“Throughout the world, you will find myth and folklore related to the water. This is nothing other than a testimony to humanity’s respect for their source material. We are all mostly water, after all.”
Ayesha Habib
The Art of Quarantine: Tierney Milne’s Storefront Murals Spread Messages of Hope
Though many creatives have had dips in work, initiatives like Belgian Moon’s #UnderTheSameMoon campaign have made strides in supporting artists by commissioning art projects across Canada with messages of unity.
Bruno Major on Love, Writing, Quarantine, and His New Album To Let a Good Thing Die
The British singer-songwriter’s soft songs are tinged with a careful balance of melancholy, heartache, and nostalgia—a soundtrack for imaginary breakups and forgotten loves.
A 36-Hour Virtual Costa Rica Travel Guide
Visit Costa Rica has put together a weekend guide to travel the country’s culinary offerings, natural landscapes, and culture—all from home.
Why Adult Animation Shows Like Netflix’s Midnight Gospel Are the Perfect Form of Escapism Right Now
In anxiety-ridden times, there’s something comforting about stories that are removed from our reality entirely, yet rooted in human emotion.
Drive-In Art: Socially Distant Van Gogh Art Exhibition Opens in Toronto Next Month
Accommodating up to 14 vehicles per 35-minute time slot, the concept is the first of its kind in the world.
What Post-COVID Travel Should Look Like, According to G Adventures’ Bruce Poon Tip
Bruce Poon Tip, founder of the small-group travel company G Adventures, considers the world of travel post-COVID in a new e-book, Unlearn: The Year the Earth Stood Still, a 24-page “love letter to travellers.”
Exploring Sonic Worlds With Black Atlass’ Dream Awake
The 35-minute experience, best listened to in one sitting alone at night according to Fleming, captures in sound both the depth of intimacy and the fleeting intoxication of young love.
Local Natives Release an Album of Remixes of Their Most Popular Songs
Alternative-folk band Local Natives’ latest album, Violet Street Remixes, is a curation of remixed tracks off of the band’s fourth album, which released this time last year.
Nashulai: Kenya’s First Community-Owned Wildlife Conservancy During COVID-19
As the first conservancy to be governed by the local Maasai community—the pastoralist tribe the Mara is named after—Nashulai is a unique model of wildlife and community conservation.
6 Examples of Creativity in a Quarantined World
Here, we’ve compiled a list of how creators around the world have responded to the COVID-19 crisis through creative expression.
Middle Eastern Streetwear Loveclosely
The Middle East meets West in Loveclosely’s designs, which infuse contemporary styles—influenced by the likes of Drôle de Monsieur and Adidas—with motifs inspired by Middle Eastern art, poetry, and architecture.
How Tiger King Reveals the Excess of American Entertainment
The entire show feels like a caricature of how much of the outside world views America.
Polaris Prize-Winner Haviah Mighty on the Power of Underdogs
Haviah Mighty is power personified. The command that her voice, flow, and performance hold over audiences attests to a confidence as natural as her real name: Mighty.
RAW Artists Canada’s Mask Making Initiative Turns Crisis into Creativity
The organization has turned to the creativity of Canadian artists to help produce personal protective equipment for those working in essential services.
New Album Releases to Add to Your Quarantine Playlist
Let music be your escape with these new album releases, chosen by our editors.
The Art of Solitude
As we’re faced with it, the muddled chaos of our loneliness is disarming at first. But there’s a magic to being comfortably alone.
What Our Editors Are Listening to This Spring
Refine your next playlist with this selection of recent album releases, curated by our editors.
Watch: Toronto Artist STORRY’s Surreal Claymation Music Video
The claymation, painstakingly created over four months, follows a couple as one partner falls into a cycle of consumption and greed while the other is left to pick up the pieces.
The Philosophy of Meme Culture
What can memes tell us about Gen Z, the most socially conscious and digitally connected generation?
Stranger than Kindness: The Nick Cave Exhibition
Spread across eight rooms, the exhibition will hold over 300 pieces, including items from Cave’s personal collection, as well as large scale installations and original atmospheric soundscapes.
BMW Art Journey Recipient Zac Langdon-Pole Talks About the Stars
Zac Langdon-Pole, recipient of the BMW Art Journey, on looking to the stars through different cultural lenses for his art project, Sutures of the Sky, and book, Constellations, which launched at Art Basel Miami Beach.
How Toronto Non-Profit Honey Jam Is Helping Women Navigate the Music Industry
Each year, a group of female-identifying musicians and performers audition to take part in Honey Jam’s programming, which has launched the career of Nelly Furtado in 1997 and more recently, of Polaris Prize winner Haviah Mighty.
The Girotondo Lamp: Illuminating Design
Modern design gets nostalgic with the Girotondo floor lamp, shaped with undulating curves reminiscent of a spinning top in motion.
Shuvinai Ashoona Bridges Reality and Fantasy at the Vancouver Art Gallery
Ashoona seems to have retained what so many adults lose in life: the ability to create from an infinite realm of imagination.
