Feature

Meagan Christou (b. 1991) is an Executive Board Member for OPSEU/SEFPO representing Toronto/GTA, the past Secretary of the Young Workers Committee, and a union steward and Strike Captain for Local 535 at the Art Gallery of Ontario. She successfully wrote and passed constitutional amendments to prolong union membership for precarious workers and a resolution opposing the practice of two-tier bargaining. Meagan helped launch the first series of Labour for Palestine Educationals, winning the OPSEU/SEFPO Human Rights Award in 2024.

Mitra Fakhrashrafi is a curator and archivist mapping legacies of colonial infrastructure and the resistance which has always followed.

Charlene K. Lau is an art historian, critic, and Curator of Public Art at Evergreen Brick Works and Nuit Blanche Toronto 2025. Her writing has been published in _Art in America_, _Artforum_, _The Atlantic_, _The Brooklyn Rail_, _frieze_, _Fashion Theory_ and _Journal of Curatorial Studies_, among others.

Emma Steen is a curator, writer, and the Outreach & Membership Coordinator for the mma Steen is a programmer, curator, and writer from downtown Toronto. Her area of interest lies in art and writing that explore intimacies, bodies, and gathering with feminist and anti-colonial intention. Emma works at the Royal Ontario Museum as a Performance Program Coordinator, bringing live arts performances, parties, and cultural events to the country’s largest museum.

Fan Wu writes, performs, and teaches. He is currently studying Daoism and its capacities to transform our Western political-aesthetic paradigms.

EMILIA-AMALIA (since 2016) is an intergenerational, in-flux working group that employs experiments, citation, annotation, and autobiography to activate feminist art, writing, research, and living practices. Active members include Cecilia Berkovic, Annie MacDonell, Gabrielle Moser, Zinnia Naqvi, and (_C_ editor) Joy Xiang, with support from Jennifer Harwart.

Dot Tuer is a writer and artist whose work explores the intersections of cultural memory, visual storytelling, and decolonial histories. She divides her time between Corrientes, Argentina, and Toronto, Canada, where she teaches at OCAD University.

This issue of C Magazine considers what it might mean to stop. Rather than denote absence, the stop offers an opening for something else to emerge. Across these pages, contributors explore stopping in: forms of rest, blockades, town halls, and critiques of the temporality and archives of empire. From blockades on Wet’suwet’en land to an underground hub in Jakarta, from moccasins cradling lichen to Lebanon’s El-Mina port, each work gathers its own form of interruption. <br/>

With contributors: Whess Harman, Hung Duong and Grace Samboh, Svetlana Romanova, Fan Wu, Meagan Christou, Mitra Fakhrashrafi, Emma Steen, Charlene K. Lau, Dot Tuer, Joyce Joumaa, Ali El-Darsa, Kay Rangel, Jasmine Sihra.

This issue considers what it might mean to stop. Rather than denote absence, the stop offers an opening for something else to emerge. Across these pages, contributors explore stopping in: forms of rest, blockades, town halls, and critiques of the temporality and archives of empire. From blockades on Wet’suwet’en land to an underground hub in Jakarta, from moccasins cradling lichen to Lebanon’s El-Mina port, each work gathers its own form of interruption.

With contributors: Whess Harman, Hung Duong and Grace Samboh, Svetlana Romanova, Fan Wu, Meagan Christou, Mitra Fakhrashrafi, Emma Steen, Charlene K. Lau, Dot Tuer, Joyce Joumaa, Ali El-Darsa, Kay Rangel, Jasmine Sihra.

Stop

Collective

Institutional critique

Fan Wu reflects on the first installment of “Open Hearing: Dreaming in Dark Times.” Initiated by EMILIA-AMALIA, the   gathered over 200 cultural workers in Toronto to confront urgent issues including Palestine solidarity, censorship, and labour. Inspired by the 1969 Art Workers’ Coalition open hearing in New York, the dispatch features transcripts from Meagan Christou, Mitra Fakhrashrafi, Emma Steen, Charlene K. Lau, and Dot Tuer.

Open Hearing: Dreaming in Dark Times, Dispatch I

Video

Performance

Relational

Getting Grafted

Chinatowns are complex sites that embody shared histories of survival spanning generations, amidst ongoing struggles with displacement and anti-Asian racism. Guest edited by Steph Wong Ken, this issue gathers artistic explorations of Chinatowns across Canada to reinterpret and reimagine their pasts, presents, and futures. From architectural shifts and hidden stories within their visual representation, to building community bonds through a garden, queer diasporic library, and pact against gentrification, Chinatown is revealed as a home for multitudes.


Chinatown

Cities

Migration

Charlene K. Lau’s far-ranging profile of artist Karen Tam chronicles Tam’s influences, from her family’s restaurant in Montreal to her scholarly writing on _shanzhai_. Lau examines how Tam’s work reconfigures the Chinese diasporic experience and disrupts the familiar.


The Spatial Imaginaries of Karen Tam 譚嘉文

Criticism

International

Critique

The article focuses on lists and rankings of contemporary art shows, galleries and artists as evidence of art criticism in crisis. The article discusses the relationship between contemporary art and commerce, the way in which lists dictate trends instead of providing analysis or evaluation of art and the way in which successful artists operate as brands. The article goes on to discuss specific lists and rankings from art periodicals such as Artforum, ArtReview and ARTnews.

Resist the List: A Problem of Politics in the Evaluation of Contemporary Art

Review

Venice

The article reviews “Altermodern: Tate Triennial 2009″ in London, featuring Franz Ackermann, Darren Almond, Charles Avery, Walead Beshty Spartacus Chetwynd, Marcus Coast, Peter Coffin, Matthew Darbyshire, Shezad Dawood, Tacita Dean, Ruth Ewan, Loris Greaud, Subodh Gupta, Rachel Harrison, Joachim Koester, Nathaniel Mellors, Gustav Metzger, Mike Nelson, David Noonan, Katie Paterson, Olivia Plender, Seth Price, Navin Rawanchaikul, Lindsay Seers, Bob and Roberta Smith, Simon Starling, Pascale Marthine Tayou and Tris Vonna-Michell.