Zadie Xa
Mood Rings, Crystals and Opal Coloured Stones (still, detail), 2016. HD video, 21 min. Courtesy the artist. Collection Arts Council of England.
Summer 2019
Femme
June 15, 2019, to September 14, 2019
This issue gathers art, stories and ideas that each, in its own way, unfolds and even subverts the many ways that we see and understand the idea of “femme.” There is no strict definition of what it means to be femme, or what “femme” is. Rather, it’s something that encompasses a multiplicity of voices, sexualities, attitudes, forms, bodies, emotions, identities, performances and lived experiences that are also, at times, contradictory. The idea of femme is always changing, adapting, being reimagined and reinforced, and pushing back on the status quo—this is its power.
Cover Image
Features
Portals
Zadie Xa’s journey through ritual, folklore and matrilineal legacies
Every Day
For artist jes sachse, straws represent a kind of freedom—from the histories of labour and the constraints of daily life
The Showstoppers
A new generation of drag stars is changing how we think about performance art
The Current Comes from There
In September 2020, Ociciwan Contemporary Art Centre opened its doors in Edmonton. Find out more about how the Indigenous art centre came to be in this summer 2019 feature.
Spotlight
In Your Face
A national survey of 10 artists who find new ways to define feminism
Artist Project
The Laughing Snake
This project uses the myth of a jinn—a supernatural creature or monstrous figure in Arabian mythology—to explore the status of women and the female body in the Middle East.
Preview
Conversations with artists and curators on upcoming projects
Keynote
On Ekphrasis and Emphasis
“All artwork is an optic of voyeurism”: An expanded story from our Summer issue looks at the ethics of representation for Indigi-queer artists
Poetry
Legacy
Just Mom
My mother has never forgotten the day the nun in day school told her that she was of a dying race—these were the kinds of things that fuelled her activism
Dialogue
Like a Vessel
Drones, moms and menopause: video artist Stephanie Comilang and performer and musician Peaches talk about all the ways that art helps represent—and resist—gender
Reviews
BUMP TV
In lo-fi and slower time: on watching Toronto’s only artist-run, public-access online TV station
Her Metal
Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, January 19 to May 19, 2019
Overheard
Ways of Doing
“I worked in my garage, took some welding courses, got equipped and worked for about 10 years like that”
Site-Specific
A Look at Northern Ontario Arts’ Striking Start, and Vital Now
From Ojibwe-language exhibition catalogues to Sudbury mural festivals to Tom Thomson's mandolin, there's lots to experience in, of and around this land
Curators’ Tips for an Art Tour of Eastern Ontario
There are top-notch exhibitions all over this region of the province—and top-notch artists, too
Southwestern Ontario Sparks Exceptional Art
“I was a hardcore Torontonian.... until I left,” laughs Guelph gallerist Renann Isaacs
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