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.
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.
Simon Wu is a writer and artist. His writing has been published in The Paris Review, Bookforum, The Drift, and newyorker.com. His first book Dancing On My Own, was published in 2024 with Harper Collins. He has organized exhibitions and programs at the Brooklyn Museum, the Whitney Museum, The Kitchen, MoMA, and David Zwirner, among other venues. In 2021 he was awarded an Andy Warhol Foundation Art Writers Grant and was featured in Cultured magazine‘s Young Curators series. He was a 2018 Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program and is currently in the PhD program in History of Art at Yale University. He has two brothers, Nick and Duke, and loves the ocean.
Merray Michael Mina is an Egyptian essayist, editor, and writing teacher based in New York. While studying art history at the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design, she co-founded and edited CRIT, a free biannual print-only criticism publication. She was the inaugural editorial fellow at C Magazine, where she conceptualized and edited three themed print issues addressing facets of systemic change in the art world. During her MFA in narrative nonfiction at New York University, she began working on a series of longform essays about family inheritance through self and body. Mina is an Associate Editor at Momus.
Momus Talks: Charting an Inflection Point in Art Criticism & Publishing
Friday April 12, 2024, 6pm, Plural Fair, Montreal
Momus editors and critics Merray Gerges, 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 Gerges, Associate Editor; Jessica Lynne, Associate Editor; and Catherine G. Wagley, Managing Editor
This panel is being generously sponsored by Art Speaks.
Jessica Lynne (photo: Willa Koerner); Catherine Wagley (photo: Isabelle Le Normand); Merray Michael Mina (photo: Connie Tsang); Sky Goodden (photo: Ulysses Castellanos).
Between Witness and Fabulation: Joseph Tisiga and Merray Michael Mina in conversation
Saturday, March 2, 2024, 2-3pm at Bradley Ertaskiran, Montreal
Momus Talks presents artist Joseph Tisiga and critic Merray Gerges in conversation.
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. Gerges 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.