Annie Canto
Artist of the Month
Annie Canto is an artist and educator working on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil Waututh people. In 2020, she graduated from Emily Carr University of Art and Design with a Master's in Fine Arts emphasizing research in socially engaged art, critical race theory, and engaged pedagogy. Working with performance, text, comics, and food she facilitates participation in communal spaces to acknowledge the complexities of the other and question the overarching systems that govern our relationships. In her current work, Annie is exploring collaborative writing and hosting practices as strategies for community organizing. She works in collective publishing models like the zine, and explores prose, poetry, and visual print aesthetics as methods to call-in and call-out through self-publication. She is active in her creative community as a board member of the Vancouver Artist Labour Union Cooperative, a unionized workers co-operative with a mission to transform labour practices within the arts and cultural sector. She is an avid cook, reads comics with her cat, and is trying to figure out new ways to safely go out and dance.
Annie Canto wrote a poem about her day from a myopic point of view - not leaving her apartment. Her day was filled with things that may have been there all along, but never before caught her attention. She wrote and rewrote the poem every day for 17 days, beautifully handwritten, on paper, one day on top of the other, as if her days in quarantine were also stacking themselves, on top of the other. Ultimately the poem, superimposed 17 times, became a visual art piece as much, or even more so than pure poetry.
You watch a wasp on the screen and you don’t have to go anywhere
You watch your neighbors exercise on the balcony
You get to order take out because it’s Friday, you’ve budgeted, and it’s difficult to find a present moment with your partner when your lives have been shoved up next to each other
in every thought, in every todo.
You don’t know where to find them.
You learn to crochet again and stitch noise into blankets, camisoles, and hats—the noise of construction, the noise of one or two cars, the noise of your roommate’s vacuum.
You tell your friend she’s selfish for asking to help her move.
You interrupt your mom to get off the phone because the line at the post office is starting to dwindle.
You tell yourself that you can sit alone—you have trained yourself to rely on others to feel productive, to feel entertained, to feel solid.
You look at the corners of skin around your toe nails, dry from walking with no shoes.
You look at the dog and cat hair dusted on your stretchy pants.
You look at beige and grey residue that circles the gas element on the popular burner.
You wonder how you came to like oatmeal over congi.
You hope no one calls.
You wish anyone would call.
You think about laying on hot sand.
You think about dunking your hair in cold water.
You think about eating homemade ice cream from a plastic cup.
You think about how long it takes to take a shower. To wash work clothes.
To roast chili peppers.
To walk to the liquor store.
To put the kettle on.
To watch a rerun.
To incubate pneumonia.
To induce labour.
To wire money.
To check-in on your dad.
To make a sweater.
To eat a well-made sandwich.
To talk to your high school friend on the phone.
To write a cover letter.
To write a proposal.
To write a thank you note.
To talk to your partner about getting a new job.
To talk to your partner about the series of wrong choices they made to reach this settled trajectory, an immovable future.
You wait for your nail to grow
For the mail to come
For the feedback to die down on your friend’s video chat
My street has maple trees. When it’s spring the leaves are green not red so nobody walks by. They prefer cherry blossoms this time of year.
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It’s 3pm and I cleaned the litter box I’m in a writing group
I apologized via text
I ordered shampoo online
I cancelled my credit card
I called the employment insurance office four times I went outside
I applied to a teach kids
I did 110 crunches on Monday
I soaked 2 1⁄2 cups of beans
I edited an illustration
I confronted my friend about missing meetings
I ate 1680 calories
I closed my eyes in the sun
I washed my feet in hot water with soap
I repierced my ear
I walked through a spider web
I bought better toothpaste
I stretched when my back hurt
I poured water into dirt
I didn’t think any of this would resurface. I didn’t think any of this would resurface. This is nothing new.