Translation
From June 15 to September 14, 2018
We have a new look—fittingly accompanying this issue on translation. We chose our logo not just because we think it looks good. (Although, we really do think it looks good.) Creative Director Barbara Solowan and I found inspiration in our own history, when another publication called Canadian Art was renamed artscanada. Over the past two years, we have found meaning and inspiration in artscanada, notably its politicized, artist- and idea-led content. What I hope you see in our new logo is our commitment to first-rate art writing, and to creating multiple, empowering conversations around it. More than this: I hope you see the lower-case, compound design as reflective of our attitude toward our name. If we are to retain “Canadian Art,” it is our responsibility, I think, to show how we can question and expand that concept. What is meant by “Canadian” and “art” is not easy, nor is it definitive, and we intend to consider this for years to come.
—David Balzer, Editor-in-Chief and Co-Publisher
Features
The Curtain Sweeps Down
One of the best-selling novels in modern Turkey was published in 1950 under a male pseudonym. Here, the story of the young translator who kept her work secret for decades, but influenced a generation
Beyond Two Solitudes
A conversation on the politics of colonial languages in Quebec
Where I Be Is with the Image
When language fails, what can art tell us about the experiences of exile and the desire to return?
We Are Each Other’s Medicine
Taylor Renee Aldridge and Jessica Lynne discuss what it means to be Black in an art world that refuses to care for Black people
Tom Girls
How the hyper-masculine, homoerotic world of artist Tom of Finland became an unlikely inspiration for G.B. Jones's subversive queer aesthetics
Our Languages Live Within Us
Words affect the way we make, do and think. For Indigenous artists, various types of communication don’t always translate—to English, or to written or spoken language
10 Artists Who Work between Meaning and Understanding
From our Summer 2018 issue, 10 cross-country practices that explore the complexities of translation
Generously Supported by
RBCLate Arrivals
In contemporary culture, we take for granted that everything is accelerating. But what happens when a book of the moment takes years to be published in your mother tongue?
The Art of Translation
A literary translator talks about her craft
There and Here
When Vincent Chevalier travelled from Montreal to Vancouver, as his father did decades earlier, he found a metaphor for coming out and coming of age, on both sides of the AIDS crisis
Poetry
Legacy
Broadcasting Beckett
How Stan Douglas’s only solo curatorial project to date helped transform a literary icon into a contemporary artist
Overheard
Language Matters
A Conversation with award-winning author and critic Ben Lerner about his craft, his observations on art, and the peculiarities of the art world
Reviews
Recent exhibitions, books, films and more
Preview
Conversations with artists and curators on upcoming projects
Artist Project
The Kaleidoscopic Review