Critical Distance FEATURING

an inter-organizational research platform with Critical Distance Centre for Curators, Carleton University Art Gallery, and Tangled Art + Disability With funding from the Canada Council for the Arts, from 2021 to 2023, Critical Distance Centre for Curators (CDCC) initiated and steered an inter-organizational research platform, whose purpose was to advance an understanding of the creative possibilities of accessibility strategies in exhibition-making and live events. In collaboration with our two committed partners, Carleton University Art Gallery (CUAG) and Tangled Art + Disability, the Access Working Group (AWG) evolved over the years as a consortium of voices, perspectives, and practices thinking together about access in contemporary art across different organizational structures, curatorial methodologies, and presentation formats. A spirit of invention guided this journey…Find out more

In 2023, we embarked upon a yearlong research and community consultation process under the banner of New Directions for Critical Distance. Still reeling from pandemic-related setbacks, we had identified strategic and financial planning as key to our recovery. Thanks to the Government of Canada’s Community Services Recovery Fund, we were able to design an integrated, multi-phase process that began in consultation with key mentors, curatorial peers, and stakeholders from across the sector. Through an in-depth survey developed in collaboration with senior market analyst and consultant Marina Mandić, plus over 40 hours of face-to-face community consultations between CDCC Director Shani Khoo Parsons and emerging, midcareer, and established curators from across Canada, we engaged a representative sampling of ~150 curatorial colleagues in conversation and critical questions…Find out more

Free and open to the public, TURNING TABLES is a hybrid art book fair + show that will shine a spotlight on over 20 local and international arts publishers and producers of art books, critical arts publications, periodicals, prints, apparel, editions, multiples, and more — just in time for the 2024 holiday season.

With this pilot initiative, Critical Distance seeks to connect publishers from across Canada and the world with Toronto-based publics and colleagues interested in critical, artful, affordable, and unusual art books, publications, and editions. Subscribe to our newsletter, follow us on Instagram, or visit our website for more information on our publishing-related activities, past, present, and future, including new additions to our Curators Library, e-Shop, and expanded publications-based programs.

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Critical Distance is pleased to present Burnt Sugar, curated by noted author francesca ekwuyasi and featuring new and recent works by Adama Delphine Fawundu, Shaya Ishaq, Bushra Junaid, Kosisochukwu Nnebe, and Oluseye. Drawing upon the artists’ longstanding engagement with themes of migration, identity, Blackness, and diaspora, Burnt Sugar explores the inextricable connections between labour, extraction and sugar production including the transatlantic slave trade and its afterlives.

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Critical Distance is pleased to present visiting artist Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn in partnership with York University. Drawing from the artist’s interdisciplinary PhD research, the talk will focus on Nguyễn’s film in progress, Visions in the Dark (working title). Set in early 20th-century Indochina and Paris, the film imagines the life of Khánh Ký (1885-1946), an aspiring Vietnamese photographer whose rise through the social ranks—documenting both anthropometric portraits and the colonial elites—reflects the tensions between ambition and a deep-seated desire for national liberation.

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