Ritual Readings
The Gardiner Museum brings together people of all ages and backgrounds through the shared values of creativity, wonder, and community that clay and ceramic traditions inspire.
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Ritual Readings
August 19, 2018 @ 12:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Part of the Community Arts Space: Recent Histories
Doors open: 12 pm
First reading: 12:30 pm
This reading, curated and moderated by Amy Wong of Angry Asian Feminist Gang and Whitney French, features local BIPOC nonbinary, trans women, and cis women writers and artists. The event will engage in a practice of remembering past voices, animating a legacy of feminist literature. Readers include Rain Chan, Elisha Lim, and a collective from the Story Reno Studio.
About Panic in the Labyrinth
Panic in the Labyrinth is a series of performances that transgress the traditional poetry reading. Drawing its title from an Adrienne Rich poem and conceptualized by multidisciplinary artist Annie Wong, the series imagines an outdoor stage for performative poetics to unfold, where the act of women speaking aloud and the experience of listening to women are politicized gestures of asserting and affirming presence and holding space.
“A Choir of Demands and Desires On Repeat” features a nomadic choir recalling and repeating the demands made by women and feminist movements, and “We’re Winning So No Comment” is a reading of misogynist social media comments interrupted by award speeches of inspiring women. Following these choral performances, Wong has invited Amy Wong of Asian Angry Feminist Gang and Whitney French of Margin of Eras Gallery to co-curate Ritual Readings, a Sunday afternoon event commemorating a legacy of feminist literature and women writing.
“A Choir of Demands and Desires On Repeat” and “We’re Winning So No Comment” will be performed by Faith Arkorful, Fiona Raye Clarke, Hanan Hazime, Lasasha Nesbeth, and Rebecca Zala.
About the Community Arts Space: Recent Histories
Inspired by the transformative aspects of ceramics, both real and metaphorical, the Community Arts Space is the Gardiner’s incubator for arts-based community projects. In collaboration with local artists, designers, and collectives, the Museum will mount five public projects that examine how cultural knowledge is passed on or performed, and the role of a museum in cultivating the so-called lived and living memory. Learn more
Presented by
Community Partners
The 519 is committed to the health, happiness, and full participation of the LGBTQ2S community. A City of Toronto agency and a registered charity with an innovative model of Service, Space and Leadership, The 519 strives to make a real difference in people’s lives while working to promote inclusion, understanding, and respect.
In 2017, The 519 provided in-kind space and resources for artistic workshops in support of the development of two process-driven projects, NU_FORuMS and Collecting Personal Archives. For Community Arts Space 2018, The 519 will again provide workshop space for a process-driven project, supporting the delivery of knowledge and skill-sharing serving the LGBTQ2S community in Toronto and beyond.
Akin Collective is a Toronto-based arts organization that provides affordable studio space as well as arts-based programming through its sister non-profit organization, Akin Projects. Akin provides space to nearly 250 visual artists, designers, and creatives in studios that maintain a friendly and inspiring atmosphere where people can work on creative endeavors and entrepreneurial undertakings of all kinds. Akin builds community through monthly art critiques, free or low-cost workshops, open studio events, gallery tours, exhibitions, as well as various other projects. During the Community Arts Space’s inaugural 2016 cycle, Akin Projects mounted Place/Setting, an exhibition hall project delivering all-ages clay-making workshops and community events. For Community Arts Space 2018, Akin will provide six months of free studio time at one of its studios, as well as kiln firing access.
For 25 years, Art Starts programs have benefited thousands of people living in marginalized Toronto neighbourhoods by providing a safe, supportive and inclusive environment for self-expression and creative collaboration. They afford opportunities for vulnerable people of all ages to contribute to the creative ecology of their neighbourhoods, using the arts to help end the negative cycles associated with marginalization and poverty.
Programming Partners
Angry Asian Feminist Gang
Asian Community AIDS Services
Invisible Footprints
Margin of Eras Gallery
Rice Roll Productions
Titiesg Wîcinímintôwak // Bluejays Dancing Together Collective
Header: We’re Winning So No Comment, 2018. Photo: Yuula Benivolski
