C Magazine

Autotheory: Hiba Ali, Madelyne Beckles, Thirza Cuthand, Andrew James Paterson, Evan Tyler, Allyson Mitchell, Deirdre Logue

Vtape, Toronto

November 20, 2018–January 26, 2019

That language is a structure of power is obvious to anyone who’s had an encounter with Foucauldian theory. That the previous sentence is a performance of said power locates a paradoxical problem at the centre of theory-based practices: by the same token that language provides a stage to give voice, it alienates, excludes or subjugates its practitioners. “That’s what I don’t like about art,” my roommate says when I tell him about the exhibition I’m writing about. “Like, only art people will get it. It’s just a circle jerk.” “No, but the show is commenting on that,” I say, kind of annoyed. “There’s, like, a lot of self-reflexivity.”

“I never wanted to be wrong about the artist’s intent and so I would read (2011), the first of seven videos curated by Lauren Fournier in . “I would take notes in my Moleskine black book. You know, big words and key phrases, things that I could incorporate in my own dialogue with contemporary culture.” This hits home—there are a lot of tabs open on my computer: [Krauss_VideoN][Full text of “Ti][Butler (200] [Autotheory-by-][Facebo][Preliminary Ma][Vttape|The].

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from C Magazine

C Magazine3 min read
“Out of Many” — Jorian Charlton Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 18 December 2021 to 7 August 2022
In her essay “Homeplace: A Site of Resistance,” late feminist scholar bell hooks describes how the private space of the home can be a radical site for Black liberation. She highlights the caretaking role that Black women adopt in the home—whether act
C Magazine4 min read
Letters
Dear C, Grief is natural, and yet there are communities that experience deathrelated grief as an exceptional, persistent phenomenon. This is made plain in Nya Lewis’s discussion of an inheritance by Kosisochukwu Nnebe, and in Rana Nazzal Hamadeh’s es
C Magazine3 min read
Carnation, Vol. 2 (Pleasure) Ed. by Christina Hajjar, Luther Konadu, Mariana Muñoz Gomez Carnation, 2021
Carnation is a self-published zine that centres BIPOC artists and writers who, in the words of editors Christina Hajjar, Luther Konadu, and Mariana Muñoz Gomez, contemplate “displacement and diaspora.” In the second volume of Carnation, the editors i

Related