Momus Emerging Critics Residency 2021

Rahel Aima is a writer based in Dubai. She was an associate editor of Momus and remains a contributor and her writing has appeared in or at 4 Columns, Artforum, Art in America, Artnews, ArtReview, The Atlantic, Bidoun, Bookforum, e-flux architecture, frieze, Garage, Harper’s Bazaar Art Arabia, Mousse, New Republic, Real Life, Rest of World, Tank, Vogue Arabia, and World Policy Journal, among many others. Aima regularly contribute exhibition texts, catalogue essays, and book chapters.

Hannah Black is a visual artist, critic, and writer. Her work spans video, text and performance and draws on communism, feminist, and Afro-pessimist theory, autobiographical fragments and pop music.

Dr. Léuli Eshrāghi (Sāmoan, Persian, Cantonese) is a visual artist, writer, curator and researcher who works between Australia and Canada. Ia intervenes in display territories to centre Indigenous kin constellations, sensual and spoken languages, and ceremonial- political practices. Through performance, moving image, writing and installation, ia engages with Indigenous futurities as haunted by ongoing militourist and missionary violences that once erased faʻafafine-faʻatane people from kinship and knowledge structures. Eshrāghi has made new commissions for the 22nd Biennale of Sydney, Sharjah Biennial 14, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art and Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center among other group and solo presentations in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. Eshrāghi has lectured at gatherings Creative Time, Hawaiʻi Contemporary Art Summit, Experimenter Curators’ Hub, March Meeting, Dhaka Art Summit, Pacific Arts Association, and Asia Pacific Triennial, as well as at universities in Antwerp, San Juan, London, Melbourne, Yogyakarta, Montreal, Honolulu, Auckland and Victoria. Ia contributes to growing international critical practice across the Great Ocean and North America through residencies, exhibitions, publications, teaching, and rights advocacy.

Sky Goodden is the founding publisher of Momus, an online platform for art writing and criticism; and co-host of Momus: The Podcast. Goodden has published in numerous catalogues, art books, and publications including Momus, Frieze, Art in America, C Magazine, and Art21, among others. She is based in Montreal.

Ebony L. Haynes is a writer and curator from Toronto, Canada. She is currently based in New York where she is global head of curatorial projects for David Zwirner.

Candice Hopkins is a citizen of Carcross/Tagish First Nation and lives in Red Hook, New York. She is Executive Director and Chief Curator of Forge Project. Her writing and curatorial practice explores the intersections of history, contemporary art, and indigeneity. She worked as senior curator for the 2019 and 2022 editions of the Toronto Biennial of Art and was part of the curatorial team for the Canadian Pavilion of the 58th Venice Biennale, featuring the work of the media art collective Isuma. She is co-curator of notable exhibitions including Art for New Understanding: Native Voices 1950s to Now; the 2018 SITE Santa Fe biennial, Casa Tomada; documenta 14 in Athens, Greece, and Kassel, Germany; Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art at the National Gallery of Canada and Close Encounters: The Next 500 Years in Winnipeg, MB. Her essays include “The Gilded Gaze: Wealth and Economies on the Colonial Frontier,” for the documenta 14 Reader, “Outlawed Social Life” for South as a State of Mind, and “The Appropriation Debates (or The Gallows of History),” for New Museum/MIT Press. In 2021 she was a recipient of the inaugural Noah Davis Prize, along with Thomas Lax and Jamillah James, and in 2022 received the Leo Award from Independent Curators International.

Emmanuel Iduma is a Nigerian writer and art critic. He is the author, most recently, of A Stranger’s Pose. His essays have been published widely, including in Artforum, Art in America, Aperture, The New York Review of Books, and a wide range of magazines, monographs, and exhibition catalogues. His honors include an arts writing grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation, the inaugural Irving Sandler Award for New Voices in Art Criticism from AICA-USA, and the C/O Berlin Talent Prize for Theory. In 2020, he was included on Apollo Magazine’s 40 Under 40 Africa. He lives in Lagos, Nigeria, and New York City.

Jessica Lynne is a writer and art critic. She is a founding editor of ARTS.BLACK, an online journal of art criticism from Black perspectives. Her writing has been featured in publications such as Artforum, the Believer, Frieze, the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, and Oxford American, where she was a contributing editor. She was an Editor at Momus from 2022-25 and is a contributor. Lynne is the recipient of a 2020 Research and Development award from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and a 2020 Arts Writer Grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation. She is the inaugural recipient of the Beverly Art Writers Travel Grant awarded in 2022 by the American Australian Association.

