Reflections on creative practice and its role within movements for Black life
Jessica P. Kirk
The energy that fills the room at a book launch surrounded by community is a feeling like no other. Walking into a reconfigured venue with familiar faces, soulful melodies, and warm hugs is one of those experiences I’m grateful to have been a part of before everything changed amid the pandemic. These are the kind […] 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 »
The artist's Rest in Power series celebrates women whose lives were taken brutally and unjustly
Madi Haslam
When Vancouver-based artist Sandeep Johal read Shauna Singh Baldwin’s novel, The Selector of Souls, she was deeply moved. The story of two Indian women tackles difficult gender-based issues Johal often finds herself considering: female foeticide, infanticide, femicide, domestic abuse, dowry, and rape. Soon after reading it, Johal was bringing a fictional goddess from the novel to […] More »
Wei Li’s painting speaks for itself. Her brush strokes tangle and twist in flashes of brilliant colour, in sumptuous variations of texture. It seems almost to evolve as you look at it, as if it might rearrange itself the moment you glance away. The startling immediacy of Li’s craft makes it no surprise to find […] More »
Big media is one hot mess. But it’s not all bad news. How community radio is set to triumph in the digital age and emerge as the surprising winner in the battle for the future of media
Doug Horner
THE CHEERY BANTER between a cartoon moose and flying squirrel has rung out over Calgary airwaves every Friday afternoon at 2 p.m. for the past 14 years. Dedicated listeners know what the goofy bit signals: it’s time for radio magic. “And now…” “Hey, Rocky!” Bullwinkle interrupts. “Watch me pull a rabbit out of this hat.” […] More »
“Having a message should be cool,” says Toronto hip-hop artist Rich Kidd on the power of rap. Kidd hosted First Out Here: Indigenous hip-hop, a documentary by Noisey, in which Kidd visited Winnipeg, Regina and Toronto to meet with Indigenous hip-hop artists. Kidd, born to Ghanian parents, says he drew a lot of parallels between […] More »
I was maybe, what, eight years old? There I was, standing in my literal cave of a stinky basement—a carved-out hollow of dark, dank stone under my rickety old house—scrounging through books piled high into mountains of dust. I whipped out one book. The cover stood out: A woman with flowing ebony braids is striking […] More »
How an inspiring new generation of spoken word poets found their voices—and are using them to confront racism and challenge damaging stereotypes about Muslim women
Nasim Asgari is looking at the tofu sitting in her shopping cart, waiting for her mother to join her at the food aisle at the No Frills store in north Toronto. I wonder what it’s going to taste like, she thinks. She adjusts her headscarf. Tomorrow she’ll start her trial 40 days as a vegetarian. […] More »
Growing up in a low-income household in a small Quebec town, Starchild Stela passed the time drawing. “It was one of the few things I felt I received validation for,” they say. As a teen they started to graffiti and moved to Montreal where they have been working since. Within the last five years the artist says they have become […] More »
YOU DON’T EXPECT the word “amazing” to come out of someone’s mouth so often when they speak about difficult issues every day. Splitting her time between New York and Toronto, Kim Katrin Milan is an an educator, writer, artist, yoga instructor, and activist. She does so much that a casual viewer would be forgiven for […] More »
The wonderfully non-human retelling of a Canadian novella on stage IT’S A STORY that needs to be retold. “The Faustian bargain is a classic hook,” says Gil Garratt, referring to Derek McCormack’s 2008 novella The Show that Smells. Garratt is adapting the book for the stage via Clawhammer, the small company he founded in 2011 […] More »