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November-December 2021

Crushing stereotypes

Series addresses fetishization of Asian women

Russul Sahib

Growing up as a biracial child, Beige Blum longingly wished to see fictional characters and media personalities that resembled part of her identity. Being of German and Filipino descent, she grew up noticing that Asian characters hardly made an appearance on screen, and if they ever did, they were almost certainly not Southeast Asian. Instead, […] More »

Gender Block: The Femme Project

Hillary Di Menna

Almost 10 years ago, walking outside, Toni Latour and her then partner, who identifies as butch, would bump into others from the queer community. While people would acknowledge her partner, Latour  often felt like she went unnoticed. After more than one such experience, Latour, a Vancouver-based multidisciplinary artist and professor at both Capilano University and […] More »

Friday FTW: International Women’s Day

Kate Hefford

Yesterday was Pi day (3.14), April 12th is National Grilled Cheese Day, and May 4th is Star Wars Day (May the fourth be with you). But joke holidays were put on hold last week for International Women’s Day. Every spring since 1911, women worldwide have campaigned for solidarity. This definitely isn’t a redundant “holiday,” and […] More »

Drew Nelson’s origami creations keep an ancient craft alive in a paperless world

Stephen Sharpe

A compact card unfolds into a three-dimensional paper scene: a polar bear atop an ice drift looking to the murky depths below, surrounded by the brilliant aurora borealis. Drew Nelson’s origami creations, like the man himself, are a harmonious, detailed and delicate reflection of his world and what he wants to contribute to it. Nelson […] More »
September-October 2011

Roberta Holden’s photographs capture the shifting landscapes of a changing climate

Jackie WongWebsite@_jackiewong

Vast, impressionistic, and haunting in its sparseness, Roberta Holden’s landscape photography calls to mind the dark, faraway corners of memory and dreams. Taken from days in the Arctic, over the frozen oceans near Greenland, and during the long nights in Morocco, Holden’s work evokes nostalgia for landscapes untouched by human development—a phenomenon many of us […] More »
May-June 2011

This45: RM Vaughan on the late art impresario Will Munro

RM VaughanWebsite

It is impossible to speak of Will Munro. It is easy to talk about Will Munro(s). Will Munro, the artist/activist/social wizard/impresario and all around wunderkind, passed away one lovely, clear-as-a-bell summer morning in 2010. He was 36. In that too-short time, Will produced an enormous amount of highly influential, DIY-infused art, reinvigorated the Toronto, and […] More »
July-August 2011

Unearthing Vancouver’s forgotten utopian UN conference, Habitat ’76

Peter Tupper

Walk around Vancouver’s Jericho Beach in 2011 and you’ll see some odd architecture: an empty concrete wharf, a welded steel railing that overlooks English Bay, a strange rail embedded beneath the sailing club. These are all that is left of a complex of five gigantic aircraft hangars that was home to an international conference 35 […] More »
July-August 2011

Kristin Nelson’s artwork re-humanizes pop icon Pamela Anderson

Whitney Light

Surfing the internet for a Grey Cup art project in November 2008, Kristin Nelson landed on a saucy image of Pamela Anderson. It immediately provoked a spark of inspiration that she couldn’t explain but also couldn’t deny. Thus emerged the seed of a body of artwork called My Life With Pamela Anderson that documents, in […] More »
March-April 2011

This45: Sky Gilbert on sex workers’ rights group Big Susie’s

Sky GilbertWebsite

I moved to downtown Hamilton, Ontario, in 2005. We bought our three-storey Victorian home near Copps Coliseum at a price that would have been unheard of in Toronto. The corner we lived on had been labelled “the most dangerous corner in Hamilton.” But my shaved head and tattoos stood out less here than in the […] More »
March-April 2011

This45: Mark Kingwell on illustrator Olia Mishchenko

Mark KingwellWebsite

“A bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells,” Karl Marx noted. “But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality.” Born in Kiev in 1980 and based in Toronto since 1997, […] More »

How to save arts and culture in Canada: a Massey Commission 2.0

hilary beaumont

Their jobs sound like an oxymoron in Canada’s present political climate; arts professionals earn about half the average national income per year, a large chunk of which comes from grants. That public funding is in danger since Stephen Harper made it perfectly clear he doesn’t consider the arts a priority. Given that the main agenda […] More »