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The Animal-to-Come: Zoopolitics in Deconstruction
The environmental instabilities brought about by climate change are multiple, far-reaching and progressively unpredictable, both in intensity and occurrence. While it is becoming clear that such instabilities adversely affect the lives of many humans (disproportionately those living in the Global South), resulting in a fast-increasing number of ecological refugees, it is equally clear that nonhuman…
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Waste as Narrative Devices in Contemporary Artworks
Food and waste seem to stand on two opposite ends of the digestive network’s spectrum: on the one hand, there is that which is destined to be ingested; on the other, that which stands as the result of consumption. There is rarely crossover between the two, for their juxtaposition is sure to generate abjection. While…
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Zinnia Naqvi
Zinnia Naqvi’s practice is permeated by familial archives, intergenerational dialogues, and politics of belonging. Principally lens-based, her work presents images that speak to the intimacy inherent to cherished family archives, as well as the embedded values that it represents. Past and Present II (2012 – 15) is a photographic series that explores the intergenerational identity construction of migrant families.…
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Blue: A Somatic Archive of Pain
Alongside a close analysis of the short-movie Blue (2019) by Manitoban artist Laura Magnusson, this article engages with the pain that comes from sexual trauma. Blue attests to the ongoingness and cyclical nature of traumatic pain, one that is negated by the legal apparatus that frames sexual assault trials. Through an understanding of the body…
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Marie-France Brière La pression austéritaire
Nous accueillant au Centre des arts actuels Skol, des mots présentés sur le mur se succèdent : bloc de présent, fabrication, permanence, effritement, fantôme, inimaginable, condensation, réification, refonte. Tels des blocs de marbre extraits d’une carrière avec une précision calculée, ces mots qui constituent l’œuvre Dazibao (2022) sont puisés dans les ouvrages qui les ont…
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Tremble Staves: Listening to the Voices of Water
Tremble Staves is a performative score created by Navajo composer Raven Chacon. Guitar player, percussionists, narrator, and viewers all congregate on a ruin site, near a large body of water. In its 2019 iteration, the score was played at the abandoned Sutro Baths bordered by the Gulf of the Farallones; setting the stage for a…
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Les yeux dans l’eau
Il y a un an déjà, une amie me fait découvrir l’ouvrage Thinking With Water, un recueil d’essais qui explorent la présence critique de l’eau dans nos vies. Ce fluide y est présenté comme agent relationnel, mais également comme outil méthodologique. Bien que les métaphores propres à l’eau aient été cooptées par le langage propre au capitalisme…
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Rules of Extraction
Rules of Extraction is a web-based project by Joëlle Dubé and Maddy Capozzi that expands on the exhibition World of Matter: Exposing Resource Ecologies, presented at the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery in 2015. World of Matter investigates the complex ecologies of primary materials through a series of exhibitions, events, publications and a multimedia…
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Entre menace, perte et existence : la glace à l’ère des changements climatiques
L’oeuvre de l’artiste inuvialuk Maureen Gruben, Moving with joy across the ice while my face turns brown from the sun (2019), est une installation de land art éphémère, fixée par la photographie représentant 14 traîneaux faits à la main, disposés côte à côte. Moving with joy nous présente le passage furtif d’êtres humains dans la…
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Cannibal Actif: The Artist Book as Threshold for Material Encounters
Two feet emerging from a pool of black oil touch the edge of a bathtub. The dark ink contrasts with the shimmery copper highlights. These feet belong to a bather in Baku, Azerbaijan, where bathing in crude oil — rich in naphthalene — is said to have healing properties. On the left, a white page…