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Griffin

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Luminato

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Neutral Ground

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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, researcher and the Associate Editor of _C Magazine_. 

Associate Editor

Designer

Publisher

This issue begins from the tidal as literal image and metaphor for ceaseless movement and its force. We think alongside the inseparability of ocean and land, inspired by Barbadian poet and scholar Kamau Brathwaite’s idea of tidalectics that moves away from easy binaries—the ones that continually justify colonial and capital expansion. From Turtle Island to the Caribbean archipelago, Palestine, Central America, and Bidong Island in Malaysia, artists wade through interconnected and overlapping struggles across multiple shores, times, and material inheritances.

Tidal

Review

Ashley Diana Culver (b. 1986) is a queer artist and writer based in Tkaronto/Toronto. Her work is in conversation with domestic space and desire for connection. From 2015 to 2020, after completing an MFA from York University (2015), Culver ran Sea Foam—an apartment gallery that encouraged a porousness between life and art by inviting local artists to exhibit in her home. She writes the column Alt-Arts for _Cornelia Magazine_, profiling alternative art spaces in Toronto and the people who make them.


Built as a factory in 1921, the building at 888 Dupont Street, Toronto, was once a home to artists, starting in the ’90s until their eviction in 2021 after it was sold to a developer. A couple years later, the building was demolished. Currently, the site is empty. The exhibition “888” considers the titular building as a case study; the didactic show is both archival and speculative.  

“888” was a collaborative exhibition by Younger Than Beyoncé (currently composed of Genevieve Wallen, Michael “Humboldt” Magnussen, Marjan Verstappen, and Marsya Maharani), and SHEEEP (an experimental art and architecture studio). The exhibition was a continuation of their shared research as HATCH: Housing affordability tactics for creative humans, and was also part of a programming series supported by Collective Collective (a group of eight collectives with majority-racialized members in Toronto, Canada). 

Sitting on saw-horses in the storefront window of the gallery was a sleek silver model of a fictional building, complete with figurines of people in common areas and live-work apartments. This maquette, as well as wall diagrams with floor-plans and a zine, proposed a different version of the space that built on the community that previously blossomed in 888 Dupont: one that centred intentional communal spaces and community care compared to the commercially driven tower of condo units that the present developer Carttera has planned. A documentary film with footage by Adam Labadie played on a screen showing what once was; former residents of 888 Dupont spoke to the camera, recounting stories of parties had, work made, friendships formed, and lives altered. The corner opposite the entrance glowed with an accompanying text installation by artist Caroline Woolard. Red text scrolling along the LED sign listed statements advocating for a solidarity economy, including phrases like “I don’t have a landlord. I’m a member of a land trust, co-op, or intentional community.”  

During my visit, I chatted with an acquaintance along with two others about cultural land trusts, food co-ops, empty condos, communes, colonialism, and credit unions—all topics directly related or adjacent to the exhibition’s core concerns. The concerted efforts toward new possibilities evident in the exhibition inspired us to exchange resources and dream. Once outside I walked west on Dundas Street, before bothering to wait for the streetcar; I felt grateful and even a tad heartened that we still have the ability to dream about different living conditions in the city. 

“888” went beyond recording what happened to the building at 888 Dupont and the people who lived their lives there; it inquired about what could have been. What is made possible if we resist the clichéd narrative of arts spaces being flipped into condominiums by developers? What could be?  

Writer

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“888” includes work by SHEEEP, Caroline Woolard, Younger Than Beyoncé, and ran from 18 October to 23 November 2025 at Whippersnapper Gallery, Toronto.

 “888” — SHEEEP, Caroline Woolard, Younger Than Beyoncé

Feature

Roxanne Fernandes is an experienced arts worker specializing in administration, production, and research; and an emerging curator/programmer based in Tkaronto/Toronto. Her evolving practice explores archives and counter-archives, memory-making, and storytelling. Roxanne supplements her artistic and historical knowledge with research and applications of critical theory. She has curated and programmed for Images Festival (Toronto, 2019), Confederation Centre Art Gallery (Charlottetown, 2023–2024), Art in the Open (Charlottetown, 2023), and the OCAD U Graduate Gallery (Toronto, 2023). For her MFA in criticism and curatorial practice (OCAD U), she presented her award-winning thesis publication “Stories of Rivers and Gold: Counterarchives of a Guyanese Transnational Identity.” Roxanne has worked at Toronto Biennial of Art, Images Festival, and TIFF, and has freelanced for various institutions and artists across the city. She served on the board of SAVAC from 2021 to 2024.

