The Aesthetic Haunt

OPEN CALL: The Aesthetic Haunt - A Study Group

Facilitated by Toleen Touq

How do the ghosts of colonialism live on in the way we make, think, and relate through art? What hidden forces shape our aesthetics, our imaginations, and our institutions—and how might we begin to identify and unlearn them?

The Aesthetic Haunt is the first thematic iteration of a study group that invites artists, writers, curators, researchers, and cultural practitioners to explore the lingering presence of coloniality in contemporary art and artistic practice. Together, we will ask how histories of violence, extraction, and empire continue to haunt the aesthetic: in materials, in methods, in relations, and in the ways we tell stories or construct forms.

Taking its name from a hauntological perspective, The Aesthetic Haunt engages with the reality that coloniality is not only historical—it is an ongoing structure and logic that continues to dominate, order, and infiltrate. Among other insidious ways, in artistic practice it appears in aesthetic conventions and in the power structures that determine what is seen, who is heard, and how value is assigned. Yet within this haunting, there is also the possibility of rupture. We will explore liberatory forms of art-making that emerge from everyday life, from collective refusal, from spiritual practice, and from deeply personal storytelling.

The study group will meet regularly and intensively over several weeks through workshops, readings, discussions, screenings, guest talks, and collective exercises. We will examine contemporary and historical art works, exploring how colonial logics have shaped formal artistic traditions, knowledge systems, and modes of making, and how anti-colonial, anti-capitalist and feminist practices might offer tools to reclaim time, narrative, and form. We will reflect on the role of art in a world shaped by overlapping crises—the current genocide in Palestine, forced displacement, racial capitalism, and ecological collapse—and imagine practices that nourish self-determination, resistance, and restoration.

You do not need to be an expert in theory or have formal training in art. We welcome participants from all disciplines and backgrounds who are curious, committed to deep listening, and ready to engage in critical and thoughtful dialogue. The Aesthetic Haunt is an experimental and collective exercise in deep inquiry and analysis, exploring the often unseen or unsaid within artistic practice today through a sense of responsibility to history, community, and transformation. We will approach art not only as a finished product but as a relational, living process, and we will learn with and from each other, creating a space of shared inquiry and curiosity.

The sessions will take place on Saturdays, Mondays, and Wednesdays starting on Saturday 17 May and ending on Monday 2 June. Saturday sessions will be from 11am – 4pm. Monday and Wednesday sessions from 6pm– 9pm . 

Applications are due by 30 April. and it's necessary to attend all sessions or at least 6 of the 8 study group sessions.

Toleen Touq is a curator and educator working between Toronto, Canada, and Amman, Jordan. She is a co-founding director of Spring Sessions (2014–ongoing), an experiential arts residency and learning programme in Amman. She co-founded and co-curated The River Has Two Banks (2012–2017), a multidisciplinary artistic platform that addressed the historical, political, and spatial relations between Jordan and Palestine. From 2018 to 2022, she was artistic director of SAVAC, a nomadic artist-run centre in Toronto, where she curated numerous exhibitions and spearheaded the pedagogical and research platform Missed Connections and the food sovereignty initiative Ishtar’s International Network of Feral Gardens. She co-curates wave~form~projects, a collaborative initiative that studies intimate and relational curatorial practice. Recent projects include Notations for Living, a series of listening sessions at Darat Al-Funun (Amman), the triennial GTA24 at MOCA (Toronto), and film programming at Images Festival (Toronto). Her writings have been published with Ibraaz, Sternberg Press, A Prior, Manifesta Journal, and others.