Decolonization is Not a Metaphor: The Toronto Biennial Fights its Frame
The fanfare and the pageantry of press junkets, patrons’ previews, and inaugural performances have long subsided. A reluctant holdout, I belatedly find myself in…
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“Seen Anything Good?” The Burden of Biennial Excess
How much art can the human mind realistically absorb from a mega-exhibition? I’m not talking about superstar retrospectives or major surveys – mainstays of…
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Courting Crisis: Condescension, Disaster Tourism, and “Learning from Athens”
The pedagogical framework espoused by the title of this year’s two-city, quinquennial documenta – Learning from Athens – preemptively suggests an ethnographic or neocolonial…
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Sound/Off: Uneasy Listening at documenta 14 in Kassel
International art gatherings are loud affairs, and a trip through documenta 14 in Kassel rewards an ability to separate signal from noise. In a…
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A Parasitic ‘joie de vivre’ in “Viva Arte Viva”
When a curator chooses a title as desperately bubbly as Viva Arte Viva, something is clearly amiss. “Live art live!” – the 57th Venice…
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An Elegy for Annie Pootoogook (1969–2016)
Annie Pootoogook was from the Arctic near the North Pole. Her community is called Kinngait in Inuktitut – the language of Inuit people – and…
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