With Opened Mouths: The Podcast Archives

World-Making with Our Hearts: Anthony Gebrehiwot

With Opened Mouths: The Podcast

World-Making with Our Hearts: Anthony Gebrehiwot

00:00 / 01:00:35

In this episode, artist Anthony Gebrehiwot and Qanita Lilla talk about his photography and digital art practice. Anthony describes the future-thinking themes of his work as being premised on the possibilities of a community of “like-hearted” people who can uplift each other towards new modes of living. Together, they talk about his artworks, Mahaba (2024), […]

Posted On : 2025-02-28 Published By : Pod Volunteer

Currents of Liberation: Camille Turner

With Opened Mouths: The Podcast

Currents of Liberation: Camille Turner

00:00 / 01:12:35

In the inaugural episode of season three, artist Camille Turner talks with Qanita Lilla about how she balances humour, healing and storytelling to recover Black histories in Canada. In her work, Camille lovingly assembles the detritus of the archive, with its sparse and often painful accounts of Black life. She invokes personas and performance, like […]

Posted On : 2025-01-31 Published By : Pod Volunteer

Season 3: Trailer

With Opened Mouths: The Podcast

Season 3: Trailer

00:00 / 00:01:27

Have you ever wondered: What is the purpose of an artist in the world today? We are back with a third season of With Opened Mouths: The Podcast. The podcast that makes space for artists, poets, performers, activists and curators to speak for themselves. I’m your host Qanita Lilla, Associate Curator, Arts of Africa […]

Posted On : 2025-01-24 Published By : Pod Volunteer

Outrageous Worldmaking from a Bright Yellow Kitchen

With Opened Mouths: The Podcast

Outrageous Worldmaking from a Bright Yellow Kitchen

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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 […]

Posted On : 2023-08-25 Published By : CFRC 101.9 FM

Travelling in a Multiverse of Hybridity

With Opened Mouths: The Podcast

Travelling in a Multiverse of Hybridity

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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 […]

Posted On : 2023-07-28 Published By : CFRC 101.9 FM

Drawing Power From Poetry

With Opened Mouths: The Podcast

Drawing Power From Poetry

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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 […]

Posted On : 2023-06-30 Published By : CFRC 101.9 FM

Imagining African Digital Futures

With Opened Mouths: The Podcast

Imagining African Digital Futures

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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 […]

Posted On : 2023-05-26 Published By : CFRC 101.9 FM

Manifesting Black Feminist Subjectivity

With Opened Mouths: The Podcast

Manifesting Black Feminist Subjectivity

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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 […]

Posted On : 2023-04-28 Published By : CFRC 101.9 FM

Sweet Grass, Boiled Eggs and Table Manners

With Opened Mouths: The Podcast

Sweet Grass, Boiled Eggs and Table Manners

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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 […]

Posted On : 2023-03-31 Published By : CFRC 101.9 FM

Access as Kindness

With Opened Mouths: The Podcast

Access as Kindness

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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 […]

Posted On : 2023-02-24 Published By : CFRC 101.9 FM

One Person’s Uprising is Another Person’s Riot

With Opened Mouths: The Podcast

One Person's Uprising is Another Person's Riot

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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 […]

Posted On : 2023-01-24 Published By : CFRC 101.9 FM

With Opened Mouths: Season Two Trailer

With Opened Mouths: The Podcast

With Opened Mouths: Season Two Trailer

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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 […]

Posted On : 2023-01-18 Published By : CFRC 101.9 FM

Bantering toward radically liberated futures

With Opened Mouths: The Podcast

Bantering toward radically liberated futures

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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 […]

Posted On : 2022-01-31 Published By : CFRC 101.9 FM

Embracing Synergies in Other Worlds

With Opened Mouths: The Podcast

Embracing Synergies in Other Worlds

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Curators and artists, Amy Malbeuf and Jessie Ray Short talk with Qanita Lilla about the many joys of collaborating. Their expansive practice embraces new visions of Métis identity and looks to broaden our view of reality to the outer limits of the known universe. Which unseen forces led them to art and to each other? […]

Posted On : 2021-12-13 Published By : CFRC 101.9 FM

Soak Black Worry in a Bath of Black Laughter

With Opened Mouths: The Podcast

Soak Black Worry in a Bath of Black Laughter

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In this episode, Kingston raised spoken word poet Britta B. talks to Qanita Lilla about navigating a White world while growing up Black. Writing and performing was a necessary part of surviving the world Britta found herself in. She talks about the people and networks who helped her to hone her powerful voice and how […]

Posted On : 2021-11-15 Published By : CFRC 101.9 FM

Intimate Recollections of Black Lives

With Opened Mouths: The Podcast

Intimate Recollections of Black Lives

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Artist Oluseye’s sculptural Eminado or talismans reside within an inner chamber of With Opened Mouths. In this episode, he talks with Qanita Lilla about his enduring ties to Africa, to black rubber and to things that give both pleasure and pain. Oluseye’s “diasporic debris” are not only the generative materials used to conjure Black journeys […]

Posted On : 2021-10-15 Published By : CFRC 101.9 FM

Our Journeys Are Our Stories

With Opened Mouths: The Podcast

Our Journeys Are Our Stories

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In episode three, Sebastian de Line, Associate Curator Indigenous Care and Relations at Agnes speaks with Qanita Lilla. They speak of life’s journeys and of what led Sebastian on their current path. What becomes clear is that one single path is not part of Sebastian’s life-trajectory. The tapestry of their life shows the importance of […]

Posted On : 2021-09-13 Published By : CFRC 101.9 FM

The Art of Black

With Opened Mouths: The Podcast

The Art of Black

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In the second episode, Qanita Lilla speaks with rapper and social activist, Jameel3DN. Jameel is the artist behind the incredible song, “The art of Black,” composed for With Opened Mouths: The Podcast. They speak about his life journey, of overcoming intergenerational obstacles, of developing his voice as a Griot (storyteller) and of reaching an understanding […]

Posted On : 2021-08-16 Published By : CFRC 101.9 FM

The Hidden Museum

With Opened Mouths: The Podcast

The Hidden Museum

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In this inaugural episode Dr Qanita Lilla introduces the main themes of this podcast. She describes a museum space that mirrors all our lived experiences and discusses what led her into the museum field in the first place. Together with Jenn Nicoll she visits the subterraneous world of the vault.They speak about the role of […]

Posted On : 2021-07-11 Published By : CFRC 101.9 FM

‘With Opened Mouths: The Podcast’ Coming Soon!

With Opened Mouths: The Podcast

'With Opened Mouths: The Podcast' Coming Soon!

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In this brief introduction, With Opened Mouths: The Podcast host Dr. Qanita Lilla, Associate Curator, Arts of Africa highlights to scope of this innovative new podcast series featuring discussions with artists, musicians, curators and spoken word poets about the expression of their practice. With Opened Mouths: The Podcast is produced by Agnes Etherington Art Centre […]

Posted On : 2021-06-23 Published By : CFRC 101.9 FM