thumbnail_Manifdart_SizeB_300_250.png

Manifdart_SizeB_300_250.png

md_Manifdart_Fevrier23_SizeA.png

sm_Manifdart_Fevrier23_SizeA.png

thumbnail_Manifdart_Fevrier23_SizeA.png

Manifdart_Fevrier23_SizeA.png

Manif d'art

sm_Darling_Exhibition_11_CMag_Ad_300x250 (1).png

thumbnail_Darling_Exhibition_11_CMag_Ad_300x250 (1).png

Darling_Exhibition_11_CMag_Ad_300x250 (1).png

md_Darling_Exhibition_11_CMag_Ad_970x180.png

sm_Darling_Exhibition_11_CMag_Ad_970x180.png

thumbnail_Darling_Exhibition_11_CMag_Ad_970x180.png

Darling_Exhibition_11_CMag_Ad_970x180.png

Darling Founderie (exchange)

sm_P26_CMAG - bannière web (mobile) (300 × 250 px).jpg

thumbnail_P26_CMAG - bannière web (mobile) (300 × 250 px).jpg

P26_CMAG - bannière web (mobile) (300 × 250 px).jpg

lg_P26_CMag_WebNewsletter banner (970 × 180 px).jpg

md_P26_CMag_WebNewsletter banner (970 × 180 px).jpg

sm_P26_CMag_WebNewsletter banner (970 × 180 px).jpg

thumbnail_P26_CMag_WebNewsletter banner (970 × 180 px).jpg

P26_CMag_WebNewsletter banner (970 × 180 px).jpg

Plural

thumbnail_VarleyArtGallery_Mar1-31_2026_Size B.png

VarleyArtGallery_Mar1-31_2026_Size B.png

md_VarleyArtGallery_Mar1-31_2026_Size A.png

sm_VarleyArtGallery_Mar1-31_2026_Size A.png

thumbnail_VarleyArtGallery_Mar1-31_2026_Size A.png

VarleyArtGallery_Mar1-31_2026_Size A.png

Varley

thumbnail_CMag_IF26_NewsletterBigBox.png

CMag_IF26_NewsletterBigBox.png

md_CMagAd_IF26_WebBanner.png

sm_CMagAd_IF26_WebBanner.png

thumbnail_CMagAd_IF26_WebBanner.png

CMagAd_IF26_WebBanner.png

Images

thumbnail_KarenZalamea_Size B.png

KarenZalamea_Size B.png

md_KarenZalamea_Size A.png

sm_KarenZalamea_Size A.png

thumbnail_KarenZalamea_Size A.png

KarenZalamea_Size A.png

Evergreen

lg_C162_Cover.jpg

md_C162_Cover.jpg

sm_C162_Cover.jpg

thumbnail_C162_Cover.jpg

C162_Cover.jpg

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

lg_KarenZalamea_SunkenGarden_Chico size C.jpg

md_KarenZalamea_SunkenGarden_Chico size C.jpg

sm_KarenZalamea_SunkenGarden_Chico size C.jpg

thumbnail_KarenZalamea_SunkenGarden_Chico size C.jpg

Evergreen SP

The Art Gallery at Evergreen presents “Every Surface Is a Shrine,” which brings together  photo-based works by Karen Zalamea that explore the relationships between material,  memory, and place. Through sculpture, installation, video, and historical processes, Zalamea reimagines photography not only as an image-making tool but as a methodology of care, labour, and cultural inquiry.  


KarenZalamea_SunkenGarden_Chico size C.jpg

Looking Closely: Karen Zalamea's "Every Surface Is a Shrine" at Art Gallery at Evergreen 

Column

Temple Marucci-Campbell is an emerging writer and scholar pursuing her PhD in art history at Concordia University. Temple’s work traces olfactory and gustatory modes of memory work, archiving, and placemaking that constitute Black diasporic identity.