Chiedza Pasipanodya is a sculptor, writer, and curator whose practice investigates material culture, diasporic memory, and the transformative potential of ritual and form. Born in Harare, Zimbabwe, and currently in Toronto, Canada, Pasipanodya works through a post-minimalist lens, drawing from Afro-diasporic and speculative frameworks to explore how objects become vessels for lived histories, perceptual shifts, and cultural transmission. Their work has been exhibited in institutions including Gardiner Museum, Cranbrook Art
Museum (USA), Artspeak Gallery, Art Gallery of Burlington, BAND Gallery, Zalucky Contemporary, and Catinca Tabacaru Gallery (Romania). Pasipanodya holds an MFA in sculpture from Cranbrook Academy of Art (2025) and a BFA in criticism and curatorial
practice from OCAD U (2019) and has participated in international residencies including Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts (USA), Dzimbanhete Arts and Culture Interactions (Zimbabwe), and the Global Experience Project: Maria Thereza Alves (Italy).

**Balancing on the steel coil, the round and impressionable 
shine of a hardened ceramic. 
Cool stone, the touch evoking memory. 
Raku-fired, a map of the passage of time. 
Gripping the clay in whatever form it presents itself. 
Peeling back the curtain, reading the scores. 
Lying in the grove beneath the light. 
Making, and making again, until intimacy is a familiar score.**

**The work of Zimbabwean Canadian sculptor, writer, and curator Chiedza Pasipanodya is an invitation to see differently. 
Through investigations of material logic and temporality, Pasipanodya
explores how objects are vessels
that embody lived histories and
cultural transmissions. To explore
what and how the body can hold a
sculpture is an invitation to shift
perception: through human and
non-human participation, weathering, breakdown, and (re)placement. It is a snapshot of relationality and how the artist’s interest
in pursuing mind-body-world connectivity with the work is a portal to profoundly understand our
histories and motivations. It is a
practice of socially poignant and
critical storytelling.**

**Roxanne Fernandes:** Previously, when we spoke during our studio
visit in 2022, you shared a playful description about process. It was a
“bringing of wobbly imaginings to tangible form and an endless mediation and generative medication.” [^1]

Something that struck me about 
the introduction of different materials like asphalt, textiles, cement,
steel, and wood into your practice—
when it was rooted in ceramics for
so many years—is what you’ve referred to as “material intimacy.” [^2] 
How have you worked through the
sentiment of intimately trusting the material when it goes through inevitable transformations?

**Chiedza Pasipanodya:** I started working
with clay over five years ago, the week
before everything locked down. I spent most of that year working with clay every single day. It taught me that materials have their own life. Five years later, it has taught me that every material has
its own conditions, restrictions, boundaries, and capacities. Clay has become a kind of listening, and my thinking about
my practice started to reflect how musicians may think about music—it’s about resonances. Like in _Kukokwa (The Invitation)_ (2023), there is a resonance when the steel interacts with the concrete, whether or not they touch directly. It’s a bit of a synaesthetic experience. That’s how I hear it and think about it.

I do a lot of research about my materials. When I started working with
asphalt, I wanted to know what it was
made of. Where does it come from?
What is the history of it? How do I make
my own? What I was interested in was
the shimmering, reflective, auditory quality of the material. The density, how my
body knew it before I was told what it is,
and then playing with that.

**RF:** In _Kukokwa_, there is a direct invitation to visitors to lie down and be among the elsewhere or otherness of the work. Embedded in the
ground, the wood halo and metal headrest become, in combination,
an aesthetic, functional, and spiritual object. 

What has it been like to introduce performance or the use
of the body into your sculptural work? How does the inclusion of
the body itself, or the act of physically or metaphorically holding
a vessel, speak to a decolonial construct of object-making and
sculptural installation? 

**CP:** The introduction of the body is, I
think, an insertion of myself in a very
literal way: in the way that I present,
with the work asking me to show up in
a vulnerable way and to put myself forward. I wonder, how can I insert the body and what are the qualities of that
body that I’ve been looking to? It is a
decolonial practice because of the institutional spaces I’m entering into. It’s a tricky thing of both asserting my existence and not saying my existence is the work. I am asserting histories and
the things I am bringing forth with me.
It is not monolithic.

“Kukokwa” means “the invitation”
—to invite somebody. It’s calling in
Ubuntu philosophy, an African-centred
philosophy around how people relate to
one another. “I am because we are” and
“I am because you are.” It means that
we are interwoven in our existence, and
when you live in that way, it becomes
difficult to harm and easy to have empathy and forgiveness.

