In this series of artist-led workshops, participants develop approaches to alternative archival practices that are rooted in community rather than established by an institution. Informed by the tenets of C Magazine’s Experiments in Criticism program, which was formed in consultation with experts in critical art pedagogy in 2019, these workshops pose questions for contemplation, discussion, and activation, such as: How can we develop embodied historiographic practices using creative-critical methods? How can we immediately begin to write a future that doesn’t perpetuate the same erasures we’ve witnessed to date? How do we record select details of our present in ways that will ensure they retain their vivacity over time, and by extension, how do we decide what to commit to memory?

This program is co-created and co-presented with the Toronto Biennial of Art.

There Are Fragments
Erika DeFreitas
Friday, April 29
4:30-7:30pm
72 Perth Ave, Toronto

Register here.

DeFreitas will share her process of working with found images, sharing space with their subjects, and attempting to unearth narratives through research, writing, and imaginings. How might the artist’s archive—the accumulation of images and items they gather as inspiration for art, life, or both—reveal stories that have yet to be centred? What lies beneath the surface? How do we unfold, uncover, and complicate institutional archives “once immobilized for preservation”? How can we forge artistic archival practices?

We graciously request that participants prepare by:

1) Reading “‘The Camera Made Me Do It’: Nicole Jolicoeur, Female Identity and Troubling Archives” by Patricia Levin and Jeanne Perrault (from which the citation above is drawn).
2) Bringing one or more images that stir their curiosity and/or have contributed to their practice, research, thinking. Hard copies are recommended, but accessing on a device is also welcome.
3) Bringing a device with which research can be conducted if needed and/or any existing research or work related to the images (e.g., notes, journal entries, articles, sketches, etc.).

We will spend time with these images individually and as a group, engaging in different frameworks for writing with, to, about, and through them. If comfortable, participants will be encouraged to share.

Please contact info@cmagazine.com with any accessibility requests.

BIO
Erika DeFreitas’ (lives and works in Toronto, Canada) multidisciplinary practice includes performance, photography, video, installation, textiles, drawing, and writing. Placing emphasis on gesture, process, the body, documentation, and paranormal phenomena, DeFreitas mines concepts of loss, post-memory, legacy, and objecthood. She is a recipient of the 2016 Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts Finalist Artist Prize, the 2016 John Hartman Award, and was longlisted for the 2017 Sobey Art Award. DeFreitas holds a Master of Visual Studies from the University of Toronto.

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