Mark Mann is a writer and editor who specializes in longform narrative journalism. He has written feature stories for Toronto Life, The Walrus, Report on Business, Reader’s Digest, The Dance Current, Torontoist, Broadview and Maisonneuve, as well as essays about art and culture for Momus, The Toronto Star, and others. His writing about science and tech has appeared extensively on Motherboard. He has been shortlisted twice for the National Magazine Award. Mann is Associate Editor in Chief at Beside.

Catherine G. Wagley is a journalist, critic, and editor based in Los Angeles. She is co-editor at Momus and her book She Wanted Adventure is forthcoming from FSG.

Lauren Wetmore is a Canadian writer, editor, and curator based in Brussels. She is Director of Programs for Momus, co-host/producer of Momus: The Podcast, and is a member of the Board of Directors of rekto:verso magazine. She is co-editor of The Employee, with Joshua Schwebel (Art Metropole, 2025) and has contributed to publications from Lenz Press, Mousse Publishing, and Sternberg Press. As a critic she has been published by frieze, MadaMasr, Spike Arts Quarterly, and C Magazine, among others. Wetmore has held curatorial positions at MUDAM (Luxembourg), the Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh), Frieze Projects (London), Mophradat (Beirut/Brussels/Cairo), the Barbican Art Gallery (London), The Banff Centre, and she has curated independant projects for the Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels) and Fundació AAVC Hangar (Barcelona). Wetmore has received grants and awards from Creative Europe, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Goethe-Institut, and the Flanders Arts Institute.

Sarah Amarica is an arts administrator from Tiohtià:ke/Montréal, who works with and writes about contemporary artists. She holds a master’s in art history from Concordia University (2018) and for the last decade has worked in art galleries and artist studios, producing media artworks, contemporary art exhibitions, and cultural events. She is currently a Project Manager at PHI Centre, Montreal and enjoys the creative interaction that comes from working alongside artists. As both an arts worker and writer, Sarah is interested in how art criticism, cultural work and artistic production intersect, while based in storytelling and community.

Kara Au is a writer based in Menagoesg/Saint John, NB. They hold an MA in Digital Humanities from the University of Alberta and a BA in Media Arts & Cultures from the University of New Brunswick. They have written for publications and organizations including Visual Arts News, Feels Zine, The Centre for Art Tapes, and more. They are finishing up an online writing project funded by artsnb called Well Painted Places. Their current writing interests intersect mental health, ongoingness, and affect.

Sarah Cecilia Bukowski is a dancer, writer, arts administrator, and community activist based in New York City. She is currently pursuing a BA in Anthropology and Dance at Columbia University School of General Studies. Sarah writes about issues of cultural equity and social justice in dance, both as a freelancer and as Writer in Residence for Amy Seiwert’s Imagery, a contemporary ballet company based in San Francisco. Her long-held passion for the written word motivates her deep inquisitiveness for the potential available at the intersections between social issues, creative processes, and the moving body.

Gwen Burlington is an Irish freelance writer and editor, based in London, UK. In 2013, she received a BA in Fine Art and History of Art from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. In 2017 she received an MA in Contemporary Art Theory from Edinburgh College of Art. In 2018, she came joint second in International Awards for Art Criticism (IAAC5). In 2019, she was a writer in residence at Jerwood Arts. She is the founding editor of a publicly funded art and literary publication called Mirror Lamp Press. She has written for a range of digital and in print publications including Frieze, Hyperallergic, ArtReview and Art Monthly among others with a focus on artists for whom there is very little already said.

Kara Clarke is an interdisciplinary artist and writer who examines art historical subjectivities and feminist philosophies of science. She creates flexible research structures with outputs ranging from installation and image to writing and sculpture. Clarke earned her MA in Aesthetics and Politics from the California Institute of the Arts and worked as a digital project manager prior to enrolling in the University of Oregon where she was a Graduate Teaching Fellow from 2019-2020.

Natalie Cortez-Klossner has contributed essays and poetry to Venti Journal, SPAM zine&Press, and Algia Press. Her experimental criticism has been anthologized in Poetics for the More-Than-Human World (Spuyten Duyvil) and her peer-reviewed article appears in a print volume of Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture. Currently, she lives in Chicago where she’s undertaking a PhD in comparative literature at the University of Chicago. Born in Lima, Peru and raised mostly in Maryland, she’s of Peruvian and Swiss descent.

