James Michael Yeboah isn’t shy about his feelings. “I’m really sensitive. I cry all the time,” he says. That was the inspiration behind his first solo show, When Black Boys Cry. The Toronto-based painter says a lot of the subject matter within his project is about what he saw within himself. “Those ideas of me being […] More »

Tucked away in an alley off the corner of Bloor and Ossington is what looks like a two-storey garage with only a small purple neon sign acting as a beacon to passersby. This is home for a collection of hackers and hobbyists known as Site 3—a communal space that rewards curiosity of the trades. Many are […] More »

There’s a running joke in the Northwest Territories that you need to travel outside the Arctic to hang out with your neighbours. That was the case for Yellowknife artists Greyson Gritt and Tiffany Ayalik, who first met a few years ago at the Northern Scene festival in Ottawa. Their spontaneous partnership soon became Quantum Tangle—a […] More »

Terrance Houle, whose Blackfoot name is Iinniiwahkiimah (Buffalo Herder), is searching for bricks from his junior high and parents’ residential schools. He will bring all three bricks back to the IXL brick factory in Medicine Hat, where he will film a performance of him smashing them until they become fine dust. His parents will sing a […] More »

How were you chosen to curate UnSettled? I was approached in August when they had already created the UnSettled theme, linked to reconciliation. In taking it on, I decided to drop the reconciliation piece, since it’s a fundamental part of a lot of things Indigenous people are doing right now. I also wanted to give […] More »

1. look, you won’t like this truth every girl competes, edits herself daily double checks, avoids dessert. we’re born again in your eyes in every man’s eyes we become legendary or not, pitiable, just friends. a women’s face is her price tag. 2. I know niceties demands we lie but I’m trans, the least girl […] More »

Apartment, acrylic panel, 2016. Courtesy Heather Cline. Regina, Sask., artist Heather Cline has her own ideas about Canada’s sesquicentennial. There’s nothing wrong with a big national blowout, she says, but Ottawa’s version of an official birthday party isn’t for her. “In Canada, we talk a lot about big history moments, but I’ve always thought about […] More »

Although labelling a band “lesbian garage rock” may sound reductive or even backhanded, in the case of Sackville, N.B.-based Partner, it’s welcomed. “Most songs are straight, but our songs aren’t straight, because we’re not,” says the band’s guitarist- vocalist Lucy Niles. “We’re just plain old fashioned dykes, really.” These kinds of matter-of-fact declarations are scattered […] More »

The same day the Jian Ghomeshi trial began at Toronto’s Old City Hall, another sexual assault trial was taking place just one floor above. Kelly Showker’s upcoming documentary film, Slut or Nut: The Diary of a Rape Trial, follows York University PhD student Mandi Gray as she settles her human rights case with the university, following […] More »

Behind black lattice, parts of women’s eyes, lips, and noses peer out of the art piece, fighting to be individualized. While women in Iran are not the shrouded masses that the media stereotypes them as—a walk through Tehran, the country’s capital, usually includes women dressed in fashionable colours, patterns, and makeup—they are nevertheless required to abide […] More »

The camera pans the much-anticipated pep rally, tasked with cheering-up the students of Riverdale High after their classmate’s recent murder. The cheerleading squad performs a dance to a mash-up of “Sugar, Sugar” (aptly, by The Archies), and even though the choreography is composed mainly of coquettish shrugging, the performance is so emotionally damaging to Cheryl Blossom—twin […] More »