The peak afternoon sun in Ocala, FL, was rapturous. The green fragrance of freshly cut grass screamed in the heat in my Grannie’s backyard. I was four years old, catching small brown lizards. My escape from the thick humidity was the air-conditioned living room where I would sprawl on the couch for a moment and then return to my hunt outside. My step-grandfather, whom we called Uncle Willett, kept an eye on me. He grew up in Guyana, so, unlike me, he was used to the intensity of the heat. He sat on a lacy wrought-iron chair as he peeled the woody layer from sugar-cane stalks to prepare them to be juiced. He called me over from across the backyard and asked if I had ever tried sugar cane. I was prepared to lie and say yes, as I was an extremely picky eater, but he assured me it was sweet and I should treat it like a popsicle. I remember the sound of the hot air, the smell of the sun hitting the grass, Uncle Willett’s booming words of assurance, and an intense feeling of belonging—something I couldn’t quite articulate at the time. The taste of sugar cane is a portal to this memory. It creates a moment of cross-temporal intimacy and kinship, a feeling that is difficult to capture or articulate.

Tao Leigh Goffe writes that “food is an archive of global desire,” [^1] implicating both our consumption and the past and present realities of its production. Sugar cane, similar to other edible goods produced on plantations by indentured and enslaved labourers, is inscribed with poetics of suffering, kinship, loss, and refusal. Sugarcane, when consumed, has the potential to cultivate an intimacy with these poetics, a closeness with past people and places separated by land masses and oceans. Sugar cane connects me to Grannie, Uncle Willett, and my father, but also to entangled colonial histories.

María Magdalena Campos-Pons’s performance _Agridulce_ was part of her 2016 exhibition at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA, titled “Alchemy of the Soul.” In her performance, Campos-Pons dressed in the style of a 19th-century enslaved woman. She wore a floor-length long-sleeved dress with patterned tendrils of foliage, meant to evoke sugar-cane fields. Her hair was wrapped in fabric in the same pattern, with the ends of her locs poking out of the wrap. Her skin was painted white, its application inconsistent with flecks of her deep complexion poking through her spectral guise. The white paint draws upon the Afro-Cuban religion Santería, a creolized version of Yorùbá rituals and practices carried by enslaved people through the Middle Passage. Embodiment is essential in devotions and rituals enacted by Santería practitioners. Practitioners would use sugar as a component in their devotionals, as it was more widely available than honey, which was
previously used by the Yorùbá. [^2] Santería practitioners would infuse edible parts of their rituals with aché, and once consumed, the sacred energy would imbue a person’s body. As Campos-Pons walked through the atrium of the Peabody with a stalk of sugar cane in one hand and a knife in the other, she would extend small chunks to audience members and say, “Try it. It’s sweet.”[^3]

A common thread between my memory in Florida and Campo-Pons’s _Agridulce_ is their ephemerality. There are photographs that depict Campos-Pons’s performance and my four-year-old self at my Grannie’s house, but the images do not capture the sensuous qualities. At one point in highschool, I bought sugar cane from a man selling it out of his trunk in Kensington Market to refacilitate the indescribable feeling, but I was only
able to catch a glimpse of it. Despite the impossibility of capture, taste forges an intimate relationship between the past and present. Taste can situate me in the past, which disrupts the Western-colonial expectation that historical truth is only a material condition. In the case of gastropoetics, a field of study developed by Parama Roy, the alimentary tract becomes a way to question colonial appetite and consumption. [^4] Roy proposes that “the alimentary tract is a boundary, a fiercely policed and hotly trafficked one,” [^5] that determines “who eats and with whom, who starves, and what is rejected as food are fundamental to colonial and post-colonial making—and unmaking.” [^6] Roy considers the
embodied affects of colonialism and how they manifest through alimentation. However, through my personal anecdote and Campos-Pons’s performance, I also want to consider alimentation as a process that interrupts the expected hypervisibility and scrutiny of Black histories. The histories activated through my consumption of sugar cane cannot
be reproduced. They are opaque, covert, and intimate, sustained through my mouth and stomach.

In the wake of destroyed material objects and the mass death of people, enslaved people were left with their embodied and sensuous memories. The Hold was a place that permanently altered enslaved people’s attunement to their sensuous realities. Stench was attributed to Black people by slave-holders and white Americans through the vile reality
of sickness and death in the Hold. [^7] Further, the spiritual and medicinal properties of shea butter were reconfigured, [^8] and as mentioned previously, Santería practitioners had to reorient their taste for honey toward that of the sugar they were forced to produce. The boats that traversed the Middle Passage and the Caribbean Sea facilitated the metaphorical and literal consumption of Black life, attempting and often succeeding at casting abducted Africans into objecthood. Despite the consumption of Black life through murder, shoddy record-keeping, and torture, the immaterial archives [^9] constituted through gustatory, and even olfactory, processes endured. The processes of tasting, chewing, and digesting became an embodied way of engaging with autobiographical and broader colonial Black histories. While I focus on sugar cane, these processes can be facilitated through rum, tobacco, coffee, and salt. Food, particularly goods with cultural significance and with connections to plantation labour, often cultivate this gustatory phenomenon that unsettles the Western expectation of visible and indexable history.

