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 »

Works of art are often able to draw people together and show their connections. Ojibwe artist Jessica Canard thought up the design for her recent mural with this goal in mind. Commissioned by the National Arts Centre in partnership with the University of Winnipeg, Canard combined her years of experience making murals and facilitating art […] More »

For Erica Shiner, 2015 marked the year she first launched herself into the world of feminist activism. That May, she started a petition to stop American rapper Action Bronson from performing at Toronto’s Yonge-Dundas Square for annual music festival North by Northeast, saying his lyrics “[glorify] gang-raping and murdering women.” After gaining more than 40,000 […] More »

I take improv on Wednesday nights in a basement dance studio with floors so sensitive we’re not allowed to wear outdoor shoes on them. The ratio of men to women in the class is about five to one, which is pretty normal. It’s my turn to play. On stage my scene partner stations himself at […] More »

Nancy Mike knows the challenges of being a musician in Canada’s North all too well. The throat singer and accordion player for Iqaluit band The Jerry Cans recalls when the band—whose fusion of Inuit throat singing, Inuktitut lyrics, and folk-rock sound have won them an international fanbase—recorded in home studios without adequate equipment, space, or […] More »

Nestled along the riverbank of the South Saskatchewan River in Saskatoon stands the Remai Modern, the new contemporary art museum that currently houses Indigenous artifacts from artists of the Treaty 6 territory—the land on which this $84.6 million facility resides. Determined by the river, a collaborative exhibition by Ontario-based artists Duane Linklater and Tanya Lukin […] More »