ROM Exhibition Explains how Indian Chintz Changed the World
The chintz created by India from the 1600s was unparalleled to anything else at the time. Indian artisans had not only mastered an immense chemical knowledge in order to apply bright dyes onto cloth, but they also managed to monopolize a global trade of the textile.
Dating in the Digital Age
NUVO Thoughts: If the advent of online dating apps, such as Tinder or Bumble, brought the collective of single smartphone users any excitement at the new expanses of romantic possibility, that sentiment seems to be ebbing. But that doesn’t mean they’ll be deleting these apps any time soon.
A Guide to Spinning, and Where to Spin Across Canada
Fitness trends come and go with the seasons, and spinning—stationary indoor cycling—has steadily been gaining popularity amongst busy professionals, students, and fitness enthusiasts. It’s easy to see why: spinning classes are like gym session–rave hybrids.
Paradise Island: The Atlantis Bahamas
The Atlantis is a resort of epic proportions, offering all the elements necessary to achieve a balance of relaxation and adventure.
16 Canadian Songs to Add to Your New Year’s Eve Playlist
We’ve lined up these newly-released tracks by our favourite Canadian artists to add a little Northern touch to your New Year festivities—no matter what you have planned.
Searching for Mountain Gorillas
In the misty mountains of Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda, these primates are slowly reclaiming their population—and sustainable tourism is helping.
Serge Ibaka Is the New Face of Canadian Outerwear Brand Nobis
With his distinctly sharp sense of style—even with a broken ankle—Ibaka has been turning all sorts of heads, including Canadian outerwear brand Nobis, who has just named the player as their global ambassador.
Nocino: A Sip of Tradition
Nocino (“no-cheeno”) has a history filled with superstition and tradition.
The Sartorialist Turns a Lens to India’s Street Fashion
Street photographer Scott Schuman’s latest book The Sartorialist: India contains over 300 pages showing a delicate and stylistic side of India. Not the India of National Geographic, but a younger, fashionable India. An India with music festivals, tattoos, and dyed hair.
The Woman with a Velvet Voice, Celeste
If the past had a voice, it would sound like Celeste’s.
The Best Canadian Art Exhibitions of 2019
Here, we’ve assembled five of our favourite art exhibitions held across Canada—classic and contemporary, beautiful and necessary—in 2019, and two exhibitions still on view into the new year.
An Ancient Chinese Art Form Is Revisited by Gongbi Master Ren Zhong
Gongbi painter Ren Zhong’s skill in exactitude is matched by his ability to express emotional intensity.
Inventing Acadia: How Art Reveals the Untold Histories of Louisiana
Inventing Acadia: Painting and Place in Louisiana, currently on view at the New Orleans Museum of Art, is the first exhibition in 40 years to critically investigate 19th-century Louisiana landscape art.
Transits and Returns Explores Indigeneity at the Vancouver Art Gallery
The middle of a journey, where one is suspended in the midst of motion, is the starting point of the Vancouver Art Gallery’s exhibition Transits and Returns.
A Baroque Entrepreneur:
Peter Paul Rubens
Early Rubens, currently on at the Art Gallery of Ontario, commemorates one of the baroque period’s greatest painters at the height of his career.
Through the Lens: On Wildlife Photography with David Yarrow
The Glasgow-born photographer is best known for his striking black and white wildlife and fashion photography and his skill to capture the soul of each subject, be it a tiger, a polar bear, or a Victoria’s Secret model.
The Skin Care Company Cleaning-Up Men’s Grooming
Since 2013, Les Industries Groom has been dedicated to ethical and sustainable personal-care products for men.
The Italian Woodwork of Porro
For more than 90 years, the Porro family has worked closely with artisans and designers to create bespoke modular furniture that marries traditional Italian craftsmanship with innovative manufacturing processes—while staying true to the material itself: wood.
The Sound of Havana Travels North with Alex Cuba’s New Album
Cuban-Canadian signer Alex Cuba’s seventh studio album, Sublime, released September 20, is a fluid journey from upbeat melodies to romantic serenades.
The Ethereal Sound of Rhye
Listening to Rhye is an act of introspection. The airiness of frontman Michael Milosh’s vocals flows into the ambience of his beats and instrumentals, evoking an almost meditative experience.
Moving Still: Performative Photography in India at the Vancouver Art Gallery
Now in its closing weekend, the Vancouver Art Gallery’s Moving Still: Performative Photography in India exhibition traces the art of performative photography—telling stories through visual stills—in India from the 1800s to the present day.
A Space for Contemplation at the Royal Ontario Museum
The Royal Ontario Museum’s new public outdoor spaces are the architectural personification of an open invitation to enter the museum, a beckoning finger to passersby.
Frank And Oak’s Circular Denim Fights Fast Fashion in Style
Jeans have been a clothing staple for decades. Yet, as Frank And Oak has proven, denim can indeed herald a new, more sustainable approach to clothing.
Q&A: Indigenous Activist Sarain Fox
Sarain Fox has one voice, but when she speaks, it reverberates with the voices of hundreds more. Such is the role of an activist: having a responsibility to speak for those who cannot be heard.
