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Owen Toews’s debut novel Island Falls (2023) is hard to describe. Half tale of unfolding friendship, half clinical report of a segregated mill town in the Canadian prairies, the enigmatic text plays with genre and form, raising questions about how space is produced and contested. The result is both charming and unsettling. Characters wrestle with how to respond to the violent structures that surround them and never really figure it out. In the end, we’re left to ponder the thorny relationship between trying to make sense of things and actually creating something better. Overall, the effect is galvanizing. Toews invites the reader to…

I “What makes Nigerians tick?” I was asked recently by one of those folks, you know, who by hook or crook would be found asking Africans here where they really are from. On a blessed day, I would’ve ignored the question, pretended I didn’t hear the blasphemy, or, even better, offered a not-so-polite dressing down. It’s frustrating to be constantly harassed with antiquated, racist questions: where are you from?, what makes your people unique?, how do you greet in your language? Questions that many of us know to be loaded with intents and mal intents to put us where we are perceived to belong. Elsewhere, anywhere…

Amy Ching-Yan Lam and I look over the menus at a packed cha chaan teng (Hong Kong-style diner) in Markham, a suburb of Toronto. In the background are sounds of clattering dishware and Cantonese conversations. People are crowded into the small entryway as they eagerly await a table, glancing at diners who might be finishing up their meals. The energy in here is frenetic, but not unpleasant. Lam speaks Cantonese. I don’t. In this setting, the language conveys ease and maybe belonging, but is not required for ordering our midday meal. Descriptions of the dishes are written in Traditional Chinese…

Fungi are everywhere. I’m not the first to say it, but I want to be the last. In February, Triple Canopy published a series of essays surveying the ongoing proliferation of fungi-inspired culture. Mushrooms, with their pleasing color palettes and subtly salacious shapes, have been made into plushie toys, decorative patterns for dish towels and puzzles, and vibey graphic tees. Mushrooms, specifically the reproductive fruiting bodies of fungi that we can see protruding from soil or downed trees, are predictably easy to aestheticize. There are other parts such as mycelium that are aestheticized too but in different ways. These fine fungal threads are similar to roots…

M.E. Sparks is an artist and educator based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Treaty 1 Territory. Born in Kenora, Ontario, Sparks completed her MFA from Emily Carr University and her BFA from NSCAD University. She has received numerous awards and grants for her work from the Canada Council for the Arts and the BC Arts Council, among others, has been involved in several international residency programs, and has exhibited internationally. Sparks’s practice is deeply rooted in the history of painting. As an art historian, I was eager to speak to her about her influences and how the past continues to inform the…

n a recent article for Airmail Magazine, a U.S.-based online lifestyle publication, the artist Laila Gohar presented her formula for hosting the perfect party. It included, in random order: Laillier Blanc des Blancs champagne (“holiday water”), crystal cups (“so wide that almost seem like swimming pools”), cotton-linen tablecloths (“elegant yet not too uptight!”), and mother-of-pearl spoons (“perfect for caviar, but also for ice cream or sorbet”). In Gohar’s opinion, these chiselled details aim to create an atmosphere “relaxed yet considered, easygoing but layered.”1 I would be lying if I said that I’m not mesmerized by the atmosphere Gohar depicts, flawlessly…

In response to the Spring Equinox, Public Parking Editorial Resident Amy Fung invited multidisciplinary cultural workers Indu Vashist and Cecilia Berkovic to engage in a mindful and honest conversation on themes of cycles, practice, violence, and endurance to mark this year’s Summer Solstice. Meeting and working in the Toronto arts scene in the 2010s, Berkovic, Fung, and Vashist reflect on the present era of what it means to be alive.  Amy Fung (Amy): Let’s start at the beginning. Ceci, Indu, how do we know each other? Cecilia Berkovic (Ceci): Well Amy, I met you through Images [Festival] when I worked there…

n a new documentary film on his life and politics, Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu is in a Toyota SUV when the camera pans closely to his face revealing his lanky form even in his cardigan. His red beret — the veritable and allegorical element of his political struggle — hangs on his knee in the brief foreshadow. Along with other comrades of his political persuasion, they are gearing up for a campaign against one of Africa’s last dictators. Shortly after this scene, Ssentamu asks if his comrades are ready for the outing in solidarity, and then a hymn follows. They all…

Theo Jean Cuthand’s videos are full of good lines, but there’s no time to dwell on them. They’re delivered without pause, almost matter-of-factly, in unhurried monologues that span the video’s run time.  In Extractions (2019), he describes the terrifying lumber scrap incinerator in Merritt, where he spent four intolerable months as a teen, “like something in a Disney movie symbolizing death and anguish.” Earlier, over footage of a series of explosions in an open pit mine, he notes benignly, “I like to think there are alternatives.” In Less Lethal Fetishes (2019), he uses gas masks to meditate on kink culture and the art world’s toxic relationship with industry….

The intersection of art and fitness is so small that I can only name a handful of artists who deliberately engage with the subject (all of them male, of course). It is a topic that is so rarely discussed in my world–the art world–that it took a global health crisis for me to finally begin to take control of my health, and introduce an entirely new vocabulary into my vernacular. Four years later, I now find myself speaking fluently–and passionately–about hypertrophy, isometric movements, and macronutrients.  Before I became the person I am today–the person who works out every day and…