One of the first times I recounted my sugar-cane encounter with my father, he reminisced about times in his childhood when he ate it to cool down. My grandfather would do the same. There is a cross-temporal connection between all of us, obviously constituted through our blood, but fortified through our stories of eating sugar cane. I learned that my grandfather had an incredibly strong sweet tooth as a child in Guyana, and he would sneak spoonfuls of sugar after dinner just to satisfy the craving. These stories, triggered through our encounters with sugar cane, cannot be unbound from the terrible realities of enslavement and terror—however, they are maintained through joy, humour, and kinship. They cultivate a kind of intimacy despite their colonial inscription.

[^1]: Tao Leigh Goffe, “Sugarwork: The Gastropoetics of Afro-Asia After the Plantation,” _Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas_ 5, no. 4 (2019), 39.
[^2]: Elizabeth Pérez, “Crystallizing Subjectivities in the African Diaspora: Sugar, Honey and the Gods of Afro-Cuban Lucumí,” in _Religion, Food, and Eating_ in North America, ed. Benjamin E. Zeller et al. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), 177.
[^3]: Adriana Zavala, “Blackness Distilled, Sugar and Rum: María Magdalena Campos-Pons’s Alchemy of the Soul, Elixir for the Spirits,” Latin American Visual Culture 1, no. 2 (2019), 29, https://doi.org/10.1525/lavc.2019.120003
[^4]: Parama Roy, _Alimentary Tracts: Appetites, Aversions, and the Postcolonial_ (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 24.
[^5]: Ibid.
[^6]: Ibid.
[^7]: Mark Smith, _How Race Is Made: Slavery, Segregation, and the Senses_ (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 6.
[^8]: Hsuan L. Hsu, “Olfactory Politics in Black Diasporic Art,” in _Olfactory Art and the Political in an Age of Resistance_ (New York: Routledge, 2021), 17.
[^9]: A term developed by Jenny Sharpe that, for her, is constituted by “affects, dreams, spirits and visions” (3) carried by enslaved Black people from Africa into the Caribbean and passed on to their descendants. A significant part of my MA research at Concordia University was to expand Sharpe’s notion of immaterial archives in arguing for the significance of taste and smell in activating them. See: Jenny Sharpe, _Immaterial Archives: An African Diaspora Poetics of Loss_ (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2020).

Writer

lg_C162_Marucci-Campbell.jpg

md_C162_Marucci-Campbell.jpg

sm_C162_Marucci-Campbell.jpg

thumbnail_C162_Marucci-Campbell.jpg

C162_Marucci-Campbell.jpg

Food

Race

Colonialism

Temple Marucci-Campbell considers sugar cane through the lens of gastropoetics. Conceptualized by Parama Roy, gastropoetics takes taste and the alimentary tract as a way to question colonial appetite, which Marucci-Campbell pushes further to explore Black histories sustained through the mouth and stomach.

lg_C162_Marucci-Campbell_Th.jpg

md_C162_Marucci-Campbell_Th.jpg

sm_C162_Marucci-Campbell_Th.jpg

thumbnail_C162_Marucci-Campbell_Th.jpg

C162_Marucci-Campbell_Th.jpg

One Thing: A Gastropoetics of Sugar Cane

Feature

Michèle Pearson Clarke is a Trinidad-born visual artist, writer, and Assistant Professor of Photography at Toronto Metropolitan University. Working primarily in photography and video, her work situates grief as a site of possibility for social engagement and political connection.

Laura Grier is a Sahtu Délı ̨ nę First Nations artist and printmaker, born in Somba Ké (Yellowknife), and based out of Alberta and currently living in Toronto. They hold a BFA from NSCAD U (Kjipuktuk) and an MFA from OCAD U (Toronto), and are currently a PhD candidate in Visual Arts at York University.

