Instagram story viewer> @silverfish.digital> Posts

Silverfish

@silverfish.digital

1.5K

followers

258

following

toronto-based contemporary arts platform dedicated to interdisciplinary collaboration

POSTS STORIES REELS TAGGED

Introducing Cassandra and Andrew, our third and final pair of Silverfish business execs 👩‍💼🧑‍💼 During our workshop program they have been thinking about corporate citizenship, the business of performing identity in the workplace, and evil crossdressers 🗂️💼😉💅🪪

Cassandra Spencer writes fiction. Her short stories typically focus on trans women who lie to themselves, make bad choices, and scramble to survive in the violent machinery of modern life. As part of this year’s workshop, Cassandra is exploring how professional environments demand, coerce, and enable the performance of gender and sexuality and the psychological effects it has on people. She currently lives and works in Toronto.

Andrew Donnelly (he/she/they) is a queer practice-based researcher living in Tkaronto, working across photography, image transfer and mixed-media practices. They hold a BFA in Image Arts Photography from Toronto Metropolitan University. Their work investigates perception and individual consciousness as structured by forces outside of the self, questioning ideological frameworks that condition the conscious and subconscious. Grounded in photographic processes but materially expansive, they construct layered, often sculptural works using acrylic sheets, acrylic gel image transfers, charcoal and other materials. by @silverfish.digital

49

5

2 days ago

Continuing with our Silverfish Business Partner introductions 🤝🤝🤝 Say hello to Elaine and Tyler, who are working hard at Silverfish HQ this year to explore their shared affinity for the language of bureaucratic bullshit 📋💼🗄️👩‍💼👨‍💼

Elaine Lee is a Chinese Canadian writer living in Toronto. She holds an MA in English in the Field of Creative Writing from the University of Toronto, where she was awarded the E. J. Pratt Award in Poetry and the Norma Epstein National Award in Creative Writing. Her work can be found in Room Magazine, Event Magazine, the Literary Review of Canada, among others.

Tyler Cunningham is a performance artist interested in queering institutionalized spaces/languages. He has been supported by Fulbright, the Goethe Institute, some squirrels I met, the Stuttgart Kulturamt, grandma, and by the medication that he sometimes forgets to take (like today). He was an artist-in-resident at LOD muziektheater, your dreams, Critical Mass Centre, your desires, and at Buddies in Bad Times. Currently an artist-in-residence at Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, he was the first artist ever to say the sentence “a big banana on my head, oh; nepotism alert everyone climb inside the giant glass of depression juice, GIOVANNI!”. He is currently by @silverfish.digital

68

4

11 days ago

Introducing our first writer/artist pair of Silverfish Business Partners: Pranya and Jasmine 🏙️👩‍💼📎 These two have been thinking together about the architecture of business, techno-capitalism, and the paradoxical relationship between pleasure and work 💼

Hailing from New Delhi, Pranya is a Toronto-based writer and multidisciplinary artist (they are trying out all of them to decisively conclude which one is the best one). They hold an MA from OCAD University. Forever drawn to the abject, they write of bodily emissions, (in)fidelity, and unattainable truths regarding the (im)mortality of trees. This features in autotheory for Sinister Wisdom, everyoneisagirl, Piss Press and NeMLA, but most exhaustively in “The Elastic Self”, their manifesto on Fembots proposing a radical eco-lesbian alternative. As a founding member of the Fibre Arts Collective, they create accessible programming for aspiring textile artists.

Jasmine Yangqingqing Yu is an artist and writer based in Nanjing and Toronto. With her interest in architecture, Jasmine interrogates facades and implied spaces, their poetics and hermeneutics, and anticipates their improper interactions, leakages, and glitches, evoking underlying links and alternative modes of cohabitation. by @silverfish.digital

91

9

16 days ago

Last night we celebrated the end of Q3 with a workshop led by Luis Jacob @towardsatheory, responding to his anthology Commerce by Artists (Art Metropole, 2011). Luis, we loved reading and talking and thinking alongside you about what it means for artists to “do” commerce 🛍️📋📈💗

Thank you also to @artmetropole for their contributions to the Silverfish Business Library 📚 by @silverfish.digital

