Critical Distance

As we count down to Making Otherwise, this is a friendly reminder to RSVP for Sunday’s gathering (link in bio). We’d love to have you join us for an afternoon of conversation, reflection, and connection. Secure your spot and come be part of it!

Making Otherwise is supported by the Collaboratory for Black Poiēsis (CBP) , an experimental, multidisciplinary research incubator and co-working research-creation hub, an archival nexus, and creative atelier/studiolab that is rooted in the importance of black study, Afro-Indigenous relations, and Afro-diasporic technologies. It is a coalitional space where transnational and anticolonial cultural workers, educators, researchers, technicians, artists, activists, system-impacted and other community members collaboratively and creatively attend to the genre-defying aesthetic interventions of Black life and Black studies. We embrace our roles as makers and maintainers, relishing liberatory practices and ideas about where we’ve been and (re)imagining where and who we want to be, together.

Established in 2022, the CBP is led by SA Smythe , Associate Professor of Black Studies & the Archive at the University of Toronto. As a critical theorist, multi-instrumentalist, and transmedia storyteller, Smythe’s work conjures black belonging and thriving relations beyond borders. Rooted in this antecartographic practice, Smythe weaves together poetics, performance, interactive light sculptures, soundscape compositions, monoprints, and archival ephemera. Their transmedia works have been featured internationally in solo and collaborative performances, film and multimedia installations, anthologies, and festivals.

We look forward to seeing you in Suite 122 at 401 Richmond St this Sunday, May 31, 2026, from 4–6 PM at Critical Distance for the roundtable.

Introducing Amy Wing-Hann Wong as part of Making Otherwise, an intimate roundtable on artistic sustainability, resistance, and care in an era of acceleration and precarity.

Wong (b. 1981, Toronto, she/they) is an angry Asian feminist disguised as an oil painter. Her practice ranges from painting-based installation to collaborative projects that explore the politics of making noise and thinking through together. She is an Assistant Professor at OCAD University.

Often inverting private and public spaces, Wong asserts ways in which a leakiness and messiness of things can aspire towards intersectional feminist and anti-colonial ways of being. Their practice oscillates between varying systems of representation to evoke non-linear, personal narratives. They often work with what they consider a bad idea or a cliché to redefine them on their own terms. Wong’s current research explores mother work as methodology and as cultural transmission.

Wong completed her BFA at Concordia University in Montreal, MFA at York University in Toronto and post-graduate studies at De Ateliers in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Recent projects include Contemporary Kids at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa; other tongues part I communication at Onsite Gallery, Toronto; and A Glitter of Seas at Dreamsong, Minneapolis.

Join us May 31, 4–6 PM to listen, reflect, and be in conversation together.

See you Saturday! ✨PROGRAMMING SPOTLIGHT✨ On May 9, join our main day panel discussion: Embodied Knowledges: Collaboration, Memory and Place. Featuring .jpg .byj and Moderated by .distance founding director
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To mark Asian Heritage Month in Canada, this panel brings together artists and independent publishers of Asian descent in Canada and in Asia who explore how embodied knowledge - memory, language, migration, ritual - is documented, translated, and shared through publishing. From zines and exhibitions to participatory archives and hybrid forms, panelists will reflect on the possibilities of publishing as a site of care, connection and resistance and the challenges of representing ephemeral and intergenerational knowledge.
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Presented by OPABF is a multi-day event which celebrates diverse and boundary-pushing artists’ publishing. Fair visitors will experience artist talks, panels, installations, workshops, outdoor activations, music performances + more alongside the work of 60+ exhibitors from across Canada and beyond.
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Object//Project Art Book Fair 2026
Friday May 8 // 5:00pm – 9:00pm
Saturday May 9 // 11:00am – 6:00pm
Carleton Dominion-Chalmers Centre (290 Lisgar Street, Ottawa)
Free and open to the public
Help sustain this 100% community-funded initiative > link in bio
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