Scott Miller Berry is a filmmaker and cultural worker who lives in Toronto. He is currently Managing Director at Workman Arts, an art + mental health organization. He was previously Executive Director (2005–2015) at Images Festival.

Vicky Moufawad-Paul is a Toronto-based visual and media arts curator and writer. She is the Director/Curator at A Space Gallery. She situates her work in terms of curatorial praxis, which simultaneously offers substantive analyses of world politics and embodies processes of enacting justice. She is interested in the ways that experiences of colonialism and complex diasporic intersectionalities can demonstrate new possibilities for transnational solidarity.

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.

Christina Oyawale is a hierarchy averse self-proclaimed “commie-punk,” with a reverence toward Web 2.0 and DIY punk aesthetics. They are a working-class queer disabled artist, curator, and writer from Toronto, currently based in Winnipeg.

**_Note: To read this dispatch in the intended print layout, please [view or download the PDF.](https://strapi-uploads-c-mag-prod.s3.ca-central-1.amazonaws.com/C162_Open_Hearing_e13a0daf12.pdf)_**

Below is the second dispatch from “Open Hearing: Dreaming in Dark Times” to be published in the magazine. [**A full public
transcript of the event is also available**](https://cmagazine.com/articles/open-hearing-dreaming-in-dark-times-full-public-transcript). 

 

This is the second of three dispatches from “Open Hearing: Dreaming in Dark Times,” a town-hall event held on March 2, 2025, in Toronto. Initiated by EMILIA-AMALIA, the event brought together more than 30 speakers and collectives who shared connected urgencies in our cultural work—over the course of four hours and to an audience of more than 200. From organizing against the genocide in Gaza, to censorship, politically-motivated fund-
ing cuts, and longstanding labour issues, the question was and remains:

> how do we persist?

The full public transcript can be viewed and shared from:
https://cmagazine.com/articles/open-hearing-dreaming-in-dark-times-full-public-transcript

_Some transcripts carry minor edits from the speakers for these pages._

**[00:12:07]** 
**Laura Grier (artist):**

Okay, I’m Laura. I didn’t know I’d be first, but I am a Sahtú Dene artist, reluctant academic, someone who likes school but doesn’t like school, I guess, if that makes sense.

Oh god, I don’t know. There was a lot of things I wanted to say, which was mostly that I’m really sick and tired of shit. And I just wanna become a radicalist. But I also have this thing that’s funny. I actually had a dream about this last night where, when I got up here, I was flooded by questions, by white-privileged people who wanted me to tell them what to do. And then we ran outta time before I could even speak. So that kind of summarizes a lot of what I’m thinking about and experiencing.

But Audra Simpson talks about privilege and the self-reflexive settler, and there’s a roundabout ritual that they like doing where it doesn’t really amount to much. There’s like no political project; there’s no actual dismantling of structures of domination and of oppression. But she does give us answers. But for that, I’m not gonna sit here and tell you that answer. You read Audra Simpson yourself. You’ll find those answers there.

But there’s a lot of things I think about, which is me being in school for 10 years and how I think about creative institutions. I think about the wellness of our students and the future artists, the possibilities of non-violent extremism, and the possibility of—like—the _impossibility_ of decolonizing institutions.

But I also think about something that Leanne said once—Leanne [Betasamosake] Simpson. And when she was asked, “How does she know when we’re well or when people are well”?

And her answer was: “We know when we’re well, when we are well and safe enough to help each other.”

And for me, I’m not well. I physically react a lot when I have to go into any university meetings now. And my window of tolerance has gotten small, my voice has gotten even smaller, but I show up. I show up to these awful committees or like whatever faculty meetings I have, getting these actual physical reactions to university now. But I always have to show up to these things alone, still.

So, my biggest question is, where are my so-called allies in these spaces? By no ways do I think that institutional structures are ways forward, but that is currently my reality, right? It’s like art and university. That’s my reality.

And my biggest vision is to have students be well and safe. And that’s a big ask, right?

So I guess I wanna—there’s lots of different things, right? Like a friend told me about how the university is this intense colonial machine and that I—like, not to get overrun by it. And that sometimes I need to put my wrench down and maybe trust that someone will pick up that wrench.

But that’s, again, I’m only alone. So therefore, you can’t dismantle this colonial machine alone. So why do I always find myself alone? I don’t really know.