87

1

19 days ago

We are proud to welcome the incoming group of dynamic leaders taking part in the Silverfish Business Incubator 👔📎📁These innovators will spend the fall working with us in our offices in the heart of Toronto’s Financial District 🏦💰🤑We’re excited to introduce this new cohort over the next few weeks as we work toward Silverfish Issue 004. We’ll circle back with more information about each of their practices and research interests soon 🗄️📈📉💼 taken in Commerce Court by @silverfish.digital

222

14

a month ago

Ring ring….. You’re in luck! We’re extending our open call deadline ☎️ Submit your applications for Silverfish’s Artist and Writer Program in by Friday, July 10 👔

Read the full call at the link in our bio 🔗

Silverfish’s Artist and Writer Program pairs emerging Toronto-based artists and writers to produce new work through interdisciplinary collaboration. Selected participants will develop their practices through reading groups, critiques, peer editing, lateral skill-sharing, and collective making. Participants will have the opportunity to host public workshops in their chosen medium, present their work in an exhibition in early 2027, and be published in the fourth edition of Silverfish’s print publication. Workshops will take place in-person in Toronto on Tuesdays from 6:00-8:00pm, from mid-September to mid-November, 2026.

This year’s program is all about Business. We are seeking artists and writers whose work engages diverse interpretations of this theme, including but not limited to the aesthetics of Business (business casual, suit-and-tie, office hoes and CEOs), the language of Business (marketing copy, advertising lingo, doublespeak, HR talk, legalese), Business that’s not legitimized as Business (domestic labour, sex work), and actions that disrupt Business (strikes, boycotts, underground economies, alternative systems of value and exchange).

In a moment marked by the ongoing professionalization of the artist and external pressure to prove the economic viability for the arts writ large, we are seeking anti-profiteers, scammers, failed girl/boy/they-bosses, hustlers, office sirens, and individuals of unpaid intern experience to think with us about what it means to be a parasite inside the body of capitalism. by @silverfish.digital

110

2

4 months ago

SHUT THE F UP!!! 📞👔📉🚨🏙️💥

With just over a week left to submit your application to Silverfish’s 2026 Artist and Writer Program: Business, we’re taking a moment to 🤝introduce🤝 Silverfish Editors Cason Sharpe and Dallas Fellini, who will facilitate this year’s workshop program.

Cason Sharpe is a writer currently based in Toronto. His writing, a mix of fiction, criticism, and non-fiction, focuses on camp and queerness in the urban environment. His writing has appeared in Canadian Art, C Magazine, Public Parking, In The Mood Magazine, BRICK, and Toronto Review, among others. His first collection of stories, Our Lady of Perpetual Realness, was published by Metatron Press in 2017. Named a Queer Writer to Watch by THIS Magazine, Cason has presented work at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Museum of Contemporary Art, FADO Performance Inc., the Vancouver Art Book Fair, the Prairie Art Book Fair, and the Hamilton Film Festival.

Dallas Fellini is a curator, writer, and artist living and working on Treaty 13 territory (Toronto). Their research is situated at the intersection of trans studies and archival studies. Dallas has curated and co-curated exhibitions and screenings for Art Metropole, the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, the Art Gallery of Guelph, Libby Leshgold Gallery, Gallery 44, InterAccess, and Vtape, amongst others. Their writing and criticism has been published in publications including The Brooklyn Rail, Canadian Art, C Magazine, Art Documentation, The Journal of Curatorial Studies, and Cornelia Magazine. Dallas is the recipient of the 2024 Middlebrook Prize for Young Canadian Curators. They are currently Director of Programs at Art Metropole.

📸 by @tessdavey by @silverfish.digital

584

43

4 months ago

👔🔗 Read the full call at the link in our bio. Please note that our deadline has been extended to July 10!

After a short hiatus, Silverfish is ready to get back down to Business.

In a moment marked by the ongoing professionalization of the artist and external pressure to prove the economic viability for the arts writ large, we are seeking anti-profiteers, scammers, failed girl/boy/they-bosses, hustlers, office sirens, and individuals of unpaid intern experience to think with us about what it means to be a parasite inside the body of capitalism.