_Kukokwa_ was the first piece I made
in Michigan [at the Cranbrook Academy of Art]. I had been walking outside, and I found this space where the light
kept hitting every morning. My thinking
was to bring in this traditional African
design of a headrest that’s found across
the continent, learn how to make it, and
reinterpret it. I was turning, making
spindles, and carving claro walnut wood,
a hybrid walnut that is native to the US.
So, the material and location of the artwork became very site-specific. I made the headrests out of steel, a material that
I’m now working with quite a bit. My
mother worked in a steel manufacturing
plant for approximately 30 years, but
that material has only now become a
part of my visual vocabulary. It speaks
to that relationship in many ways—
with the potential to reflect light, heat,
and energy.

Working with metal and wood comes from my relationship with the m’bira, a lamellophone musical instrument from
Zimbabwe, and its material logic. I find
it fascinating, the resonance of the metal
and the almost bass-like quality of the
wood in combination. Now, it is often a
deconstruction of this “m’bira methodology” when I’m working with wood and metal.

The work is an invitation for the
body to further reorient and look upward. My hope was that through that reorientation, a new perspective was possible. A transformation or a slight shift. And then emerges the question of what’s
possible when a slight shift happens?

> _Lying down openly in public, or inviting someone to rest, is a vulnerability in Pasipanodya’s approach
that I find myself returning to over
and over. A shift in perspective—especially in the current socio-political and cultural climate of art-making—is a necessary vulnerability in
order to recognize the world around
the piece in tandem. Over the years,
I’ve been adamant in reaffirming
that we do not exist, or create, in
a vacuum. Pasipanodya has recalled
French philosopher Roland Barthes’s
idea of “shimmering,” [^3] a quality of
subtle transformation. They have
described it, in relation to their
work, as “a perceptual flickering
like heat on asphalt that unsettles
fixed meaning.”_ [^4]

**RF:** I believe that through your devotion to materiality, you have so
beautifully and continually (as is its
nature) embodied the act of shimmering. Graphite and wax, materials that you’ve introduced into your
practice, have discernible slip and
shine that changes when the light
hits a different spot.

What has it meant for you to embody that notion metaphorically, symbolically, and through
all the stages of creation? That idea of a shifting perspective and the shifting of material meaning
through exploration?

**CP:** I think there are so many of us like
that—we are just watching the light shift
and sometimes it’s so everyday that maybe we don’t document it, but at the same
time it’s extraordinary that it happens.
And it is not guaranteed.

How can I create more opportunities for myself, and by extension others, to be more present with this thing we
are describing? Shimmering is a way
to bring that, our connection to light,
back into view. It requires the viewer to
work around this object. It’s not asking
you to be static or stable because it’s
not possible.

> Kunyoresa (Scores) _(2025) is that ask
to work around the object. To push
the question “What can the object
hold?” toward “How can the body
hold the object? And what does it
mean to do so—here, now?”_ Kunyoresa _is presented as a four-part sculpture: a soda-fired ceramic mass,
an almost anthropomorphic handful of clay, and a curtain of dyed
fabric. Each is accompanied by a
curved steel rod that meticulously
holds or supports it in some form.
The fourth component is a series
of written scores that prompts the
visitor to interact further, and
form intimacy with and responsibility for the objects by holding or
grasping the ceramic, or pulling back the curtain. There’s a
thoughtful, although precarious, 
level of balance and participation
with the work, affixed so gently to
its walls. “Pick-up / Pick-up the ball
/ Pick-up the ball and…” reads one
of the scores, leaving the rest up to
you. Will you return the ball to its
steel hold?_

**RF:** I’ve been interested to know
how you coalesce the experience
of “returning” in your life and work?
Geographically, in this triangulation between Zimbabwe, Toronto,
and Michigan; or in the themes and
shapes that appear in your work:
the baobab, other seeds and fruits,
and the termite mound or other
conical forms?

**CP:** Like many people who have immigrated from one place to another, images have been a way of staying in touch.
My family has an informal photographic archive because people were sending things back and forth. What I like about
the archive is that, in a particular way,
it’s stable, because the past has already
happened. Whereas, when I’m dealing
with the future or even the present, it’s
rhizomatic. There are a million arms
that I can’t completely wrangle. This has
taught me that objects can hold memory, and it can be recalled.

For _Mauuyu_ (2025), in making ceramic fruits over and over again, it became a remembering of the initial fruit
in my hands and everything that’s happened since. The fruits themselves have
changed and evolved over the years and
different types have emerged, but the series is still _Mauuyu_. As they evolve and
grow, they both hold memory and create
memory, which for me operate in different time-space continuums. The shape
of a termite mound, like in _Munda (The Field)_ (2021), is very much about ascension, but also legacy building, ancestry,
labour, and the family. It is said that
termite mounds, their shape and size,
often outlive the colonies they house.
Also, the mounds recall traditional Southern African ceramic techniques and
are created by labour-intensive coiling
and burnishing. In all, it is another way
of looking at time and measuring what
we are doing here.