But I’m going to end with a quote by Leanne Simpson, which is that:

> For my _kobade_ [which is really like your connections] to survive and flourish for the next hundred years, we need to join together in a rebellion of love, persistence, commitment, profound caring and create constellations of coresistance, working together toward a radical alternative present, and based on deep reciprocity and the gorgeous generative refusal of colonial recognition.

I had lots of things to say, but I wanted to end with something more hopeful than me being really angry, which, I’m angry all the time.

That’s about it.

**[01:58:06]** 
**Michèle Pearson Clarke (artist and writer):**

Hi, everybody. I didn’t write anything down. I’ve been trying to figure out what I was going to say.

The energy in this room is so mixed. There is joy, there is solidarity. There is also, for me, a tremendous amount of sadness and grief. And, I think—I guess I just wanna choose my time to name and acknowledge this. I think most of you know that’s the focus of my practice.

I think we still—most of us—find it very, very challenging to talk about grief, to name it, and to acknowledge it.

I think everything that we’ve been talking about today, everything that we’ve been going through as a community—there’s so much loss. There’s so much grief, in terms of politics, values, friendships, opportunities, jobs.

Some of us have had to sacrifice our principles. A lot of us have been reduced, made to feel small. And there’s just, I feel that so much in this room, underneath all of the laughter, which we need as well. And I think none of the action, none of the rallying, none of that is possible if we don’t name it, and acknowledge it, and hold space for each other’s grief.

 

> < applause >

**[01:12:09]** 
**Vicky Moufawad-Paul (curator and writer):**

It is heartening to see everybody here together.

I was born into this genocide during the Civil War in Lebanon. Throughout the long list of attacks against Palestine and Palestinians in my lifetime, I have always been outspoken. This time around I am depleted and feel that I have nothing to add. Even still, I’m going to try to say something.

Solidarity across communities is the only way that we can keep going. It’s amazing to see many of you here from across different struggles and different communities.

I am reminded of the song “Where Are the Millions?” (“Wein El Malayeen?”) sung in 1982 by a multiethnic group from Syria, Tunisia, Lebanon, and written by the Libyan poet Ali al-Kilani. “Where Are the Millions?” is about the First Intifada in Palestine. Julia Boutros, the Lebanese singer, has continued to perform this song, and it has been widely associated with her. The song is about the struggle for Palestine and asks “where are the millions” of supporters who stand with us for human rights?

At the time, the question was, where are the millions of Arabs and the other Arab nations who would stand in solidarity with us? Why aren’t they standing up for Palestine? And, of course, the answer is complex but part of it is that silence and passivity are created by the terribly unequal military and economic might of the colonizer. The oppressive systems that encircle us also encircle many communities in the world, including, of course, Indigenous communities here.

When I listen to that song now, I feel a renewed kind of enthusiasm for “Where Are the Millions?” The call from the song is being answered by justice-loving people from all over the world. It is not simply Arabs that respond to the call because we are and have always been anti-essentialist in our resistance. It is the duty of all justice-loving people to respond, and our solidarity is in excess of what the military machine or any of these colonial machines can understand.

This time around, the hollowness of universal human rights, international law, democracy—all of that is so glaring. It’s not just glaring to me, thankfully, and not just glaring to Palestinians and to Arabs, but also to people from every corner of the planet. And that’s a
testament to all of you being here today. I want to mention that I’m working with a collective of people organizing the Gaza Biennale T’karonto Pavillion. The Gaza Biennale features over 50 artists. It was put together in April 2024, and it is going to be
in Toronto in November of 2025. Gallery TPW and A Space Gallery are the main sites for the exhibition. We won’t have 50 artists, but we will have as many as we possibly can. It’s impossible to get artwork out of Gaza right now, yet we will find ways to show their brilliance, sensitivity, and dignity.

 

> Thank you.

**[02:20:37]** 
**Scott Miller Berry [filmmaker and cultural worker]:**

Hello. Thank you for having me. I’m really humbled and flattered to be in this magical room. Let’s start with a poem, shall we?

>In the dark times, 
>will there also be singing? 
>Yes, there will also be singing. 
>About the dark times. 

That’s called “Motto to the Svendborg Poems,” from Bertolt Brecht, 1939.

This event feels like a beautiful concert: singing and listening about the dark times. My first hat tip to Indu Vashist, who shared that poem at a SAVAC [South Asian Visual Arts Centre] event last week. Thanks to all the organizers.

