As part of our ongoing Conversations on Collecting series, this two-part miniseries will focus on the impacts that COVID-19 has had on artists, galleries, curators, studios and online entities operating within the complex ecosystem of the international art market in South Africa, Canada and beyond.

Join Latitudes Co-Directors Roberta Coci and Lucy MacGarry for a conversation focused on the challenges, changes and silver linings encountered over the course of the past year amidst COVID-19, and what it means to break down barriers and inequalities in the art world as the founders LATITUDES, the first platform of its kind dedicated to African art.

LATITUDES is an online platform featuring a constantly changing, curated selection of art from the African continent and the diaspora, bringing together artworks presented by galleries, curators, studios, not-for-profit and independent artists themselves.

Building on one of Griffin Art Project’s mandates to examine new currents in contemporary collecting practices, Conversations on Collecting is an ongoing series that considers the methodologies, thematics and narratives that shape collecting practices in Vancouver, Canada and beyond. This mini series is presented in collaboration with the Contemporary Art Society of Vancouver.

Join Linda Zhang, professor in the School of Interior Design at Ryerson University in Toronto ON, live over Zoom to learn about the story and process behind her recent project ChinaTOwn, a multi-player board game that prompts participants to put their heads together to negotiate what is worth including in a community space. Zhang partnered with research technology officer in Ryerson’s Library Collaboratory, Jimmy Tran, to fly drones over Toronto’s Chinatown, photographing 99 individual buildings and subsequently turning each one into a board-game sized model. To play the game, participants must select only 12 of the 99 buildings to include in their hand-picked Chinatown. Centred on questions of heritage preservation within the community, ChinaTOwn asks players to have a conversation about what is important to them and the future of their community, a topic that is relevant now more than ever as Chinatown’s across the country face unprecedented challenges and change.