Farid Djamalov is a writer and art historian studying at Yale University. His research touches on queer phenomenology, Soviet nonconformism and photography. He has worked in various art institutions, including Barjeel Art Foundation (Sharjah, UAE), Christie’s (London, UK), Darling Foundry (Montreal, Canada), Gagosian Gallery (Paris, France), Garage Museum (Moscow, Russia), The Jewish Museum (New York, USA), Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven, USA). His writing appears in Border Crossings, C Magazine, and All The Russias. He is the founder of Asterisk*, an intercollegiate art history journal that aims to subvert traditional narratives.

Vania Djelani completed her BFA in Art History & Studio Arts at Concordia University. As a writer and researcher based in Tiohtiá:ke, or Montreal, she is interested in the way materiality can be manipulated to construct a sense of identity— in exploring subjects like race, class and gender. Further informed by studies around material culture, she examines how objects can play a central role in understanding culture and social relations.

Joia Duskic is an emerging scholar based in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal from Montenegrin and Italian origin. She is currently transitioning from her BFA in Art History (2021) to her MA in Art History (2023) at Concordia University. Her summer is spent researching the ephemeral programming of La Place Publique Permanente for La Fonderie Darling as part of an internship directed by Concordia University. As she wishes to pursue her research on urban public art during her master’s degree, this residency seems like the perfect opportunity to see her subject in a new light.

Austin Henderson is an emerging writer, visual artist, and cultural worker based in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal, with roots in Oshawa, Ontario. He holds an MA in Art History from Concordia University (2020) and a BFA in Visual Art from Queen’s University in Katarokwi/Kingston (2018). Austin has studied internationally at the New York Academy of Art in New York City and the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. He currently serves as the Communications and Events Coordinator at the Museum of Jewish Montreal. Austin’s research and artistic practice investigate the intersections of film, fashion, popular culture, and queer politics. His writing has appeared in esse arts + opinions.

Cindy Hill is a Canadian visual artist and writer. She holds a BFA in Studio Arts from Concordia University. Her work explores themes of desire, sexuality, gender, ecofeminism, and bodily autonomy. Her writing has recently appeared in Esse. In 2018 she completed a residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. She was recently an artist-in-residence at the London Summer Intensive hosted by the Camden Arts Center and the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL in London (UK). Recent exhibitions include Wick Gallery in Brooklyn (NY) and Calaboose, Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montréal. She currently lives and works in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montréal.

Caroline Ellen Liou is somewhat in-between an artist, art historian, and curator, currently based in Los Angeles. She received a BFA in painting at the Rhode Island School of Design, USA in 2014 and an MA in contemporary Chinese art and geopolitics at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London in 2017. Afterwards, she studied Curating at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Italy in 2018, which awarded her a curatorial fellowship from 2018-2019. As an Asian-American, she is interested in how art can often metabolize the Other through appropriation, recontextualization, and consumption. She is hoping to apply to a doctoral program this upcoming year, using the lens of Asian-American to explore how difference is framed in contemporary art.

Christiana Myers is a curator, writer, museum educator, instructor, and artist living in Menagoesg (Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada). She holds a BFA from Mount Allison University and a MLitt Curatorial Practice from the Glasgow School of Art. She has undertaken curatorial projects in Atlantic Canada, Montreal, Finland, and Scotland, and worked for organizations including La Centrale, the New Brunswick Museum, Third Space, the Hunterian Art Gallery, and Glasgow International. In 2018, she was selected as Canadian Art’s winter editorial resident. Her recent arts writing on disability and access in the arts and environmental classism have appeared in C Magazine and publications produced by The Banff Centre and Goose Lane Editions.

Joseph Omoh Ndukwu is a writer and editor. He has work published or forthcoming in Guernica, the Prairie Schooner, A Long House, Off Assignment, The Sole Adventurer Art Magazine, Rele Gallery’s Book of Young Contemporary Artists, and elsewhere. He lives in Lagos, Nigeria.

Aya Nimer is a Program Associate at Pillars Fund, where she works on programming that advances Pillars’ mission of changing the narrative around Muslims in the US. Alongside Pillars, Aya works at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago coordinating the development of strategic planning, budgeting, and exhibition production. She has a Masters in Humanities and a Bachelor’s in Philosophy from the University of Chicago.