Ok four minutes, or three-and-a-half now. I agonized about which preoccupation, which passion, which problem du jour to talk about.

I’m Scott. I’ve been a cultural worker in this place since 2001.

The first thing I thought about was—having a screening and talk that centred Palestine, censored and cancelled last October at my day job—[this] seemed ike the right thing, but I’m not allowed to talk about it. Because, you know, what could be better than censoring and canceling an event than further censoring any discussion about the actual censorship?

But, anyway, let’s talk about labour again, and inequities, and a couple of proposals.

I’m trying to be precise in my old age, which is hard for a Pisces. But we’re gonna get—I’m gonna throw out some numbers.

In 2005, I applied to be the Executive Director at Images Festival. The position was advertised with a salary of $36,000–$40,000. I was hired at $36,000, with an annual budget of around $420,000. My final year as director, 10 years later, the ED salary was at $59,000, with a budget of around $600,000. The board of directors hired my successor at more than $10,000 less than that salary. Same position. Same budget. Same responsibilities. Same expectations. And it’s very important to add that she is a racialized woman. And I wrote, “sigh.”

My current salary at Workman Arts, an arts and mental-health non-profit and charity, is $71,000. And the Executive Director’s salary is almost double that amount. The next closest salary to mine is mid-50s. The current annual budget is $1.3 million dollars.

Cultural workers and artists have long worked hard over many, many decades—we heard about this from—my new nickname is KarlFac (for Karl Beveridge)—to establish fee schedules for all kinds of presentations, commissions, exhibitions, talks: CARFAC, IMAA,
ACAAQ, et cetera. Oh, Jesus. Your film is 16 minutes and showing at a festival? Their budget is X? We have a public schedule that tells everybody involved
what the minimum fee should be.

My proposal is this: let’s develop a salary schedule, similar to an artist-fee schedule, with a goal of levelling inequities and save everybody a lot of time.

You’re a coordinator at this gallery. Their budget’s $400,000. You’re applying to be a coordinator at that arts organization, similar budget. Your salary scale will be known, as long as it’s a similar position.

And if this sounds like a union scale or an artist’s union—that’s also not a new idea.

> < applause >

And so be it.

All job postings could be linked to this schedule. Can we also please make salary disclosures required as part of all job postings, already?

My second proposal: after 10 years, a cultural worker must circulate to another organization or another sector. One part of the problem with cultural workers being underpaid in this place is that we figure out how to survive on less than a living wage and then we keep salaries low and “acceptable.”

I owe my second hat tip to JP Kelly, who tabled that idea at the MANO [Media Arts Network of Ontario] conference in 2013.

What comes around, goes around. Free Palestine. Love you all.

> < gavel bangs >

**[01:49:08]** 
**Christina Oyawale [artist, curator, and writer]: [“First as tragedy, second as farce”]**

My name is Christina Oyawale. I am an interdisciplinary artist, curator, and writer from Toronto, and currently based in Winnipeg. I was wrongfully dismissed from an arts administration position at Trinity Square Video in 2024, alongside five of my other colleagues for refusing to stay silent about labour and geopolitical issues. That experience incited me to write this call to action:

Over the past two years of the livestreamed genocide in Palestine, I have been thinking about how we as settlers need to be more willing to implicate ourselves and be less fearful of repercussions. By that, I mean not separating the political from the artistic. While we
contemplate the loss of funding or exhibitions, we watch domestic and international community members lose their lives to poverty, greed, ethnic cleansing, and Christofascism.

What is our purpose as artists? How can we use creativity as a catalyst to disrupt? Is there potential for art to be used as rhetoric? These are conversations we might be having amidst our immediate peers, but there is no good in questioning our morality if it does not engage the wider community at large.

Art and the communities we cultivate have never been safe, especially for those racially and socio-economically on the margins. For many of us, getting the exhibition, the Sobey [Art Award], or the profile in _C Magazine_ or _Border Crossings_ was never the goal. Our
intentions were to cultivate spaces that reflect the realities of the world; never capitulating to capitalistic pressures of consumption. To have a moral compass and comprehend the horrors of the world, one does need to identify as an “activist” to be vocal about the violent
effects of colonialism. It is the bare minimum of our humanity to acknowledge injustices, but this need to characterize our positions has become far too obsessed with the aesthetics of the self. Disabled, queer, Black, and Indigenous communities have historically done much of the emotional and physical labour of coalition-building; it is time for everyone else to follow suit.