I remember my grandmother and
my mother saying to me “Ziva kwawakabva nokuti kwaunoenda usiku," which means “Know where you’re coming from,
so that you know where you’re going.” It
was embedded in me. Within return is
this whole belief system around the
value of eldership and ancestors. That’s
a whole worldview.

> Mauuyu, _in particular, is a work that
I’ve seen change over the years—
imbued with the energy of an archive and picked with care for the
occasions in which the pieces are
shown. In prior studio visits, texts,
and exhibitions by Pasipanodya,
I’ve been privileged to witness the
glisten of experimental glazes, the
lustre and blackening of raku firing, and the cold touch of the serpentine stone. The seed, fruit, clay,
and stone are immensely nourishing
in their reimaginations. Playful in
their inconsistencies. And, like the
mounds, a testament to labour. Each
beckons to an event or a learning,
bookmarked, with that memory carried forward._

**RF:** _Chibereko (Womb) III_ and _Chibereko (Womb) IV_ (both 2024) are
pieces where materials are in companionship with one another, and
manipulated toward a physical transformation. To what you were shaing about resonance, I can imagine
moments coming together when
you’re welding, or adding pigment
and laying concrete, where there
may also be a resonance of sound
that is almost onomatopoeic—and
so linked to the sounds that we
know from spoken language. And
that shows up, visually, as this record through the work. Can you
share a bit about that?**

**CP:** I think there is a bit of imbuing there.
It’s a translation and transference of energy. The way I can describe it is that it’s
a layering. In _Chibereko (Womb) IV_, the
cement is mixed with the pigment so
it looks like a red clay. Some kids have
thought that it’s gum. There’s asphalt in the cement, but there are also rose
petals from openings, and gifts and orange rinds from friends over the years
embedded into it. There is an accumulation in a single form, all the way down
to the red pigment that is grasping on
to the hardware and cloth. When we talk
about sound and resonance, for me, it’s
the wind blowing clothes on the line and
the softness of the silk dress that my grandmother is wearing. The resonance of
this experience has become fragmented
and reorganized so the body is no longer physically present or represented, except through the two-dimensionality
of the barely visible figures on mulberry paper in _Chibereko (Womb) III._ The
resonance sits in the place of a collective memory. The work is not asking
for you to know who those people are. Rather, I think it’s asking for connection to a feeling.

For both pieces, there’s an invitation
to a kind of softness, and I think that
this softness arrives through colour, a
flesh tone that is showing up in my work
as of late, and through the curves on
the forms. Even in the roundness of the
clay that has been fired or hardened.
The softness encourages a potential for
holding, touching, or caressing, which
I welcome from an art object even if
they can’t always do that in the spaces
they are shown in. It’s nice to know,
and see, that there is still softness in
the world available to us. These materials
had to be found, given, bought, dried,
and then embedded. Softness arrives
through the history of those objects. I
think by the time the organic material
arrives in a work like _Chibereko (Womb)
IV_, it’s representative of holding on.
Other times, when materials arrive in
an artwork, it’s the end. Sometimes,
things may make it through the tides
of time. Like when you see something
in the water, washed up on the shore,
and wonder “Where did you come
from?” and “What life have you had?”


[^1]: Chiedza Pasipanodya, conversation with Roxanne Fernandes.
[^2]: Material intimacy can be understood as how an artist utilizes the multiplicities of a material toward greater personal connection.
[^3]: Roland Barthes and Thomas Clerc, The Neutral: Lecture Course at the College De France (1977-1978), trans. Rosalind E. Krauss and Denis Hollier (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 51.
[^4]: Chiedza Pasipanodya, Chiedza Pasipanodya (artist book, Cranbrook Academy of Art, 2025).

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Sculpture

In their conversation, Roxanne Fernandes and Chiedza Pasipanodya notice subtle transformations of matter that unsettle fixed meaning in Pasipanodya’s sculptures. Through clay, steel, concrete, wood, graphite, wax, and more, Pasipanodya recalls the shapes and lineages of objects like the Zimbabwean instrument m'bira or termite mounds that represent legacy-building, labour, and the family. 

What Happens When the Light Shifts?: Chiedza Pasipanodya's Perceptual Flickering

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**Manif d’art – The Québec City Biennial** returns from February 28 to April 19, 2026, with its 12th edition, _Splitting Ice / Briser la glace_.

Splitting Ice: Manif d’art 12 Explores Winter, Territory, and Climate Transformation

Shazia Hafiz Ramji’s writing is forthcoming in the _Literary Review of Canada_ and has appeared in the 2024 Montreal International Poetry Prize anthology. She lives in Vancouver, Toronto, and London, UK, where she teaches art writing and creative writing. Shazia is the author of _Port of Being_ (2018).

