Momus Talks is an ongoing series of public events hosted my 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.
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 will come 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, will touch 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.
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 (image credit: Willa Koerner); Catherine Wagley (image credit: Isabelle Le Normand); Merray Gerges (image credit: Connie Tsang); Sky Goodden (image credit: Ulysses Castellanos).
Momus Talks presents a conversation between artist Joseph Tisiga and critic Merray Gerges
Saturday, March 2, 2024, 2-3pm at Bradley Ertaskiran, Montreal
Between Witness and Fabulation: Joseph Tisiga and Merray Gerges in conversation
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 will be situated within Tisaga’s current solo exhibition It was God the whole time, on view 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 (image credit: Connie Tsang), and Joseph Tisiga (image credit: Alistair Maitlind).