Finally, as artists, practitioners, academics, and students, we have a responsibility to contribute to our communities in a meaningful manner that breathes light into people’s lives. The fascists are currently winning at politics, but they will never win at culture. We
have the advantage as cultural workers and what we do in this position is the most important part of our existence. I write this as a rallying call, to acknowledge and rectify every time we wished we could’ve done “more”—I write this as a reminder that despite the 77 years of brutality and loss, Palestinians have always marched back to what remained of their homes and ate breakfast amidst the rubble. The spirit of the Palestinian people has taught me that there will always be more work to be done, and despite it all, there are always people worth fighting for. Whether that be the Indigenous people of Turtle Island, occupied Palestinians, the people of Somalia and Congo, as well as, the houseless people in our communities.

“The fascists are currently winning at politics, but they will never win at culture.”

To end, I will remind us of the Marxist quote “first as tragedy, second as farce.” History presents us with tragedy upon tragedy, and thus as we navigate the current times, make no mistake, all of this has been forewarned for decades. However, time and again, we fail to realize that our actions will define what we leave for generations to come. Farce is the act of people recycling ideas, art that fears implications of one's political affiliation. To this I say, don’t contribute to the farce. Be creative, be weird, be hell-bent on making sure this place is not a safe place for profiteers and fascists. Raise hell for the humanities and arts programs intentionally being cut at universities, raise hell about unlawful deportations on stolen land and raise hell every single day you feel drawn to creation. Otherwise, what even is the point? That is the most important thing.

lg_Untitled design.jpg

md_Untitled design.jpg

sm_Untitled design.jpg

thumbnail_Untitled design.jpg

C162_Open Hearing (from dispatch 1)

C162_Open Hearing.pdf

Collective

Institutional critique

“Open Hearing: Dreaming in Dark Times” was initiated by EMILIA-AMALIA as a town hall that gathered more than 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 Laura Grier, Michèle Pearson Clarke, Vicky Moufawad-Paul, Scott Miller Berry, and Christina Oyawale.

Open Hearing: Dreaming in Dark Times, Dispatch II

Review

Irem Karaaslan is a writer and researcher from Istanbul, based in Montréal/Tiohtià:ke. She is interested in exploring how aesthetics can address the pressing issues of the 21st century meaningfully, with a particular emphasis on the migrant crisis and ecological exigencies.

With a quiet cadence, Diyar Mayil’s installation “Still Air” gathers itself like a courtyard, deliberate yet unfinished. I sit on the low bench that faces a shallow pool, bordered by a gutter. I trace the gutter’s edge, following where the line falters, where it nearly meets itself. Above, a square of polished copper hovers just below the ceiling, its surface breached at the centre, to release water drops that fall out of rhythm. The sound fills the room with a kind of waiting; I hold my breath between each descent, suspended in what never fully arrives.

With each drop’s erratic fall, I’m compelled to wonder if the infrastructure I’m inhabiting is, in fact, faltering. A subtle wash of blue marks the corrosion encircling the rupture in the copper, hovering like a small piece of sky that inevitably remains tethered. I look at the basin underneath to encounter the reflection of this “sky.” This small rupture halts at mere suggestion. I understand that to sit in “Still Air” neither elevates one to a feeling of respite nor collapses fully into failure.

It is as if Mayil enacts through form what my thoughts hold in suspension in the room. Where the edges of the basin and gutter soften, they concede their pretense of marble to reveal wax; within them, faint wicks are held. Poured from emergency candles, once meant to flicker in urgency, the wax now congeals in a water infrastructure that is collapsing. A lit candle’s potential undoing becomes what sustains it. The structure’s form rests inseparable from suggested crisis.

Here, to last is not to resist but to tremble, being suspended in the nearness of collapse. Vitality, where it appears, finds itself equally arrested. Small copper beans that float atop the stagnant water suggest sprouting, growth, germination. However, some retain their metallic sheen, seemingly immune to time, while others bear the green patina of corrosion. Each sitting still on the surface marks another moment of deferred becoming, another instance where potential encounters its impossibility.

