ARTMargins University of Toronto Workshop: The Loose Threads of Liberation

​In its first Canadian iteration, the annual ArtMargins workshop will extend and expand ongoing conversations about the role of visual art and its institutions in struggles for decolonization, pursuits of freedom and emancipation, and articulations of alternative futures, by incorporating the dynamics of diaspora, indigeneity, exile, and the complexities of settler colonial nationhood.

​Histories of visual art and decolonization have often focused on rupture, revolution, and resistance. Yet many artists work in the aftermaths and residues of such moments, confronting unfinished projects, deferred hopes, and unrealized futures past. This workshop is particularly interested in the quieter moments of artistic practice and the solidarities that follow periods of political upheaval, collective mobilization, and emancipatory aspiration.

​How do we listen to the historical archive when its volume is turned down to a hum? How might we write histories that account for ambiguity, disappointment, elongated and endured struggles, and the uneven temporalities of political, social and cultural exchanges? What work do images perform amid conditions of incompletion, uncertainty, melancholy, and historical endurance?

​See website for more details and full schedule: theloosethreadsofliberation.cargo.site

​Note: cover image — In Solidarity with Our Sisters of Indochina. Artist Printer: Printed by Press Gang Printers for the Vancouver Women's Caucus. Date: April 1971Source Repository: Digitized courtesy of the Rise Up! Feminist Digital Archive.