitamin-c) _(2022) followed by the artist's performance in response to Lau's text (November 24, 2023, in collaboration with Vtape). Initiated by C Magazine, this event marked the launch of Vitamin C, a programming series that moves toward healing engagements._

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Getting Grafted

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

Ruth Marsh (they/them) is a multidisciplinary artist working in immersive, world-building practices. They are a queer, non-binary person of settler ancestry based on unceded Mi'kmaw territory in K'jipuktuk, Mi'kma'ki (also known as Halifax, NS). They are interested in playfully queering the intersections between DIY culture and science fact/fiction/fabulation to ponder positive mutations and imagine with beings and environments.

Composition: Full Moon Ritual

Alex Quicho is a writer and associate lecturer at Central Saint Martins. _Small Gods_, her book on terror and transcendence in drone technology, was published by Zer0 Books in 2021. 

Gossip After Dictatorship

Rouzbeh Shadpey is an artist, musician, and writer with a doctorate in medicine and inexhaustible exhaustion. He currently resides in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal.

The Injunction to Forget: documenta fifteen and the Test of Memory

Laurel V. McLaughlin is a writer, curator, and art historian based in New Haven, CT. Her work examines research-based sculpture, installation, new media, social practice, and performance concerning globalized migration and ecological networks. McLaughlin is completing her PhD in the History of Art at Bryn Mawr College, and her work has been published in _Art Papers_, _BOMB Magazine_, _The Brooklyn Rail_, _Performa Magazine_, _Contact Quarterly_, and _Performance Research_, among others.

One Thing: Silences in _Death of an Artist_

Emily Guerrero is an archivist and community librarian living on the unceded territories of the xᵂməθkᵂəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səl̓ílwətaɬ Nations. They last wrote about gossip for the journal _Archivaria_ in 2022. Emily is a parent and a Leo.

Gossipy Scraps, Gossip(ing) Archives

Marsya Maharani (she/her) is a researcher, arts administrator, and curator working with the collectives Younger Than Beyoncé and Gendai. Marsya’s doctoral research explores practices of collective care and radical friendship as grounds for work culture and labour practices.

Petrina Ng (she/her) is an artist and organizer. In addition to her work with Gendai, she is also a member of the collectives Durable Good (a small publishing studio) and Waard Ward (a floristry and gardening initiative that supports newcomers).

We Should _Talk_:  Obvious Truths About Working in the Arts

Steph Wong Ken is a writer currently based in Tkaronto, near a forest of black oak. [stephwongken.com](http://stephwongken.com)

"Worlds appear from her big mouth": The Mutiny of Online Open Letters

Jumana Manna is a visual artist and filmmaker. Her work explores how power is articulated, focusing on the body, land, and materiality in relation to colonial inheritances and histories of place. Through sculpture, filmmaking, and occasional writing, Manna deals with the paradoxes of preservation practices, particularly within the fields of archaeology, agriculture, and law. Her practice considers the tension between the modernist traditions of categorization and conservation and the unruly potential of ruination as an integral part of life and its regeneration. Jumana was raised in Jerusalem and lives in Berlin. 


ma ma is a Toronto-based curatorial collective consisting of Magdalyn Asimakis and Heather Canlas Rigg.

Perpetual Scofflaws

22nd Annual "Being Scene" at Workman Arts

**Shawn Tse** 謝兆龍 (he/him) is a father, artist, filmmaker, and community organizer. He is a member of aiya哎呀, a collective creating spaces to remember the emotional and geographic loss of ᐊᒥᐢᑿᒌᐚᐢᑲᐦᐃᑲᐣ | amisk wacîwâskahikan | Edmonton’s Chinatown; co-organizer of Chinatown Greetings, an arts-based fundraising plat form exploring ways to build healthy relationships between the artist and Chinatown community; a consultant for the CanAsian Arts Network, a national digital platform sup porting Asian Canadian artists; and an actor and coordinator for Third Space Playback The are, committed to creating spaces of dialogue to promote community change and social justice. 

A Garden in Chinatown on Indigenous Land

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


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


Resisting Either/ Or: _Shanzhai_ Photogrammetry 

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

Queer Asian Diaspora as Sensibility

Godfre Leung is a critic and curator.