The city of Liverpool unfurls from its port, which was
central to the transatlantic slave trade in the 18th century and has grown to be a hub for container shipping.
Curated by Marie-Anne McQuay, the 2025 Liverpool Biennial takes the theme “BEDROCK,” which acknowledges these troubled histories as it takes a cue from the
city’s sandstone architecture, the distinctive red hue of
which can be seen in structures like the Liverpool Cathedral and early dock walls.

In geological context, bedrock is the lowest layer
and remains unchanged for long periods of time, even
though soil layers on top may erode or accumulate into
smaller or bigger particles. The metaphor prompts questions about change and foundations: is it possible to create change when bedrock is almost immutable? How can
layers of archaeology, history, story, sound, and image
shift this ground?

Three Canadian artists at the Biennial engage with
Canadian, colonial, and diasporic influences. Multimedia
installations by Karen Tam, Dawit L. Petros, and Nour
Bishouty all probe local histories in Canada and their
historical and international resonances.

Tam’s _Scent of Thunderbolts 雷霆之息_ (2024) is a
reproduction of a Cantonese opera stage. Inspired by
listening to opera with her grandmother as a child, the
work was initially created for the 2024 Toronto Biennial
of Art. In Liverpool, Tam’s installation is housed in
the Pine Court, established in 1986 to accommodate
Chinese and Southeast Asian communities who were
facing poverty. Moving through the room, I brushed
past hanging sheer fabric bamboo to glimpse what
seemed to be intimate interiors because of archival photos on the walls of Cantonese opera troupes in the diasporic community. While Tam reimagined spaces in
Montreal’s Chinatown where she grew up, I was acutely aware of the vitality of such an installation in Liverpool’s Chinatown, particularly in a city where East and South Asian sailors and seamen have historically experienced homelessness and a lack of community—from the 18th century when they were employed on ships and at
ports, to WWII and the post-war era when they faced deportation. Audio excerpts from opera are interspersed
with soundscapes of interior Chinatown in Montreal,
hearkening the creativity of the form itself, which merges song, dance, and martial arts. Soon after I saw Tam’s
work in Toronto, I happily ate dumplings on Spadina
Avenue (as I do at least twice a week), but seeing it in
Liverpool felt somber, since the site-specific context
evokes a shared history of displacement and loss.

_As the Nile Flows or the Camel Walks_ (2025), by Eritrean-born Canadian artist Petros, takes a deep dive to
unveil the entangled power dynamics of colonial legacies. Petros draws inspiration from a historical account
written in the late-19th century by Louis Jackson, a Mohawk man who participated in the British-led expedition
of the Nile River to reach Khartoum in order to save the
British governor general from Sudanese Mahdist forces.
Petros’s curiosity was piqued when he learned about
Jackson being on the Nile River in 1884: what was he
doing there? _As the Nile Flows_ is necessarily complex.
Installed in the historic Hornby Library, a small pile of
white plastic rifles behind glass evokes Eritrean askaris,
Indigenous troops that were recruited into European
colonial armies, like Italy’s—a history that emerges
around the same time as the expedition in which Jackson participated. Nearby, listening stations unearth
BBC archival footage celebrating the splendour of the
Nile River that Petros remixed with war chants from
Nubia. The sense of disorientation and cacophony is
also evident in Petros’s “disassembled travelogues”
where he juxtaposes historical photographs, books, and
documents, placing the viewer in the role of the researcher. Such an invitation may seem scholarly, but it makes visible the stakes of research: which narratives can be built
from what is available? Petros creates an immense challenge to narrative and history itself, since his work unmasks
complex dynamics of complicity without didacticism.

Bishouty’s _Nothing is lost except nothing at all except what is not had_ (2025) is an ekphrastic work that responds to Al-Wadi, an ’80s painting made by her late father, Ghassan Bishouty, which depicts a Bedouin tribe in the desert of Jordan. In this multimedia installation, Bishouty places large-scale wooden carvings of animals like bulls, cows, and camels across her father’s
work. In the catalogue from Gallery 44 in Toronto, where a first version of this work was shown in 2022, curators
Toleen Touq and Lillian O’Brien Davis note that “staffage” is a Western art-historical term that refers to the
placement of such animals in landscape paintings with
the sole purpose of drawing the viewer’s eye to the landscape, making the animals incidental. By creating and
adorning these sculptures with mother-of-pearl inlays and
fragments of sacred geometry, Bishouty centres the marginal, so that what is part of the land is finally acknowledged as such—even if the context of the gallery displaces original referents to land, the act of creation itself recognizes the weight of its meaning. Bishouty’s
work is immensely quiet and moving.

