Category: With Opened Mouths: The Podcast

Emelie Chhangur, Director Curator of Agnes Etherington Art Centre talks with Qanita Lilla about her radical curatorial practice. Growing up in Paris, Ontario in an assimilationist paradigm, she talks of harnessing experimentation and rejecting the confines of the status quo. Emelie’s lived experience of cultural mixing and of negotiating multiple worlds allows her to open […]

In artist Rajni Parera’s marbled landscapes, mutant travellers traverse interstellar terrains as regal environmental combatants. Hers is a multiverse of jewel-coloured intensity, of hairy spoons and delicate seed pods all of whom co-exist as equals in a realm where only the gentle survive. Which life events birthed these ideas and which everyday materialities were harnessed […]

For poet Juliane Okot Bitek storytelling was always in the air. In this episode, she shares with Qanita Lilla that stories have the power to transform who we are and how we situate ourselves in the world. Juliane describes the precarity of belonging, the unexpected joys of ‘unsettlement’, intergenerational memory (contained in the beauty of […]

In this episode, Chao Tayiana Maina shares her pathways into the digital humanities and metadata with Qanita Lilla. Framing new structures for African knowledges, she has combined a lifelong love of history with innovative technologies. For Chao, translating history into the digital sphere requires an understanding that information in the archives has a living relevance […]

Visual artist Kosisochukwu (Kosi) Nnebe talks with Qanita Lilla about the rich sources of her artistic practice. Inspired by social theory as well as her lived experience, Kosi creates art that resists the easy consumption of blackness and allows instead for quiet, sometimes disturbing realizations to emerge. Referencing her video installation in the Brown Butter […]

In this episode, poet Billie the Kid talks with Qanita Lilla about honouring stories as living entities. Through storytelling she manifests light, hope and joy. Billie’s practice takes us on a journey through a tapestry of family, poet communities, and resonant connections with mentors. The fundamental humour in her writing emerges as speaking back to […]

In this episode, performer and dramaturg, Yousef Kadoura speaks with Qanita Lilla about living an exuberant life as a disabled performer and of surrounding himself with networks of people who share affirmative joy. Expanding the idea of storytelling and re-defining disability, Yousef talks about navigating belonging in a field populated by able bodied performers, and […]

In a meeting of hearts, artists Winsom Winsom and Pamila Matharu talk with Qanita Lilla about their journeys and their ongoing mentor-mentee relationship. Winsom sheds light on her rich practice that traverses the globe, including her time in Kingston, and Pamila talks about Fresh Arts and finding her creative community. Together, they discuss vital pedagogies […]

We are back with a second season of With Opened Mouths: The Podcast, where we give artists, poets, performers, activists and curators a platform to speak about what motivates them to imagine new worlds. Subscribe now and join us every month as we listen to the sometimes-unexpected paths of these exceptional people. With Opened Mouths […]

Jason Cyrus, Ezi Odozor and Qanita Lilla talk together about the creative processes of curating, researching and writing in the Canadian arts sphere. Sharing the enriching journeys around Agnes’s exhibitions Spirit Banter, History Is Rarely Black or White and With Opened Mouths, this episode is about the urgency to have our voices heard, the joy […]