Such is the refusal of “Still Air” to give in to the comfort of arrival—associated with the resolution of form and closure of meaning. To dwell here is to experience potential as a material force. The space insists on a kind of belief, but one that is constantly negotiated. You believe the marble until it betrays itself; you expect the beans to sprout, even as they tarnish. These small material betrayals do not cancel hope, but fold it into a more unstable, more restless condition.

The cadence of each falling drop presses, compresses, accumulates, until it feels like pressure to me. The courtyard’s language becomes that of purgatory. To enter “Still Air,” one must learn to breathe with such pressure: the ever-present possibility of instability and collapse. The air contains what resists articulation yet demands attention. For the artist, grief further infuses the structure, in contrast to the relief that courtyards can provide. Grief saturates but attaches to no particular loss; it does not resolve and refuses to dissipate. It is often not named; it is the air that thickens. It is constantly held caught in the persistence of almost.

The work realizes itself within these refusals and insists that what is withheld is as significant as what is revealed. To submit to such pressure means recognizing that what denies resolution might create space beyond what ease allows. The work calls for an endurance that does not seek to overcome, a willingness to bear time held taut. We follow the silent work of waiting. We track the hidden traces of anticipation. We tend to what sustains itself on the threshold.

lg_KARAASLAN.jpg

md_KARAASLAN.jpg

sm_KARAASLAN.jpg

thumbnail_KARAASLAN.jpg

C162_KARAASLAN.jpg

C162_Karaaslan.pdf

“Still Air” ran from 11 April to 24 May 2025 at articule, Montreal.

md_KARAASLAN_TN.png

sm_KARAASLAN_TN.png

thumbnail_KARAASLAN_TN.png

C162_KARAASLAN_TN.png

“Still Air” — Diyar Mayil 

Print and Digital subscriptions are available for individuals and institutions

C Magazine

Subscribe to

[**DONATE NOW**](https://gofund.me/1edf5095d)
 

Dear Reader,

**_C_’s continued operation is at immediate risk. As one of the few remaining national arts periodicals, we need your help.**

With rising costs, the gaps between public granting cycles, and an overall decline in support for independent publishing, _C_ is at a crossroads. **In order to maintain _C_’s operational integrity, [we’re setting a critical fundraising goal of $80,000 by April 15.](https://gofund.me/1edf5095d)** This is crucial to maintain our baseline staff, contributor, and production needs for the next few months. Otherwise, after supporting thousands of artists, writers, editors, interns, and advertisers over the years, _C_ faces the prospect of imminent closure.

For more than 40 years, _C Magazine_ has been an essential platform for responsive and informed perspectives on contemporary art in Canada and beyond. _C_ connects readers to new and culturally urgent voices that shape how we perceive and experience art in an ever-changing world, including major social and ethical concerns. This is an inheritance and a responsibility that directs all of the work we do.

We appeal urgently and directly to you—_C_’s readers, supporters, contributors, colleagues, and everyone in the broader art community who believes in the importance and future of independent art criticism and publishing in Canada—to donate generously.

We know this is a huge ask in a cultural space filled with precarity among our many peers, but if _C_ was where you discovered an artist you love; if _C_ gave you your first published opportunity or helped you and your community feel seen; if _C_ has been a resource for your research or a sounding board for risk-taking ideas; if _C_ has been a mirror to your questions, passions, frustrations, and provocations about art and its structures—**your support right now matters more than ever.**

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Bryne McLaughlin, Executive Director and Publisher 
Joy Xiang, Editor 
_C Magazine_

Tairone Bastien, Tess Edmonson, Adrien Hall, Mary Kim, Henry Heng Lu, Kirstie McCallum, Johanna Mizgala, Janine Ramlochan, Justin Waddell, Natalie Waldburger, Sarah Wang, Jayne Wilkinson, and Viahsta Yuan 
Board of Directors 
C The Visual Arts Foundation

Screenshot 2026-03-11 at 12.28.33 PM.png

As one of the few remaining national arts periodicals, we need your help. In order to ensure _C_'s continued operation, we're setting a critical fundraising goal of $80,000 by April 15. If _C_ means anything to you, please consider donating. Your support right now matters more than ever.


_C_'s continued operation is at immediate risk. Visit donate.cmagazine.com

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.

Header

C's continued operation is at immediate risk. Visit donate.cmagazine.com

C Mag