Recommended Reading

Connect with leading thinkers, researchers and artists whose innovations help shape the conversations at our museum through monthly recommendations from Remai Modern's Publication Coordinator Rebecca La Marre.

The artists, researchers and writers below have brought groundbreaking ideas into the world, creating new possibilities for thought. Their texts span disciplines like science, art history, criticism and philosophy, and influence visual artists working today, helping all of us appreciate the arts in new, deep and meaningful ways.

These lists emphasize the incredible digital resources available through the Saskatoon Public Library and link to other sources of publicly available content on the Internet. 

Friday, June 19th

Pride in Saskatoon is virtual this year, but there are still lots of ways to learn and celebrate while physically distanced. Read on for a selection of great online resources. Pride began as a protest against police violence, and that spirit is reflected today in the vigils and gatherings to both honour American George Floyd and demand change here in Saskatoon and around the world.

This list foregrounds contributions by BIPOC artists and writers who have changed the world by arguing for the right to freedom and safety for the 2SLGBTQ+ community and beyond.

Through Saskatoon Public Library digital resources, you can access articles in the New York Times for free! Learn about what BIPOC means and the history of the term here.

Lists and labels are great tools for starting conversations. However, by definition, they exclude. This list is just a beginning; it aims to stimulate your curiosity about key people, events and their impact.

Toni Morrison

In 1993, Toni Morrison was the first Black woman to win the Nobel Lecture in Literature. Read her speech here.

Her writing often features queer characters and she speaks powerfully about the damage caused by what she calls “lethal discourses of exclusion.” In her speech she highlights what drives many artists, whether they work with text or image:

“Don’t you remember being young when language was magic without meaning? When what you could say, could not mean? When the invisible was what imagination strove to see? When questions and demands for answers burned so brightly you trembled with fury at not knowing?"

Bell Hooks

Bell Hooks is a prolific feminist writer and academic who writes about the intersectionality of race, capitalism, and gender, and what she describes as their ability to produce and perpetuate systems of oppression and class domination.

Audio Book - Bell Hooks: Aint I A Woman via Hoopla

Audio Book - Bell Hooks: Teaching to Transgress via Hoopla

James Baldwin

James Baldwin was a major 20th-century American author, a Civil Rights activist and, for two crucial decades, an essential gay voice calling for an end to racism.

Film - I Am Not Your Negro via Kanopy. An Oscar-nominated documentary narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, I Am Not Your Negro explores the continued peril America faces from institutionalized racism.

Film - James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket via Kanopy. This archival documentary captures the passionate intellect and courageous writing of a man who was born Black, impoverished, gay and gifted.

BEYOND THE BINARY

Hannah Black, My Bodies (2014)

“…a short video that, contrary to the curatorial emphasis on women’s images of themselves, doesn’t show her body. [Jennifer] Chan told me she thinks of the piece as the show’s “thesis statement,” a meta-commentary on what it is to have a body—and what it means to represent that body—in a society of gender and racial hierarchies.”

Women on the Verge - Art, Feminism and Social Media via ArtForum

National Indigenous Peoples Day is June 21st, the same weekend as Saskatoon Pride. Learn about the history of why the "2S" in 2SLGBTQ+ stands for Two Spirit.  

Join the virtual Two Spirit Ball this year at Saskatoon Pride.

Learn about the evolving conversation around Butch and Stud identities in this recent  New York Times survey

Take a walk with non-binary poet Eileen Myles

“One egg is better than two ‘cause of all the longing it leaves.”

Find trans academic writer and researcher Mackenzie Wark’s contribution to The Quarantine Files: Thinkers in Self-Isolation at the Los Angeles Review of Books

THE STONEWALL RIOTS

One of the key figures in the Stonewall Riots, which celebrated its 50th-anniversary last year, was the Black activist and self-identified drag queen Marsha P. Johnson.

A documentary about the event in 1969 can be found here via Kanopy

For more historical context you can read Paris is Burning on Hoopla, a book by Lucas Hilderbrand that discusses the 1991 cult-classic film by Jennie Livingston. It captures the energy, ambition, wit, and struggle of African-American and Latino participants in the 1980s New York drag ball scene.

PULSE NIGHTCLUB

Violence against the queer community disproportionately affects trans people of colour. The Pulse nightclub tragedy in 2016 highlighted this, with a mass shooting at the venue in Orlando, Florida. 49 people were killed, the majority of them from the Latinx community. 

This article from the New Inquiry discusses the vigil for this event held in Montreal and explores the overlap of racialized police violence, slavery, Indigenous identity and the queer community in Canada.

House House Press

House House Press is an exciting and experimental publisher with a primary focus on radical BIPOC and queer writing practices. Edited by David Bradford and Anahita Jamali Rad and based in Tiohtiá:ke/Montréal, House House Press publishes poetry chapbooks, pamphlets and ephemera operating outside of the prevailing lyrical and experimental aesthetics. They have been hosting live Instagram readings and posting content throughout the pandemic.

EMILIA-AMALIA

EMILIA-AMALIA is an intersectional, intergenerational, feminist experimental working group, initiated in Toronto in 2016.

The group uses informal knowledge sharing and experimental writing to cultivate relationships of mentorship, collaboration and reciprocal indebtedness between generations of artists, writers, thinkers, curators and practitioners.

Their bibliography is available on their website, featuring readings that show how gender, race and politics intersect with the arts. Many titles are available for free online and can be found here.

C.R.A.Z.Y (2005)

The Saskatoon Public Library offers a digitally published script of this film by French-Canadian director Jean-Marc Vallée. The film depicts a young gay man who struggles to find his sense of self amidst a family of four brothers and a homophobic father who seeks to cure him. The film won the best picture Genie Award (Canada's version of the Oscars) in 2006.

Agnes Martin

A beloved Saskatchewan-born abstract painter, Agnes Martin is a vital queer figure in the global arts community.

Film - Agnes Martin: Before the Grid via Kanopy. Through interviews with friends, lovers and classmates who knew her well, insight is gained into Martin's personality and the development of her creative process before she became known for her grid paintings.

We hope you enjoyed exploring, and if you have any resources you would like to share with us, please send them to info@remaimodern.org