We are soliciting applications from emerging Toronto-based artists and writers to participate in the fourth edition of Silverfish’s Artist and Writer Program. This year’s program is all about Business.

When we think about Business, we think about the drab monotony of labour that invests in the oppressive conditions of racial capitalism. We think about the rising cost of living, profit-over-people politics, the relationship between value and labour, and labour conditions that disproportionately marginalize BIPOC, 2SLGBTQ+, and other equity-deserving communities.

We are seeking artists and writers whose work engages diverse interpretations of this theme, including but not limited to the aesthetics of Business (business casual, suit-and-tie, office hoes and CEOs), the language of Business (marketing copy, advertising lingo, doublespeak, HR talk, legalese), Business that’s not legitimized as Business (domestic labour, sex work), and actions that disrupt Business (strikes, boycotts, underground economies, alternative systems of value and exchange).

Silverfish’s Artist and Writer Program pairs emerging Toronto-based artists and writers to produce new work through interdisciplinary collaboration. Selected participants will develop their practices through reading groups, critiques, peer editing, lateral skill-sharing, and collective making. Participants will have the opportunity to present their work in an exhibition in early 2027 and be published in Silverfish’s print publication. Workshops will take place in-person in Toronto on Tuesdays from 6:00-8:00pm, from mid-September to mid-November, 2026. by @silverfish.digital

249

6

5 months ago

Edge Theory is dazzling and delicious – but don’t just take our word for it 😜

Immense thank you to Ami and Jess for your kind testimonials 🤍

Order your copy of Edge Theory today – you know where the link is by @silverfish.digital

71

3

a year ago

Thank you to everyone who came out to the launch of Edge Theory yesterday 🤩🩵🌀 If you missed it, you can still get your hands on a copy at the link in our bio 🔗 by @silverfish.digital

81

1

a year ago

Please join us on Sunday April 27 from 3–5 PM at Art Metropole for the launch of Edge Theory, the newest publication from Silverfish. We’re so excited to celebrate the launch of this sexy and smart publication with a reception, conversation, and reading from artists Darian Razdar and Alicia Nauta!

You can still secure your copy of Edge Theory (at an exclusive pre-order price) through the link in our bio!

✴️
In Edge Theory, Darian Razdar examines the slippery chasm between self and other. Contaminating theory with poetry and vice-versa, this brief and sexy treatise unspools the ever-shifting nature of relationality through a prism of intertextual references, tautologies, double-negations, and double-entendres. Accompanied by eclectic artwork by Alicia Nauta, Edge Theory is a cerebral and sensual exploration of the contours of desire.

🖇️
Graphic by Tess Davey taken in Art Metropole by @silverfish.digital

120

4

2 years ago

ANNOUNCING EDGE THEORY: A NEW PUBLICATION FROM SILVERFISH

Silverfish is ecstatic to announce the launch of Edge Theory, a new collaborative artists’ book featuring writing from Darian Razdar and artwork from Alicia Nauta. The publication can be pre-ordered through the link in our bio 🔗

In Edge Theory, Darian Razdar examines the slippery chasm between self and other. Contaminating theory with poetry and vice-versa, this brief and sexy treatise unspools the ever-shifting nature of relationality through a prism of intertextual references, tautologies, double-negations, and double-entendres. Accompanied by eclectic artwork by Alicia Nauta, Edge Theory is a cerebral and sensual exploration of the contours of desire.

The release of Edge Theory will be celebrated with a launch event at @artmetropole in Toronto on Sunday April 27, 2025 from 3:00-5:00 PM.

—
Darian Razdar is a writer, artist, and independent scholar. His practice is embodied, ecological, collaborative, and research-intensive – often working with the mediums of poetry, image, textile, and print.

Alicia Nauta is an artist publisher based in Tkaronto/Toronto. Much of her work serves as speculative windows to explore possible worlds; drawing inspiration from the natural world, dreams, myth, ancient history and sci fi. Her collages are created from an archive of photocopied images from books found in thrift stores and libraries. by @silverfish.digital

293

12

2 years ago