While biennials can often be showy parties of virtue signalling and censorship, Tam, Petros, and Bishouty ultimately present work that is unafraid to embrace positionality. Because of their deeply personal engagements and a willingness to embrace complexity that prevents
tokenization, they make it possible to see their art beyond national, international, and institutional frames of practice and looking.

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The 2025 Liverpool Biennial “BEDROCK” ran from 7 June to 14 September 2025. Curated by Marie-Anne McQuay.

“BEDROCK” — Nour Bishouty, Dawit L. Petros, Karen Tam 譚嘉文

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Rana Abughannam, Émélie Desrochers-Turgeon, Karen Lutsky, Ozayr Saloojee, and Zoe Todd consider how imperialism in their homelands—from South Africa to Gaza to Turtle Island—are contemporary manifestations of the logics of the Roman empire. But, like the Tiber River flooding Rome, they also remind us of the “possibilities for solidarity, liberation, and return that come from breaking the dam.” 

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All Floods Lead to Rome: Watery Repetitions of Resistance Against Empire

Wanda Nanibush is an Anishinaabe-kwe image and word warrior, curator, and community organizer from Beausoleil First Nation. She recently won the Toronto Book Award for her coauthored book Moving the Museum. She is the 2025 Helen Frankenthaler Visiting Professor in Curating in the PhD Program in Art History at CUNY. She is also part of the curatorial team for Counterpublic 2026, a triennial civic exhibition in St.
Louis. In 2024, Nanibush was awarded The Hnatyshyn Foundation Mid-Career Award for
Curatorial Excellence. Nanibush founded aabaakwad, an international yearly gathering of over 80 Indigenous curators writers, and artists.

Composition: We Return

Amanda Boulos (she/her) is a visual artist and educator. Boulos engages with fragmented oral national narratives from Palestine, Lebanon, and Canada to explore how those histories can morph into a future Palestinian diaspora. She is an Assistant Professor of Painting and Drawing at OCAD University, a member of the plumb, and a programmer for the Toronto Palestine Film Festival.

When Play Confronts Power

**Nic Wilson** (they/he) is an artist and writer living and working between the Prairies and the Maritimes. Their most recent book, The ‘Ayin, was published in the summer of 2025.


The Afterlife of Writing

Teresa Tam is an artist from and based in Calgary. She doesn’t specialize in anything, but likes to work with digital processes, functional installations, all things shaped in paper, excessive labour, and collections of mildly niche objects. She graduated from AUArts in 2014 and is the other half of Yolkless Press.

One Thing: In Search of an Incorruptible Life

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

The House Edge

Kai Trotz-Motayne is a Guyanese-Canadian researcher and writer from Tkaronto/Toronto, whose work takes inspiration from the many Caribbean people that raised her. She spends most days reminiscing about family gatherings that would end with tales of her family’s
Caribbean past. Inspired by their imaginative retellings, her mind now wonders what stories she will one day tell. Her work now explores how storytelling practices, like identities, evolve and transform through movement.

For Those Who Visit Us in Our Dreams

Shalaka Jadhav is based between Block 2 of the Haldimand Tract (Kitchener, ON) and Treaty 1 (Winnipeg, MB). Their research interests on spatial positionality and critical geographies of grief and public memory can be evidenced in exhibitions and programs they have curated in Halifax, Winnipeg, Kitchener, and Toronto. Shalaka has held roles at OCAD University and Blackwood Gallery, and is the Co-Director of Textile, a hyperlocal arts collective in Waterloo Region that supports writers and artists through mentorship, publishing, and curation. Trained as an urban planner, Shalaka took the advice of an aptitude test to pursue curatorial studies, and practices as a researcher, curator, and writer.

Yasmeen Nematt Alla is an Egyptian immigrant and settler on the unceded and stolen lands of Tkaronto and Waawiyatanong, Turtle Island. Her practice creates machinations that attest to the existence of the Brown Disabled Queer Self, resisting systems programmed to forget us. She has most recently exhibited at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, Bronx River Art Center, Heaven Gallery in Chicago, and Xpace Cultural Centre in Toronto.

To Enshrine an Ululation

TJ Shin is an artist and writer based in Los Angeles. Their writing has been published in Active Cultures, Asia Art Archive, _Mousse Magazine_, Vera List Center for Art and Politics, and more.

The _KISSSSS_ of Yong Soon Min

Lara Mimosa Montes is a writer, editor, and teaching artist whose practice and experiences span the fields of alternative publishing and experimental writing. She was born in the Bronx.

Sofía Gallisá Muriente is a Puerto Rican visual artist and cultural organizer. Her work employs text, image, and archive as medium and subject, exploring their poetic and political implications.