Questioning Identity at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts This Fall
The theme of identity is a thread that weaves through time at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts’ upcoming fall exhibitions spanning the mediums of archaeology, painting, and photography.
What We’re Listening to This Summer
Refine your next playlist with this selection of recent album releases, curated by our editors. This summer, we’re listening to Solange, Billie Marten, Tanya Tagaq, and more.
On Identity and Poetry with Somali-Canadian Singer Amaal
Amaal’s vocals on Black Dove are reminiscent of the airy inflections heard in ’90s-era R&B. Her expansive voice seems to flutter through you, soothing and swaying as it passes.
Automatic Negative Thought at the Contemporary Art Gallery
Maryam Jafri’s first solo exhibition in Canada examines the economic, political, and cultural factors that explain certain fixations of contemporary society: self-care, politics, and the legalities of creative property.
Lacoste’s First Collaboration with Tyler, the Creator
Hip-hop–endorsed street fashion meets classic French tennis-court style in Lacoste’s first collaboration with Golf le Fleur, a subset of Tyler, the Creator’s clothing line Golf Wang.
Because We Are Girls Director Baljit Sangra
For the past decade, the documentary filmmaker Baljit Sangra has focused on sharing stories from her community by navigating the subtle complexities that lie within the hyphen of Indo-Canadian.
The Colourful New Louis Vuitton X Exhibition in Beverly Hills
You can relive the creative collaborations between Louis Vuitton and globally renowned artists and designers over the past 160 years at the maison’s latest exhibition.
The Chan Centre Presents Concert Series
The 2019/2020 Chan Centre Presents season kicks off in September and features nine musical performances spanning the streets of Havana to the northern reaches of Scandinavia.
The Art of the Machine: Computational Drawing
Art meets machinery in Carl Lostritto’s new book Computational Drawing, a five-chapter theory and exercise book on the craft of drawing with computer code.
Alberto Giacometti: A Line Through Time at the Vancouver Art Gallery
The Vancouver Art Gallery’s latest exhibition honours Alberto Giacometti from June 16 to September 29. The Swiss-born artist is renowned as one of the greatest sculptors of the first half of the 20th century, with a record-breaking $141-million (U.S.) paid at auction in 2015 for his work L’Homme au doigt.
Minotti, Made in Italy
Good design tells a story, and the people behind Minotti are storytellers who speak the language of artisanal designers. The brand’s 2019 collection is an ode to the art of handcrafted Italian furniture and the talent of global designers.
The Paintings of Bruno Leydet
Following his first solo exhibition at Galerie Youn in Montreal last year, Bruno Leydet’s kitsch-inspired acrylic-on-canvas paintings have established the artist as one to watch in the contemporary art domain.
Particles of a Built World: A Consideration on Concrete at the Surrey Art Gallery
Bocci founder and sculptor, Omer Arbel experiments with the fluidity of concrete in a three-part installation for the Surrey Art Gallery.
A Fantasy-Themed Home Collection by L’OBJET Haas Brothers
In a combination of imagination and talent, Los Angeles–based artists and brothers Nikolai and Simon Haas joined forces with Israeli-born L’OBJET founder and creative director Elad Yifrach for a fantasy-themed home collection.
In the Age of Rembrandt on View at the Royal Ontario Museum
The Royal Ontario Museum’s upcoming exhibition, opening June 1st, is a celebration of one of the most significant periods in art history: the Dutch Golden Age.
Lacoste Save our Species Polo Collection
Fashion meets conservationism with the release of the Lacoste Save our Species collection in honour of International Day for Biological Diversity. The limited-edition series swaps the iconic crocodile for 10 endangered species.
In Conversation: A Future World, Makeup Chores, Pilobo-land
The art of conversation in a digital world. This week, our editors are talking about climate change, the femininity and feminism of makeup, and a magical photoscape in Connecticut.
How to See Science
A new book by American curator and writer Marvin Heiferman “reveals what lies beyond the parameters of sight, imagination, and human control.”
In Conversation: Jeff Goldblum, the History of Peaches, How to Understand
The art of conversation in a digital world. This week, our editors are talking about the life and fashion of Jeff Goldblum, the history of peaches, and what it means to understand.
Photojournalism in the Modern Age
When words fail, a photograph does not. And with the rise of image-heavy social media apps like Instagram, photojournalists have become the unsung heroes of truth. Does it matter who stands behind the lens?
A Harlem Nocturne
Toronto-based artist Deanna Bowen fuses the nostalgic with the forensic in the CAG’s latest exhibit on the unacknowledged story of Vancouver entertainers, threaded with her own family history.
Inside Vancouver’s Newest Aesop
Aesop settles into their third Vancouver location on Main Street, with a purple palette and subtle homages to the city.
Livia Bakery, Vancouver
On a corner in Vancouver’s Commercial Drive, sweet indulgence is personified through Italian-inspired Livia Bakery.
Encore: Reenactment in Contemporary Photography at the Getty Museum
Seven photographers explore the art of reinterpretation at the latest GETTY exhibition.