Critical Distance DIRECTORY wave~form~projects

Curators Toleen Touq and Liz Ikiriko have been working together since 2018 as wave~form~projects. Together, they bring years of cross-disciplinary curatorial and cultural arts practice both locally and internationally within varied settings, independently and collectively, building relationships with artists, fellow curators, organizations and institutions. wave~form~projects enacts practices that embody accessible and relational modes of care and critical thinking, centering underrepresented voices and the slow rooting of meaningful relationships across the arts and culture landscapes. We are guided by the teachings and practices of feminist, anti-colonial thinkers and pedagogues including global Indigenous methodologies as ways of being, making, and working. wave~form~projects attends to cross-disciplinary and multi-form engagements that open up spaces of inquiry and transgressive action and connection.

Toleen Touq is a curator, cultural producer and facilitator working between Toronto, Canada and Amman, Jordan. In Amman, she is co-founding director of Spring Sessions (2014-ongoing), a yearly residency program that brings together artists, researchers and cultural practitioners in a collaborative and experiential learning environment that is fueled by responsiveness to place and deep curiosity. In Toronto, she is artistic director of SAVAC, a nomadic artist-run center dedicated to presenting and developing the work of marginalized artists on Turtle Island. Her writings have been published with Ibraaz, Sternberg Press, A Prior, Manifesta Journal and others. She is currently an MA candidate at Queen’s University.

Liz Ikiriko is a Co-Curator of the 13th Edition of Bamako Encounters, African Photography Biennale (2022) in Mali, West Africa and is the Curator of Collections and Contemporary Engagement at the Art Gallery of York University, Toronto. As a Nigerian-Canadian artist, curator, educator, maker, and mother, she is focused on African and diasporic narratives. Through research, she supports and creates embodied experiences to facilitate moments of vulnerability and care with her communities. Her projects and curiosities engage, question, and confront internalized systems of oppression. Her writing has appeared in Aperture, Public Journal, MICE Magazine, C Magazine, Blackflash, and Akimbo. She holds an MFA in Criticism and Curatorial Practice from OCAD University (2019).