Until wonder is welcomed in all workplaces, the health of our society and our capacity to imagine new alternatives is contingent on the ability to experience and refine wonder in artistic spaces.
A sculpture of two saints meeting and embracing embodies the importance of touch in Renaissance culture as a form of devotion and ultimately a way to access the divine.
(Renaissance Polychrome Sculpture in Tuscany database)
After a year of pandemic social distancing, we know touch is a much-desired privilege. In the Italian Renaissance, people longed to touch not only each other, but also religious sculptures.
The extensive damage done to lead character Ethan’s hands in ‘Resident Evil’ sparked online commentary.
(Screenshot of Resident Evil: Biohazard/Capcom)
Game design engages players through emotional identification and physical participation, and relies heavily on the role of human hands in knowing and navigating the world.
We can put boundaries in place as we write, while attending to our emerging and vulnerable feelings to ensure emotional safety.
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An empowering writing experience will leave you with a sense you have spent time meaningfully.
A woman walks past a mural in Vancouver, B.C. The power of public art is its ability to turn artistic practice into a social action.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Marissa Tiel
When public art pairs artistic expression with community engagement, it can honour the diverse communities that share public spaces and spur important conversations.
Why are Ontario reopening rules treating live arts like a luxury instead of something critical?
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5 ways to support safe live performance re-openings as we emerge from COVID-19.
The ‘Fast and Furious’ franchise’s focus on kinship allows the films to swerve around narrative logic and whiz past characterization.
(Universal Pictures)
The ‘Fast and Furious’ films pay fetishistic attention to the movements, sounds and shiny surfaces of machines. But family is the moral centre of the fanchise.
Eugene Levy, who co-created ‘Schitt’s Creek,’ with son Dan Levy, arrives on the red carpet at the 2016 Canadian Screen Awards in Toronto in 2016.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young
Critics who ignore or simply miss the Jewishness of the ‘Schitt’s Creek’ characters fail to appreciate this key aspect of the show’s inclusive reach and appeal to diverse viewers.
‘An Olympic Dream: The Story of Samia Yusuf Omar’ recounts how the Somali Olympic runner drowned while trying to reach Italy in 2012.
(From Reinhard Kleist's 'An Olympic Dream: The Story of Samia Yusuf Omar/SelfMadeHero)
Comics about migrant experiences seek to expose personal perspectives about the global crisis of 80 million individuals and families forcibly displaced worldwide.
A group of policemen in Marseille, France, pass in front of a bus shelter featuring a poster from the television series ‘Paris Police 1900’.
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The classic cop show is now a problematic genre, but if it can change, then perhaps real world policing can too.
Artist Alanis Morissette receives her lifetime achievement award from the Canadian Music Hall of Fame during the 2015 Juno Awards.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette
Known variously in Juno history as ‘Best Single,’ or ‘Best-Selling Single,’ and now ‘Single of the Year’ this award always garners attention. Reflections on select singles since 1979.
Members of BTS at the 61st Grammy Awards in Los Angeles.
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A new wave of Korean music and cinema can play a powerful role in changing perceptions and stereotypes of Asian people.
Sales increases for self-published titles in the pandemic is likely related to the accessibility of ebooks during bookstore and library closures.
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Publishing houses face strain, and in some cases, closure, as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Authors are looking for alternative ways to get their work to readers.
‘BoJack Horseman’ still and figures shown in the tomb of Horemheb from the Valley of the Kings, West Thebes.
(Netflix/ Wikimedia Commons)
Both the art of BoJack Horseman and of ancient Egyptian artists places great emphasis on balance and proportion.
Artist Steven Shearer’s untitled billboard images of reclining and sleeping people were displayed as part of Capture Photography Festival in Vancouver but were soon removed due to complaints.
(Dennis Ha)
Examining parallels between Steven Shearer’s billboard images and religious figures of 17th century baroque art allow a consideration of how context is everything when it comes to reading images.
Soul and R&B legend Sam Moore performs at the 2009 Nakusp Music Festival in Nakusp, B.C.
(Richard Vignola/Flickr)
There is a history of exploiting Black musicians in the United States that dates back to slavery. But movements like Black Lives Matters are working towards economic justice.
If rules generate ways of seeing the world, why not change the rules?
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The tabletop role-playing game scene once epitomized by ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ has seen new game genres emerge where people experiment and play with solutions to structural inequalities.
Yuh-Jung Youn, winner of the Oscar for best actress in a supporting role in ‘Minari,’ poses at the Academy Awards, and the film’s director, Lee Isaac Chung, arrives at the ceremony at Union Station in Los Angeles on April 25, 2021,
(AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, Pool)
Second-generation storytellers are being candid about challenges and benefits of creative careers in the face of family hopes or fears, or societal resistance to hearing marginalized narratives.
Soo Yong and William Boyd in a still from the film ‘The Secret of the Wastelands’ (1941).
(Paramount Pictures)
Soo Yong’s career, particularly when contrasted with Anna May Wong’s, shows how Hollywood and Chinese popular culture aimed to depict Chinese women amid shifting Chinese-American relationships.
This year’s 93rd Academy Awards are celebrating Asian women from Chloé Zhao (Nomadland) to Christina Oh (Minari) and Yuh-jung Youn (Minari).
(Shutterstock)
Relying on familiar stereotypes and images can make us miss this critical opportunity to reshape the ways in which Asian women are viewed as individuals and artists.
Diana Ross rides on a float at 92nd Annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on the streets of Manhattan in 2018.
(Shutterstock)
A new study finds that women influencers over the age of 50 engage in style activism to combat ageist and sexist fashion and beauty industries.
It is easy to think that handwashing is accessible to all today, but COVID-19 calls attention to communities both within Canada and around the globe where clean water is not a given.
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There are signs that home movie viewing could meet a resurgence of local movie-going that draws on entertainment conventions that preceded Hollywood’s rise.
Nike ad in New York in 2018, showing former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick after his 2016 kneeling protest. Could a corporation sell an act like Kaepernick’s ‘kneel’ as an NFT?
(AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
When we see the high prices some are paying for NFT art, we must assume more performances, and potentially, acts of protest, could circulate as NFTs.
Community members gather for a vigil in memory of the victims of the Atlanta shootings and to rally against anti-Asian racism in Ottawa.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang
Chinese-Canadian journalist Edith Eaton documented anti-Asian racism in Canada in the late 19th and early 20th century. Over 100 years later, not much has changed.