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 »

The “Nirvana: Taking Punk to the Masses” exhibit at Seattle’s EMP Museum should have been heaven. For a fan of Nirvana, Mudhoney, and a bunch of other bands from the Pacific Northwest like me, a room filled with rare artifacts, such as the sweater Kurt Cobain wore for the MTV Unplugged appearance or the drum […] More »

The seating area of the Burdock music hall is cast in a faint glow by the string lights above. A spotlight creates a faint hue behind a microphone. Tonight’s artist line up is taped on the microphone stand. The Slackline Creative Arts Series is ready for another show. The volunteer-run arts series started in July […] More »

The sound of biting lips softly. The sound of bones cracking. The sound of a light that never flickers. What we hear depends on who we are. These personal politics of sound are the focus of a challenging art exhibition in Halifax. Sound Etiquette explores the social conventions around sonic communication the hearing community might […] More »

Imagine a teenager, face smeared in soot and red and white paint, summoning the crowd to its feet. This was the breathtaking scene at Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory’s pep rally in the 1990s. Pep rallies, stirring and spirited as they are, don’t immediately evoke images of overtly political, much less radical, acts. But for Williamson Bathory, […] More »

Mohawks in Beehives (1991) Shelley Niro’s visual art and film have explored a borderless continent, power and pop culture, life on First Nations reserves, and much more – never without a sense of self. Niro, born in 1954 in Niagara Falls, New York, is a Mohawk artist from the Six Nations Reserve near Brantford, Ont. Living […] More »

Photo by Ailyn Malit Nikki Cajucom can pinpoint the exact moment her trajectory in life ricocheted. It happened when she first set foot in a basement in Toronto’s Kensington Market neighbourhood, reluctantly beginning her first day as an intern at Kapisanan Philippine Centre for Arts and Culture, a community organization that acts as a safe […] More »

Shirley Moorehouse’s Pure Energy. Photo courtesy of Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada. In The Hunter, a digital photograph by Michelle Baikie and part of Newfoundland and Labrador’s SakKijâjuk: Inuit Fine Art and Craft exhibit on Nunatsiavut art, Baikie uses the purple hues of thermal imaging to depict the central role of cold in her culture’s geography—bringing the landscape’s […] More »

Photo by Dean Bradley Like much of Toronto, the Yonge and Eglinton neighbourhood has undergone great change. As condos crop up on nearly every street corner and new transit lines are built to expand the city, the midtown area, frequented most by businesspeople and commuters, has seen vast growth. Nothing is stagnant, and the streets […] More »