Skip to content

May we suggest

Winter 2021
Winter 2021: Tangents

Tangents

Available from December 15, 2020, to March 14, 2021

For this issue we asked artists to tell us stories about their stories—to write about idiosyncratic histories, side interests or obsessions, curiosities and unknowns. Taking our lead from artists and their research, we’re exploring how lateral and divergent thinking can produce ideas that change course, ideas that, however subtly, resonate and shift the direction of a project or practice. The stories that follow are all written by artists: some detail how the day-to-day aspects of personal life can directly inform a practice; others mine family histories, inherited narratives and obscure archives to find meaning in the present; still others focus on plant and animal life, exploring topics that may seem unrelated but which often lead to surprising parallels in one’s work.

This Issue

Written entirely by artists, this issue explores the tangents of thinking and writing that inform artistic practice

Features

Memory Work

Two powerful photographs of a 1986 workers’ strike suggest the dystopian consequences of collective forgetting

The Territory of the Unsmelled

Smell can be both a memory and a chemical compound that triggers reactions in organisms—human, animal and insect

Nunatsiavut Artist Jason Sikoak and Mina Campbell Talk on the Traditional Seal Hunt

Sikoak, studying in Montreal, is not able to attend the upcoming hunt. But the tradition continues to influence his prints and drawings

A Garden Diary

The embroidery lessons that I learned from my mother and grandmothers seeded large, complex textile artworks

What Ever Happened to Felicia Montealegre?

A distant relative of the wife of Leonard Bernstein looks at her creative and family life, on and off the stage

Pasolini’s St. Paul

What is at the heart of an unrealized idea? The marginalia on Pasolini’s last screenplay mark the edges of a sacred story

by Simon Belleau

A Topography of Free

A Toronto installation artist accumulates materials for her found-object sculptures by navigating neighbourhood free piles and scouring curbside detritus

Lost Classics of Acadian Disco and Rock ’n’ Roll

A tour though a midcentury collection of Acadian music celebrates a unique culture while questioning an archive, one both fortified and fictional

Two Passages

In a fictional dialogue between two artists, the persistent image of a famous lighthouse and the story a sculptor intertwine

by Zahra Komeylian

Spotlight

Unfixing Futures

A national survey of artists who imagine otherwise

Preview

Alex Turgeon, Kapwani Kiwanga, Thelma Pepper, Anna Binta Diallo and Marigold Santos talk about their recent and upcoming exhibitions, while Heather Igloliorte discusses the curation of “INUA” at Qaumajuq

School Guide

Reviews

Owen V. Gordon

For his first solo exhibition in Canada, the Toronto artist presents a body of work that deals with a range of political, environmental and social concerns

Wendy, Master of Art

In the third instalment of Walter Scott's graphic novel series, Wendy goes to grad school where she has new responsibilities to her students, friends and lovers—but is she ready?

Azadeh Elmizadeh

The suite of paintings in “Subtle Bodies,” at Toronto’s Franz Kaka this fall, blended Sufi cosmologies, Persian miniatures, abstraction and light

How Amy Lam’s Make-Believe Bathroom Offers Real Relief

This virtual artwork showed that, in the wake of the virus, the lack of will or public policy to make washrooms safe and accessible has exacerbated brutal discrepancies

Embracing the Uncertainty of the Earth with Jeneen Frei Njootli

In their latest solo show, Jeneen Frei Njootli spoke to the loving yet trying dependency that we, as Indigenous people, can have in connection to ancestral territories

From 14-Storey Berry Freezer to Public Video-Art Venue

In August 2020, Sackville’s Owens Art Gallery, Struts Gallery and Faucet Centre, and Sappyfest held a queer-centred screening on a vast industrial “cube”

Reviews in this issue also include: Ossie Michelin on “Acts of Resistance” at the Museum of Vancouver; Bryne McLaughlin on Manuel Mathieu at the Power Plant, Toronto; Chelsea Rozansky on Patrick Cruz at Gallery TPW, Toronto; Johanne Sloan on Cynthia Girard-Renard at Darling Foundry, Montreal; Harry Burke on Elif Saydamat Tanya Leighton, Berlin; and Christian Vistan on “Third Realm” at the Polygon Gallery, North Vancouver.

Backstory

A Letter for Immediate Use

by Divya Mehra

On the Cover

Party with Dionysos 2

Hand embroidery on silk, 105 cm x 1.8 m

by Anna Torma

Winter 2021: Tangents