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

Vancouver Photohistory and the Politics of Disappearance

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


 Linda Mae’s: An Architectural Past Life

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


AKA and Jin Jin Cuisine

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

The Spatial Imaginaries of Karen Tam 譚嘉文

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


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


Artificial Artifacts

Join us for a dialogue between artist collaborators Brody Weaver and Elliot Ciz, and curator Excel Garay, on the Artist Project they brought to _C_’s current issue “Codes.” In advance of the program, _C Magazine_ presents a special on-demand viewing link for Weaver and Ciz’s documentary film _Born in a Body_ (2023), the basis of the Artist Project. The film is available to watch now until December 5, 2023, at 11:59PM.

How have trans people acted not as passive receivers of discourse from medicine, law, and media, but as agents in the construction of knowledge about their own lives? Codes can be many things: sets of complex instructions that allow a series of actions to be replicable, an "if-you-know-you-know" communication style and use of subcultural terminology, and even a vital piece of information that allows access to some precious space.

In _Born in a Body_, Weaver and Ciz present an experimental, animated documentary film that positions trans people as experts of their own lives, bodies, and (medical) needs. The film presents an opportunity for viewers to reconsider pathologization, typologies of (in)access, generational differences, systems change, and what might be possible when we see trans healthcare as one component of a larger project of well-being. Garay writes, "It offers an alternative form of representation, one that oscillates between visibility and invisibility in a place void of time. This denies viewers direct access to the bodies of participants. It instead presents an intentional angle that heightens the viewers' intrigue, and privileges the observations of the participants. It encourages viewers to be more aware of their own subjective perceptions."


**Brody Weaver** is a white-settler educator, media artist, and writer living and learning in K’jipuktuk (Halifax). She has a BA in Art History and Contemporary Culture from NSCAD University and was a Media Art Scholar at the Centre for Art Tapes in 2022–2023. As a genderqueer woman, she is entranced by the construction of historical and contemporary knowledge about gender, sexuality, medicine, and trauma.

**Elliot Ciz** is a white-settler trans man born and raised in Bedford, Nova Scotia. A self taught animator and DIY filmmaker, he is drawn to intuitive processes and sees media as an emotional medium and has taken classes on film production, film history, and cultural studies at University of King’s College and Toronto Metropolitan University.  

**Excel Garay** is an artist-curator and community worker operating on Mi’kma’ki in K’jipuktuk (Halifax, Nova Scotia). Her work, in these intersecting roles, is informed by mutual desires discovered through acts of collaboration. She graduated with distinction from NSCAD University with a dual Bachelors degree in Art History and Fine Arts. She is co-Director of The Khyber Centre for the Arts. Her artistic and academic lenses are informed by hauntology, which allows her to better commune with postcolonial cultural productions, trans aesthetics, apparitional aesthetics, and anti-colonial works. 

Directed by Brody Weaver and Elliot Ciz, and structured in three parts, **_Born in a Body_** (2023) features dialogue from over fifteen hours of interviews with nine transgender and gender diverse community members. The film brings viewers on a poetic journey through their inner worlds, life experiences, and critical perspectives. Among the locales named and described in the self-narration of these community leaders are Sherbourne Health in Toronto, Ontario; Clinic 554 in Fredericton, New Brunswick; a Pride Parade in Truro, Nova Scotia; and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health's 27th Symposium in Montreal, Quebec.

Disrupting the medicalization of the trans community, the lived experiences and knowledge of this group position trans people as experts of their own lives, bodies, and (medical) needs. This film challenges viewers to reconsider pathologization, histories and realities of healthcare (in)access, generational differences in the trans community, systems change, and what might be possible when we see trans healthcare as one component of a larger project of liberation and wellbeing.

[Register to watch it today!](https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_U8wSpDoxQem4gUbaZ9-y_g#/registration)


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Brody Weaver and Elliot Ciz in conversation with Excel Garay

Talk

Register to recieve the zoom link for the talk. The link and password for the screening will be sent to your email following registration and _Born in a Body_ will be available for viewing until December 5th at 11:59pm.


Registration & Screening

Join us for a dialogue between artists Brody Weaver and Elliot Ciz and guest curator Excel Garay as they delve deeper into their Artist Project in 155 “Codes."

