De-Canon is a literary social practice art project that centers the works and voices of writers of color. Founded in 2017 as a “pop-up library” + social engagement project, with a mission to challenge and unsettle notions of the (western) literary canon while also questioning precepts of canonization itself, De-Canon encourages new paradigms of writing and reading. 

Through our “de-canonizing”activities, we work toward not simply an alternative canon but multiple canons that may hold space for pluralities, hybridities, and elasticities of borders and identities. 

Our latest project is A Mouth Holds Many Things—a book + exhibition project that seeks to create a space for a type of literature—a literary art—straining against and splitting the seams of its textual confinements, that spills messily across borderlines into other art domains. 

The print publication of A Mouth Holds Many Things, published in collaboration with Fonograf Editions (June, 2024), is a collection of hybrid-literary works by 36 women + nonbinary BIPOC writers whose works navigate the restless intersections of poetry, prose, visual art, moving image, sound, and other media. 

A group art exhibition for A Mouth Holds Many Things is hosted by Stelo Arts in Portland, Oregon (June 6-August 31, 2024), showcasing works from 12 of the artists in the collection.

This exploration of hybridity is also an exploration of the creative possibilities of language, extending De-Canon’s mission to encourage new modes of reading, writing, and perceiving. 

:: read more - Past Projects & History