Poetry isn’t a vocation associated with typical career paths, but even so, Toronto-based poet Sabrina Benaim’s journey has been unusually meteoric. In 2014, she performed a poem called Explaining My Depression to My Mother at the National Poetry Slam in Oakland, California. “Mom, my depression is a shapeshifter,” she begins in the video that has […] More »

In 2014, I stepped into a Yayoi Kusama infinity room at Copenhagen’s Louisiana Museum. There were only a few people in line and no formal time limit, and it was dope as hell. Surrounded by mirrors and pulsing lights, your reality becomes obliterated and it leaves you with a visceral feeling of foreverness. I took […] More »

On April 8, The Simpsons aired the episode “No Good Read Goes Unpunished.” The 15th episode of the series’ 29th season addressed the issue of the racist portrayal of Kwik-E-Mart owner Apu Nahasapeemapetilon. “Addressed” insofar as Lisa Simpson looked at the camera and said, “Something that started decades ago, and was applauded and inoffensive, is […] More »

It’s 2015, and the light come up on a dark stage at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre in New York City. Two young women stand on opposite sides of an empty mirror frame. As one waves her arms in the air creating shapes to convey her curious thoughts, the other begins to sing, giving those signed […] More »

What unique perspective do women bring to the arts? This is the question west-coast filmmakers Ian MacKenzie and Nicole Sorochan want their audience to think about, especially within the realm of female DJs with their transmedia project, Amplify Her. Through a documentary-style, feature-length film, a graphic novel, and a motion comic series, Amplify Her tells […] More »

Dear art thieves, Yes, that’s what you are. No, I don’t care that you just really liked my work. No, I don’t care that I didn’t use a watermark. It’s my design, you took it, you didn’t get my consent. You’re an art thief. I know we live in a time where millions of delicious […] More »

Taking to the ice with smooth transitions and ever-changing focal points, contemporary ice skating company Le Patin Libre uses minimalistic choreography to create a performance that founder Alexandre Hamel calls “magical.” The Montreal-based troupe, founded by Hamel in 2005, focuses on providing a skating experience for its audience that’s free from competition and scores. “It’s […] More »

Growing up in Canada in the mid-2000s, there was never quite a role model in Western popular culture who looked like me. As an 11-year-old, it didn’t occur to me that there was anything amiss with my pop idols, or that their portrayals of North American life were missing an important element of cultural relevance […] More »

Joshua Whitehead has a lot to say. The 29- year-old Oji-cree, Two-Spirit otâcimow, or storyteller, often finds himself fuelled by anger: from the day-to-day frustrations to systemic-sized injustices, and Canada’s political climate and the ongoing colonization of Indigenous peoples in Canada. His collection of poetry, full metal indigiqueer, came from this fire, this feeling “of wanting […] More »

Kenneth Moffatt is the 2018 Jack Layton Chair of Social Justice. That sounds fancy, and it is. Appointed across the Faculty of Arts and Faculty of Community Services, the Chair emphasizes the causes of the late NDP leader, and works “to effect progressive social change.” But to many Torontonians, especially those of us in the queer arts worlds, Moffatt […] More »

With the first chord of “Burn Your Village to the Ground,” the song accompanying a burlesque act titled “Not Your Stereotype,” a transformation begins. The figures on stage, dressed in racist caricatures of Indigeneity—feathered headdresses, wearing “Indian” Halloween costumes, carrying “Made in China” dreamcatchers—begin to shed their layers. The commodified image of the “Indian” is […] More »