Critical Distance Program Type Core Program

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.

thinking about forever  is presented by Images Festival in partnership with Critical Distance Centre for Curators. Curated by Jaclyn Quaresma, and featuring works by Azadeh Elmizadeh, Maryam Tafakory, Shelley Niro and Anna Gronau, the exhibition explores refusal as an unwillingness to accept. In an ableist imperialist white supremacist capitalist cis-hetero patriarchy, refusal is also a mode of being that requires consistent rehearsal in order for one to sustain themselves against the violence of these interlocking hegemonic systems.

Critical Distance is pleased to present this bridge between starshine and clay, an exhibition that explores and illuminates sonic innovations and architectures that create and hold space for Black aliveness. Using Lucille Clifton’s won’t you celebrate with me as a poetic entry point, this collection of work across mediums weaves through themes of geography, movement, rhythm, (un)knowing, vibration, and sound. Bringing together new works by  artists Renee Gladman, Adee Roberson, and Rashid Zakat, the concept of musical bridge becomes literal, creating portals and possibilities.

Garden of Broken Shadows, curated by Fatma Hendawy Yehia, features works by Lamis Haggag, Katherine Melançon, Ahmed Naji, Anahita Norouzi, and El Rass. In a transglobal world, race and class are the basis of any immigration system. Through the use of organic material, text, sound, and technology, these artists manifest the ways in which one could survive and adapt within new environments. The exhibition interweaves these practices, producing a temporal space in which visitors can experience the possibilities of being both here and there — in both Canada and the MENA region (Middle East and North Africa) — simultaneously. 

Featuring works by Joi T. Arcand, Celeste Pedri-Spade and Catherine Blackburn, with a public art billboard by Nadya Kwandibens
Curated by Ariel Smith

Core Exhibition at the 2022 Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival

Opening reception
Friday, April 21, 6 to 8 pm
Artist Panel
Saturday, April 22 from 1 to 3pm at Urbanspace Gallery

Native Women in the Arts and Critical Distance Centre for Curators are pleased to present Materialized in partnership with Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival and Partners in Art.

Combining portrait photography with elements from adornment arts, textiles, sculpture, and customary Indigenous art practices, Materialized examines themes of intergenerational memory, familial narrative, and decolonization. By using their craft to reclaim portraiture as a form of self-expression and self-determination, each artist resists the colonial metanarratives contained in settler-made images of Indigenous subjects.