Critical Distance Program Type Billboard on Shaw

Critical Distance is pleased to present Scooped and Scattered, a public art billboard by English River First Nation artist Catherine Blackburn. Presented in-gallery as part of our 2023 exhibition Materialized (curated by Ariel Smith and co-presented with Native Women in the Arts), this re-installation of Blackburn’s work is to celebrate the recent release of CDCC’s Access Working Group (AWG) Report, and to honour Blackburn’s participation in creative access consultation and production in collaboration with Disabled arts workers, community members, and Critical Distance.

For AWG, organizational partners Critical Distance, Tangled Art + Disability, and Carleton University Art Gallery engaged with artists, curators, accessibility experts, and audio describers in Toronto and beyond, facilitating the translation of various exhibitions and artworks into mediating formats primarily intended for blind or low vision communities. For the Materialized exhibition in particular, the AWG brought together audio describer Kat Germain and Melanie Marsden, a blind Anishinaabekwe, to engage directly with artists in the exhibition, including Catherine Blackburn. Through an exploratory process attending to the ways in which works could be described and translated, new connections between the intricate processes of description and the meticulous methods of craft were made.

Critical Distance is pleased to present artist Adama Delphine Fawundu’s billboard Sea Whispers for Mami Wata at the shore of Guanahani, as part of Burnt Sugar, curated by francesca ekwuyasi 

OCAD University’s RBC Centre for Emerging Artists & Designers (CEAD), in partnership with Critical Distance Centre for Curators (CDCC), is pleased to present the Public Art Billboard and Exhibition Essay Career Launcher featuring artwork by Ernesto de Cabral de Luna and a commissioned essay by Kay Rangel.

Artist Adee Roberson‘s billboard Transport Connection (Sister Nancy) is on view at 180 Shaw Street through October to November, 2023, as part of the exhibition this bridge between starshine and clay featuring works by artists Renee Gladman, Adee Roberson, and Rashid Zakat, and curated by Safia Siad. The exhibition explores and illuminates sonic innovations and architectures that create and hold space for Black aliveness. 

OCAD University’s RBC Centre for Emerging Artists & Designers (CEAD), in partnership with Critical Distance Centre for Curators (CDCC), is pleased to present the Public Art Billboard and Exhibition Essay Career Launcher featuring artwork by Yuhan Zheng and a commissioned essay by Avalon Mott.