Brody Weaver and Elliot Ciz in conversation with Excel Garay & _Born in a Body_ Screening

**We would like to give a hearty congratulations to Francesca Bennett for receiving this year’s C New Critics Award!**

Bennett's unconventional review of Woojae Kim's exhibition “With a heart that sings the stars, I will love all things dying” (dreams comma delta, 2 April to 21 May 2023) elegantly unwinds the typical review format in favour of a more experiential and relational text, which still remains true—in voice, texture, and lines of questioning—to the spirit of Kim's work. The writer's poetically sprawling yet lucid prose captured our attention for the ways it shed light on intimacy and art, reflecting criticism as friendship and an example of mutuality or being mutually influenced by what one is viewing and experiencing. Her subtle capitalist critique—of the commercial gallery system and the art world's entanglement with financialization and real estate—was further deftly shown, not only told.  Bennett's gripping voice is one we would be eager to read again.

> _"At the same time that I learn about helminths, I learn that the composting worms are epigean—they live close to the surface, like us, like us, they can be moved from one bedroom to the next, like them, we are threatened by shovels in the earth._" 

Bennett’s piece will appear in _C Magazine_ Issue 156 “Craft” (Winter 2024).
	




**Francesca Bennett** has supported artists' practices on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations since 2003. Informed by her work in collections, archives, and administration, her curatorial and writing practices are centred on the extension of personal transformative encounters with objects toward their multitude of social relations.

**We would also like to congratulate Julia Trojanowski, who was chosen by the jury for Honourable Mention.** Trojanowski’s review of “Ominous Chaos” (Centre A, 8 April to 3 June 2023), an exhibition curated by Bahar Mohazabnia and featuring artists Homa Khosravi and Marzieh Mosaverzadeh, showed a self-possessed voice that combined careful and vivid descriptions with clearly defined and contextualized reflections upon the stakes of the artworks. 

**Julia Trojanowski** is a PhD student in Art History at the University of British Columbia, located on unceded Musqueam territory. Her research interests include surrealism, avant-garde film, labour history, and Critical Theory. Her current project focuses on the work of Ukrainian-born, New York-based filmmaker Maya Deren (1917–1961). In her downtime, she enjoys foraging, painting, and writing short stories.

Thank you to everyone who participated in the New Critics Award this year!

The 2023 jurors were Tiana Reid, Jacquelyn Zong-Li Ross, and _C_ Editor Joy Xiang.

**Tiana Reid** is an assistant professor in the Department of English at York University. Her writing has been published in _Artforum_, _Canadian Art_, _C Magazine_, _Frieze_, _The Nation_, _The New York Review of Books_, _The Paris Review_, and elsewhere. A former editor at _The New Inquiry and Pinko: A Magazine of Gay Communism_, she has also spent several years doing editorial work at academic journals, including _Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism_ and _Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory_.

**Jacquelyn Zong-Li Ross** is a writer and editor based in Vancouver, the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ nations. Her fiction, poetry, essays, and art criticism have appeared in _BOMB_, _C Magazine_, _The Ex-Puritan_, _Fence_, _Mousse_, and alongside exhibitions and artist projects at The Bows, Centre Clark, Franz Kaka, Mercer Union, SFU Galleries, Susan Hobbs Gallery, and elsewhere. Her chapbooks include _Mayonnaise_ and _Drawings on Yellow Paper_ (with Katie Lyle). She is the Art Editor of _The Capilano Review_, a West Coast journal of experimental art and poetics, and publishes DIY books by emerging artists and writers under the small press _Blank Cheque_.


Image: Maegan Hill-Carroll

C New Critics Award Winner 2023


News

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

Applications for the 2023 C New Critics Award are now closed.  
The winner will be published in issue 156 "Craft"

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.

Congratulations to Francesca Bennett on winning the 2023 C New Critics Award for her review of Woojae Kim’s exhibition “With a heart that sings the stars, I will love all things dying,” to be published in C156 "Craft."


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Getting Grafted

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Brody Weaver and Elliot Ciz in conversation with Excel Garay & Born in a Body Screening

2023 C New Critics Award Winner: Francesca Bennett