In the Lacuna

Christiana Myers is a curator, writer, educator, and cultural policy analyst based in Menahqesk/Saint John, NB. Her practice often explores physical, environmental, or institutional systems, and her PhD research in Art History through the University of Glasgow examines representations of contagion in contemporary artistic and curatorial practice.

A Vampire Walks Into a Funhouse

Innas Tsuroiya is a writer living in Indonesia who works across poetry, criticism, translation, fiction, and divination. Her work can be found in _Poetry Wales, MOLD Magazine, C Magazine, Protean Magazine, ArtReview Asia,_ and _Artforum_, among others.

One Thing: Kamala Ibrahim Ishag’s Zar Paintings

Furqan Mohamed is a writer and educator from Tkaronto interested in all things culture, kinship, and abolition. Her work has been featured in publications such as _Canthius, This Magazine, Maisonneuve,_ and _The Local_. She is presently a graduate student at the University of Toronto.

Karice Mitchell is a photo-based artist whose practice seeks to situate the vintage erotic publication _Players_ as a crucial marker of Black cultural production. Concerned with how the Black female body has been historically and colonially exploited, Mitchell is invested in finding restorative ways to engage with and respond to archival erotic material. She received her BFA at York University in 2019 and her MFA at the University of Waterloo in 2021. She resides on the unceded and traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations where she is a Black Scholar Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia.

Black, Alive, and Looking Back at You: In Conversation With Karice Mitchell

Joshua Segun-Lean’s writing has appeared in _Republic Journal, The Brooklyn Rail_, and elsewhere.

Tiffany Sia is an artist, filmmaker, and writer who was born in Hong Kong and currently lives and works in New York. Her films have screened at TIFF Toronto International Film Festival, MoMA Doc Fortnight, New York Film Festival, Flaherty Film Seminar and elsewhere. Her essays have appeared in _Film Quarterly, October_ and _LUX Moving Image_. Sia’s first collection of essays _On and Off-Screen Imaginaries_ was published by Primary Information in 2024.

Cinema, Nostalgia, and the Excess That Remains: A Conversation With Tiffany Sia

Nasrin Himada is a Palestinian writer and curator from Montreal. Their practice is heavily influenced by their long-term friendships and by their many ongoing collaborations with artists, filmmakers, and poets. Nasrin’s recent project _For Many Returns_ experiments with writing as an act dictated by love, and typifies their current curatorial interests, which foreground desire as transformation and liberation through many forms. Nasrin currently holds the position of Associate Curator at Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen’s University in Kingston (ON).