Erin F. O’Leary is a writer, editor, and photographer from the Midwest and raised in Maine. A graduate of Bard College, she has lived in Los Angeles since 2018, where she writes about photography and image culture. Her work has appeared in CARLA, Photograph, and Momus, among other publications.

Diana SeoHyung is a New York based writer and translator. Her writing has appeared in Art in America, The Brooklyn Rail, and others. She is an immigrant, born in Seoul, South Korea, raised in Queens, New York, and is a mother of a six-year-old called Mark.

Leanne Petersen a writer and independent curator from London, England currently based in New York. Her writing has been published online and in print for publications including Frieze, Ala Champ Magazine, the Voice, and the Metro Newspaper UK.  In 2019 she completed her MA Art History whilst working full time as part of the curatorial team at the non-profit organisation Autograph, ABP (formerly the Association of Black Photographers). Here she was engaged in conversations that ignited her interest in the viability of a transatlantic presence, and the visibility of Afro-European visual artists in the USA.

Ashley Raghubir is a Trinidad-born researcher and writer based in Tkaronto/Toronto. She is currently pursuing a PhD in art history at the University of Toronto whose research centres contemporary Black diasporic artistic practices. She has contributed writing to C Magazine.

Kamayani Sharma is an independent writer, researcher, and podcaster. A former text editor for the quarterly ART India, for which she continues to be Delhi correspondent, she contributes to Artforum, Aperture, Frieze, Art Asia Pacific, and The White Review. Her critical writing has been recognized by the Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation and the Serendipity Arts Foundation. She was a finalist for the International Awards for Art Criticism 2020 and is a Kalpalata Fellow in Visual Culture Writing 2022. Sharma runs ARTalaap, South Asia’s first independent visual culture podcast.

Arushi Vats is a curator and writer pursuing a PhD in History of Art at University of Cambridge. She is the recipient of the Momus / Eyebeam Critical Writing Fellowship 2021 and the Art Scribes Award 2021. She was a member of the curatorial panel for Kochi Muziris Students’ Biennale 2022. She serves as Associate Editor for Fiction at Alternative South Asia Photography Connect, and is a member of the editorial panel for Cambridge Journal of Visual Culture.

Danielle Wu is a writer and curator based in Brooklyn, New York. Her reviews can be found in Art in America, Artforum, and The Offing. In 2019, she curated “Ghost in the Ghost” at Tiger Strikes Asteroid, New York, with Anne Anlin Cheng. She is currently working on an exhibition of a collection by Godzilla artist Arlan Huang and an anthology about gardens with Chanelle Adams.

Joy Xiang is a writer, arts worker, sometimes poet, ecstatic dancer, pansexual femme, and perpetually bourgeoning human born in Shanghai and based in Tkaronto/Toronto. Her work engages desire, migration, material flows, and media nostalgia and futurity. She prioritizes learning ways of being together in complication and intimacy. Her first zine cold blood (2017) used cold-blooded creatures as a metaphor for creative and survival-focused adaptation strategies. She has edited for Milkweed erotic zine, re:asian, and Canadian Art; written for Mercer Union, Ada X, and Hamilton Artists Inc.; and held positions at Vtape and Blackwood Gallery. She is a member of the intergenerational feminist working group EMILIA-AMALIA.

Yang Qing Qing Yu is an artist, designer, and writer based in Nanjing and Tkaronto/Toronto, currently a fourth year student in University of Toronto double majoring in architectural and visual studies. She is working on a catalogue essay.

Chelsea Yuill is a curator and textile artist. Yuill’s textile practice explores symbolism, childhood nostalgia and cheap glamour. She received a BFA from Emily Carr University (2019). Yuill is the Assistant Curator at Capture Photography Festival. Recently, her curatorial and writing practice reflects upon perception, representation, memory, and the consumption of images. Yuill is a white settler of Scottish, Dutch and Welsh ancestry based on the unceded and traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh Nations (Vancouver).

Jacob Zhicheng Zhang lives, reads, and writes in Berlin, Germany. His writings and translations (CHI-ENG) have appeared in Berlin Art Link, THE SEEN, The Art Newspaper China, and LEAP among others. Additional writings of his can be found in publications by the Art Institute of Chicago, Synoptique, and UCCA Center for Contemporary Art. Aside from researching Sinophone (moving) images and performances, Jacob is concerned with labor relations in institutional settings. He holds an MA in Modern and Contemporary Art History from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA in Art and Chemistry from Colby College.