Momus Talks - Momus

Momus Talks is an ongoing series of public events hosted by Momus, often with our colleagues and collaborators internationally. Ranging in format from artist talks and critics in conversation events, to book launches and live podcasts recordings, Momus Talks aims to galvanize communities around a model of art writing and criticism that is plural and rigorous.

Memorial Park Book Launch: Minh Nguyen in Conversation with Tiana Reid

Saturday Oct. 4, 2025, 3:00-5:00 pm, 896 College St, Toronto, ON

Please join us for the launch of Memorial Park: Revisiting Vietnam, a new publication from writer and curator Minh Nguyen. On Saturday October 4, from 3-5 PM, Nguyen will be joined by critic Tiana Reid for a conversation about the book, writing about art to write about place, writing from the personal as a position in the world, and killing the academic in your head to make better sentences.

This event is co-presented by Art Metropole and Momus, as part of the Momus Talks series.

About Memorial Park:

Fifty years after the Fall of Saigon and twenty years after her family’s emigration to America, Minh Nguyen returns to her native Vietnam to find out what’s left of the old revolutionary project. In Memorial Park, a collection of essays pairing travelogue and criticism, Nguyen finds relics of proletarian romance and vestiges of totalitarian control amid an evermore corporatized society. Along the way, she considers how contemporary artspeak confuses state censors, the rise of luxury “Smart Cities” as they supplant socialist housing complexes, and the grip of nostalgia on the diaspora.

Memorial Park is co-published by Art Metropole and Wendy’s Subway and is available beginning September 2025.

Minh Nguyen is a writer and curator based between New York City and Ho Chi Minh City. She is the curator of Dogma, a collection and gallery in HCMC focused on art and political graphics, and managing editor of e-flux journal. Her art and film criticism has appeared in publications such as e-flux, Art in America, Artforum, Momus, Mousse, and frieze, and she has curated exhibitions and screening programs at Wing Luke Museum, Northwest Film Forum, King Street Station, Gene Siskel Film Center, and Chicago Cultural Center.

Tiana Reid is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at York University in Toronto. Her research and teaching interests include black literature, gender, sexuality, and labour. Her writing has been published in Aperture, Bookforum, Dissent, Frieze, Momus, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. She also co-edits the magazine Pinko.

Art Metropole is a non-profit artist-run centre that publishes, promotes, exhibits, archives, and distributes artists’ books, multiples, and related media. Art Metropole produces exhibitions, talks, readings, and other programs that highlight artists who make books and other artworks that can be widely circulated.

Buy the Monograph Memorial Park

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Post/doc Spring 2025 Celebration and Launch with Momus

Monday, May 5, 2025, 6:30 pm, Storm Books & Candy, 118 Norman Ave, Brooklyn, NY

The Vera List Center for Art and Politics and Momus are pleased to co-present the launch of the spring edition of Post/doc, the VLC’s biannual publishing series for discursive, speculative, experimental writing and artistic practices.

This shared edition of Post/doc features a new sound work by musician JJJJJerome Ellis and a text by writer Diana SeoHyung, both reflecting on the theme of intervals—on languaging, language breaks, aphasia, riffing, and repeating. This particular edition is published on occasion of the VLC’s current institutional sabbatical, and will be available online starting May 1.

The launch brings together the spring contributors for a reading and listening session, followed by a conversation and small reception hosted by Storm Books & Candy.

Dancing On My Own: Artist Lecture by Simon Wu, and conversation with Merray Michael Mina

Thursday October 17th, 7:00 – 9:00 pm at CARA, 225 West 13th Street, New York

In celebration of Simon Wu’s debut book Dancing On My Own: Essays on Art, Collectivity, and Joy, Momus hosted an artist lecture by Wu at CARA, in New York City. Reflecting on the reciprocal relationship of artmaking to writing, and on collaborative art-making with his mother, Wu’s lecture was followed by a conversation with Merray Michael Mina (formerly Merray Gerges), Associate Editor of Momus, who worked with Wu on texts that later became material for his book.

Simon Wu, photo: Jarod Lew. Merray Michael Mina, photo: Celia Perrin Sidarous.

This event was generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.

Momus Talks: Charting an Inflection Point in Art Criticism & Publishing

Friday April 12, 2024, 6pm, Plural Fair, Montreal

Momus editors and critics Merray Michael Mina, Jessica Lynne, and Catherine G. Wagley came together from their respective coasts to discuss the significant inflection point at which we find ourselves in art criticism and publishing. The conversation, moderated by Momus’s founding publisher Sky Goodden, touched on the new existential threats to art writing (boycotts, closures, and conglomerations!) but largely focus on the regenerative and redirecting potential of this moment, especially for independent art publishers and historically underrepresented art writers. You can listen to the podcast recording of the panel conversation here.

Moderator: Sky Goodden, Publisher, Momus

Panelists: Merray Michael Mina, Associate Editor; Jessica Lynne, Associate Editor; and Catherine G. Wagley, Managing Editor

Jessica Lynne (photo: Willa Koerner); Catherine Wagley (photo: Isabelle Le Normand); Merray Michael Mina (photo: Connie Tsang); Sky Goodden (photo: Ulysses Castellanos).

This panel was generously sponsored by Art Speaks and the Canada Council for the Arts.

Between Witness and Fabulation: Joseph Tisiga and Merray Michael Mina in conversation

Saturday, March 2, 2024, 2-3pm at Bradley Ertaskiran, Montreal

Joseph Tisiga’s work is informed by global histories of colonial violence and witnessing the ongoing dispossession of Indigenous peoples. He begins with fact, then cocoons it with fiction. Doubles dance, surfaces deceive. He cloaks archeological and totemic forms in connotations and allusions, creating a pictorial and psychic plane in which mythologies morph.

The worlds he creates provoke these questions: What is fabulation’s role in the face of colonial violence? Could fabulation become a tool in the production of a new political reality? And could it liberate marginalized artists from the moral imperative to bear witness?

This conversation was situated within Tisaga’s solo exhibition It was God the whole time at Bradley Ertaskiran in Montreal. Mina and Tisiga have been in ongoing dialogue for over a decade, since meeting at Nova Scotia College of Art & Design.

Merray Gerges, photo: Connie Tsang; and Joseph Tisiga, photo: Alistair Maitlind.

Sky Goodden in Conversation with 2022 Venice Biennale curator, Cecilia Alemani

Art Toronto, October 28, 2022

Cecilia Alemani’s exhibition The Milk of Dreams for the 2022 Venice Biennale has been celebrated for bringing attention to a number of significant artists, including Canadian Shuvinai Ashoona. Momus founding publisher Sky Goodden hosts Alemani for a conversation exploring the show, the artists, and the exhibition’s critical reception. You can listen to the podcast episode here.

Sky Goodden and Cecilia Alemani, 2022. Courtesy of Art Toronto.

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