On Being
Exquisite Corpse
WAVEform (Toleen Touq and Liz Ikiriko)
Workshop
Friday, July 7, 4pm - 6pm
Exquisite Corpse is an active session hosted by Liz Ikiriko and Toleen Touq who will lead a group reading exercise, listening session and meditation inviting participants to explore multisensorial learning that moves away from linear, hierarchical or theory-based knowledge production. The session constructs a site for gathering and musing on the temporality of life, death and being together. As we listen, read and use our bodies, we will consider ways of honouring the natural life cycles of projects, collaborations and other living things in and outside of the art world. Exquisite Corpse provides a space to contemplate how we bring together a sense of connected, embodied presence in our personal lives and in our lives as arts workers.
Liz Ikiriko and Toleen Touq are the co-founders of WAVEform Collective. Using their years of curatorial and educational experiences in artist-run-centres to national institutions, both Ikiriko and Touq support and engage QTBIPOC curators, artists, and arts facilitators who work outside colonially structured knowledge systems and institutions. The collective’s pedagogical ethos lies in immersive and experiential knowledge sharing and learning as a foundation for community building within the arts. During 2022-2023, the collective was granted a Canada Council for the Arts grant and partnered with Critical Distance Centre for Curators (CDCC) to run Ways of Attuning, a curatorial study group with 4 participants from across Turtle Island. Ways of Attuning included a retreat, mentoring sessions, and workshops with an international roster of guest facilitators that will culminate in CDCC exhibition programming throughout the 2023-2024 season.
Liz Ikiriko is the Curator, Collections and Art in Public Space at the University of Toronto’s Art Museum. She was a part of the curatorial committee for the 13th Rencontres de Bamako, African Photography Biennial in Mali, West Africa and most recently contributed to Aperture’s publication As We Rise: Photography From the Black Atlantic.
Toleen Touq is an independent curator, cultural producer and facilitator working between Toronto, Canada and Amman, Jordan. In Toronto she is currently curating the Greater Toronto Art 24 triennial at the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto. She was previously artistic director at SAVAC (South Asian Visual Arts Centre) from 2018 - 2022. In Amman, she is co-founding director of Spring Sessions (2014-ongoing) residency and experiential learning program.