Image: Sunday Summer Reading Series 2019, Lauren Lavery & Katie Kotler
Has the Community Been Fed? is a workshop series centered on hospitality as a mode of public engagement between artists and their communities. Throughout the month of December, artists will host film screenings, workshops, and artist talks that traverse diverse points of research and interest, which will culminate with food and conversation. The aim of this workshop series is to engage the public through events while opening channels for exchange through food, outside the mediated boundaries of artist and public.
Has the Community Been Fed? is presented by Noor Bhangu, an emerging curator and scholar based between Winnipeg, Treaty 1 and Toronto/Tkaronto, whose practice employs cross-cultural encounters to interrogate issues of diaspora and indigeneity in post- and settler-colonial contexts. Bhangu was the curator-in-residence at Latitude 53 from July-September 2019, and will return to curate an exhibition in early 2020.
Lauren Lavery’s writing-focused workshop endeavours to bring together and analyze the ways that traditional and experimental critical art writing has been effective in further engaging art viewing, whether provocation and harsh criticality is beneficial, as well as the general use-value for readers and artists alike. Using works from writers such as Maria Fusco, Chris Krauss, Helene Cixous, Lisa Robertson, and Maggie Nelson as a starting point, participants will be lead through excerpts and asked to respond through discussions, written responses and group workshopping. The workshop has a strong focus on developing writing about fine art, and will also include a segment on ways to effectively interpret artwork.
Lauren Lavery is a visual artist, writer and the founder and editor of Peripheral Review, a Toronto-based platform of exhibition reviews featuring Canadian emerging artists and spaces. Her writing has been published in Nacre Journal, Public Parking, Luma Quarterly and Peripheral Review, and in exhibition texts for Xpace Cultural Centre and Y+ Contemporary in Toronto. She holds a BFA with honours from Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts in Vancouver, BC.