Momus Emerging Critics Residency

Osei Bonsu is a British-Ghanaian curator, critic and art historian based in London and Paris. His activities encompass exhibition programming, publishing and cultural strategy in the field of visual arts. He has developed projects focused on transnational histories of art, collaborating with museums, galleries and private collections internationally. In 2017, he curated the 10th edition of Satellites, an exhibition co-commissioned by Jeu de Paume and CAPC: Centre for Contemporary Art, Bordeaux. He has also worked on the development of a number of projects focusing on African art, including ‘Pangaea II: New Art from Africa and Latin America’ (Saatchi Gallery, 2015) and 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair (2013-14). He holds a Masters in History of Art from University College London, where he earned a distinction for his dissertation on Surrealism and African sculpture. Bonsu is a contributing editor at frieze magazine.

Daisy Desrosiers is the inaugural Director of Artist Programs at the Lunder Institute for American Art at Colby College. She is an interdisciplinary art historian and independent curator. Her thesis concerns the cultural, post-colonial, and material implications of the use of sugar in contemporary art. In 2018, she was the inaugural recipient of the Nicholas Fox Weber curatorial fellowship, affiliated with the Glucksman Museum (Cork, Ireland), as well as a curatorial fellow-in-residence at Art in General (Brooklyn, NY)

Rahel Aima is a freelance writer and editor based in Brooklyn. Her writing has appeared in 4Columns, Art Asia Pacific, Artforum, Art in America, Artnet, ArtReview, ArtReview Asia, Atlantic, Bandcamp, Bidoun, Bookforum, Brownbook, Canvas, Creators Project, Document Journal, e-flux architecture, Elephant, Foam, Frame, Frieze, Harper’s Bazaar Art Arabia, Ibraaz, 艺术界 LEAP, Mark, Momus, Mousse, New Inquiry, New Republic, Red Hook Journal, Real Life, Tank, Vogue Arabia, and World Policy Journal, among others. Aima grew up in Dubai and graduated from Columbia University in 2010 with a degree in Anthropology; she has previously lived in Kochi, Lisbon, and Venice. Aima is currently Special Projects Editor at New Inquiry, a correspondent at Art Review Asia, a Contributing Editor at Momus, and was formerly the founding Editor in Chief of THE STATE. Aima is a recipient of a 2018 Creative Capital Arts Writers Grant in the shortforum category, and has been profiled in Elle India and New York Magazine.

Saelan Twerdy is a Montreal-based writer and editor and a PhD candidate in Art History at McGill University. He is currently the Managing Editor of RACAR, the official journal of the Universities Art Association of Canada. Since 2014, he has been a contributing editor at Momus, and his writing has appeared in venues such as Canadian Art, Esse, C magazine, Border Crossings, Blackflash, and The New Inquiry. He has also contributed to books and exhibition catalogues published by the Darling Foundry, Concordia University’s FOFA Gallery, Fogo Island Arts/Sternberg Press, and the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (now MOCA Toronto), among others.

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. His essay “Lucky Strikes” won a National Magazine Award and was published in The Best Canadian Essays of 2011 by Tightrope Books; he was shortlisted again for the National Magazine Award in 2018, in the literary longform category. He has told stories on CBC Radio, Lipstick Studios podcast, and at Raconteurs events in Toronto. As a member of the art collective CCC, he creates scripts for historically-researched site-specific audio walks. Apart from his freelance work, Mark is a senior editor at Beside, the managing editor of Research Money, and a contributing editor at Momus.

Sky Goodden is the founding Publisher and Editor of Momus (momus.ca), an international art publication and podcast that stresses “a return to art criticism.” Momus has been shortlisted for two International Awards for Art Criticism since its inauguration in 2014, and its contributors have been awarded nine Creative Capital Warhol Grants for Art Writers, and a Rabkin Foundation Award for Art Journalism. Momus published its first print compendium in 2017, which toured across Canada, the US, and Mexico. Goodden was the Artist-in-Residence at Montreal’s Concordia University in 2018-19, and holds an MFA in Criticism & Curatorial Practice from OCAD University, which awarded her with an “Alumni of Influence Award.” In 2019, she was awarded the J.E.H. MacDonald Award from the Arts & Letters Club of Toronto. Goodden has published in multiple catalogues and art books, as well as Frieze, Art in America, Modern Painters, Canadian Art, C Magazine, the National Post, and Art21. She is currently hosting Momus Emerging Critics Residencies in collaboration with Concordia University (Montreal), OCAD University (Toronto), and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, with annual scholarships provided by the former US Ambassadors to Canada, Bruce and Vicki Heyman. Goodden is building a Momus Institute in Montreal, to be launched in 2020-21.

Lauren Wetmore is a curator and writer based in Brussels. She has contributed to exhibitions, biennials, and commissions internationally including Frieze Projects (London, 2014-15); the 2013 Carnegie International (Pittsburgh, 2013); and Meeting Points 8, a biennial of art from and in the Arab World, which took place at the Beirut Art Center (Beirut, 2017), La Loge (Brussels, 2016), and the Windsor Hotel (Cairo, 2016). Her curatorial project The Conversation won the Encura curatorial residency at Fundació AAVC Hangar (Barcelona, 2015). Wetmore was short-listed for the 2016 International Awards for Art Criticism for her piece in Momus, and she has contributed to publications including Xavier Cha: abduct (MOCA Cleveland, 2015) and These Are the Tools of the Present: Beirut – Cairo (Sternberg Press, 2017). She holds a MFA in Criticism & Curatorial Practice from OCAD University (Toronto, 2011) and a BA in Art History and Gender Studies from the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, 2008).

Aliya Pabani is a Toronto-based artist and audio producer. She was host/producer of Canadaland’s arts and culture podcast, The Imposter, and her audio work has appeared on Falling Tree Productions’ Short Cuts for BBC 4, In the Dark, and NTS Radio. Her predominantly installation and performance-based art has been shown as part of Images Festival, Summerworks, the Toronto Biennial of Art and most recently in Resonant Bodies, an exhibition of sound-based works presented by Constellations, recently released in podcast form. She is co-creator of POC in Audio; an online database of hundreds of people of colour working in audio from around the world.