Yantong Li (b. 1998, Dali, China) is a curator and artist based in Toronto. He is a Master of Visual Studies (curatorial) candidate at the University of Toronto. Li works at the intersection of global infrastructure, Sinophone and trans-Pacific diaspora, regional folklore, and decolonization. His recent works and curatorial projects have been shown internationally, which include the Curatorial Awards at Jimei x Arles International Photography Festival, Xiamen (2022); Durian-Durian: The First Trans–Southeast Asia Triennial, Guangzhou (2023); Trinity Square Video, Toronto (2023); The New Gallery, Calgary (2024); Jackman Humanities Institute, University of Toronto (2024).

```````````````````To Return

James Albers is an emerging artist, writer, and cultural worker situated on the unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. They are interested in the magic of fiction and believe in the truth of a perfect lie. Recently, they’ve been exploring hidden folklores, intimacy, and uninhibited dancing.

Bhenji Ra is a Filipina-Australian artist based on Gadigal land, Eora Nation. Ra’s projects combine choreography and video and are deeply rooted in social justice practices. Her practice combines dance, video, illustration, and community activation. Her work dissects cultural theory and identity, centralizing her own personal histories as a tool to reframe performance. She is the mother of Western Sydney–based collective and ballroom house SLÉ.

Bhenji Ra Dances at the End of the Rainbow

Christian Vistan is an artist from the peninsular province Bataan, Philippines, living on unceded xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) territories, colonially known as Vancouver. In their artworks, they translate experiences of distance and diaspora into hybrid forms that fold together memory, place, poetry, and abstraction. They make paintings and texts, organize exhibitions and publications, and often collaborate with other artists, writers, curators, and their relatives.

Floor Drawing Series by Aubin Soonhwan K: Text

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?

We are delighted to announce Miyopin Cheechoo as the winner of the 4th annual Indigenous Art Writing Award! On behalf of all of us at _C_ and the [Indigenous Curatorial Collective/ Collectif des commissaires autochtones (ICCA)](https://icca.art/), congratulations!

Cheechoo’s text, “ai tried to code being indian,” stood out for its experiments in how poetic language might introduce generative glitches and interruptions into otherwise colonial algorithms. It was a pleasure to read, and we are excited to share it with our readers in an upcoming issue of _C_.

We would also like to congratulate Jamesie Fournier and Petala Ironcloud on being named runners-up. We look forward to reading their future pitches!

Thank you to everyone who participated, and to Napatsi Folger and Justine “Tini” Stilborn for adjudicating this year's award alongside _C Magazine_’s Associate Editor Maandeeq Mohamed.

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ᐙᒡᐦᐊᔾ᙮  
ᒦᔮᐱᓐ   ᒌᒎ    ᓃᑎᔑᓈᑳᓱᐦᓐ᙮   
ᒨᓱᓀ    ᓂᑑᓐᒋ᙮

Wachay, my name is **Miyopin Cheechoo** and I am a member of Moose Cree First Nation. I grew up in Moosonee and Moose Factory, ON.

I am in my second year of my doctorate at the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education, where I work on conceptualizing Indigenous feminist visions of curriculum and pedagogy in an on-reserve context. In addition to being a full-time student, I am also a Research Fellow within the Indigenous Literatures Lab, where I am mentored by Dr. Jennifer Brant. 

A core tenant of my lab is taking an Indigenous feminist approach, meaning we intentionally guide our research into education to be aligned with the Calls to Justice for MMIW2S. This way of seeing guides my own creative writing, where I draw upon narrative from my lived experiences to create pieces intended to spark dialogue around critical facets of Indigenous life and future. Miikwec.

Ironcloud_headshot

**Petala Ironcloud** is a Lakota/Dakota writer from California. He writes for _The New York Times_, _Business of Fashion_, _Architectural Digest_, _T Magazine_, _Hyperallergic_, _PAPER_, and others. He lives in New York.

Fournier_headshot

Born and raised in Denendeh, mixed Inuk writer and poet **Jamesie Taligvat Evaluardjuk Fournier**’s debut horror book, _The Other Ones_ (2022), won silver at the 2022 Independent Publisher Book Awards and is currently being made into a stop-motion film. His poetry collection, _Elements_ (2023), was shortlisted for the 2024 Indigenous Voices Award and won the 2024 NorthWords Book Award. His premiere children’s book, _Lemming’s First Christmas_ (2024) was animated to English and Inuktitut. His latest children's book, _Umingmak & Fox: Why Is It Dark?_ was published in 2025. Jamesie divides his time writing across Nunavut, Ontario, and the NWT.

Indigenous Art Writing Award Winner 2025

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

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

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

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

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

Submission

Partners

Indigenous Art Writing Award

Program

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

Indigenous Art Writing Award Winner 2025: Miyopin Cheechoo

##### Call for Pitches for FILTH

##### C164—Autumn 2026

##### Accepted until: March 6, 2026

We invite you to engage with filth and all that it might entail, artistically and politically. We are especially interested in submissions that explore the value (or, alternatively, lack thereof) accorded to “filth” as an aesthetic quality. For instance, what does what a given social milieu label as “filth” teach us about that society? Can we conceive of “filth” without its racialized foil: “purity,” “cleanliness,” etc? Alternatively, other concepts filth might be tied to include: fecundity, transformations of matter that (re)fuel cycles of life, biologically rich spaces like bogs, resilient ancient beings, or overturning codes of morality. What needs to be excreted to release the entire system? Can filth embody a different sense of a productive space? Think: vulgarity, “dirty” materials, contamination, waste, overconsumption, transmutation, mud, compost, and practices honouring filth and its sacredness.

We are seeking pitches for thematic Features of all kinds and creative ideas for our Composition column, which encourages artists’ visuals alongside experimental thought/text conceived for a print format. Bring us your wild ideas! We also welcome Reviews pitches, not required to be on theme. 
 
Send pitches to [pitch@cmagazine.com](mailto:pitch@cmagazine.com) by **March 6, 2026**, with a subject line that starts with the word PITCH and indicates the submission type (review, essay, interview, composition, e.g.). 

**What to include:** 
*~150 words about your subject and how you’ll approach it, including hyperlinks if relevant 
*An estimated word count (except for Reviews, which run 800-1000 words)
*If you have not written for us recently, please include a link to your website or a copy of CV for us to learn more about you, 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 unless with prior discussion. See our [writer’s guidelines](https://cmagazine.com/opportunities/write) for more information.
 
Please understand that due to capacity, we are unable to reply to all pitches, and welcome you to pitch elsewhere if you do not hear back within 4 weeks after the call closes.

Note about conflicts of interest: we do not accept pitches from platforms regarding their own programming.

Call for Pitches for FILTH

Call

Pitches for C162 accepted until March 6, 2026.

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All Floods Lead to Rome: Watery Repetitions of Resistance Against Empire

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