Critical Distance FEATURING

Critical Distance and the Embassy Cultural House are pleased to announce a celebratory book launch for Not/For the Money, an online exhibition featuring works by artists and cultural workers examining themes related to money, capital, and value. Featuring contributions from Ron Benner, Karl Beveridge, Lily Cho, Matthew Dawkins, Holly English, Soheila Esfahani, Kelly Greene, Jamelie Hassan, SF Ho, Michael Maranda, Alistair MacKinnon, Patrick Mahon, David Merritt, Mohamed Monaiseer, Sheri Osden Nault, Wanda Nanibush, Shelley Niro, Claudia Sambo, Ruth Strebe, and Jeff Thomas, the Not/For the Money exhibition catalogue will be available for perusal and purchase, alongside artists’ multiples, postcards, and prints by Anahí González, Incé Husain, and others, and a full complement of past publications by ECH. 

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Critical Distance is pleased to present Hard Feelings: a somatic workshop series led by Indu Vashist. The full series comprises 5 workshops in total for $120 CAD and includes the following: Session 1 is a two-part workshop taking place over two hours. For the first hour, we will discuss the structural reasons why the art world is shrinking. Arts Councils on every governmental level are oversubscribed and underfunded. This is resulting in far fewer artists receiving funding and fewer places to showcase work. Without this systemic analysis, individual artists experience rejection from the granting or showcasing system as social rejection. These emotions can trigger a physical response. We literally feel rejection as pain.  In sessions 2–5, Indu Vashist will lead…Find out more

Learning to Be Here is an exhibition of five looping films by Anika Iyer, Dee Dee Decay, Hala Alsalman, Wang Zi, and Xinyi Tian, curated by Jasmine Liaw. Embodiment within a decentralized lens → these films focus on the curiosity of deciphering communication sequences, understanding hi/stories through an oneiric epistemology, symbolic cognition, forming self through communal mark-making, and practices of re-languaging.

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As part of our ongoing Curatorial Considerations series, Critical Distance brought together artists and curators at Youngplace for a conversation circle centered on the practice of studio visits—how we approach them with criticality, care, and curiosity.

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Join us at Critical Distance on Friday, October 3, 6:30 – 8 pm for the Toronto launch of two new books in conversation: As for Protocols (Vera List Center for Art and Politics/Amherst College Press, 2025) and Convivialities (Talonbooks, 2025). New York-based writer, editor, and curator Re’al Christian, co-editor of As for Protocols, will be joined by Montréal-based writer and editor Michael Nardone, editor of Convivialities, for a conversation on the editorial/curatorial practices and perspectives at the core of their two volumes. Both books emerge out of sustained engagements with writers and artists; together, Christian and Nardone will consider how the array of artists and writers involved in their editions articulate the contemporary conditions, relational affinities, and protocols of making.…Find out more