COImag

COI is a collaborative project by Zachary Ayotte and Christina Battle started in Edmonton in 2025.  

Zachary Ayotte is a writer and visual artist living in Treaty 6, Edmonton, AB. His work explores themes of care and maintenance and how they are juxtaposed by the temptation toward consumption, accumulation, and control. He has published multiple book projects, including I Wish U Were Here, Notes on Digging A Hole, and At the Same Time. His writing has appeared in publications like The Walrus, Culture Study, and Canadian Art.  

Christina Battle is an artist, curator, and writer based in amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton), within the Aspen Parkland: the transition zone where prairie and forest meet. Her practice focuses on thinking deeply about the concept of disaster: its complexity, and the intricacies entwined within it. She looks to disaster as a series of intersecting processes including social, environmental, cultural, political, and economic, which are implicated not only in how disaster is caused but also in how it manifests, is responded to, and overcome. Battle’s practice prioritizes collaboration, experimentation, and failure; she has exhibited internationally in festivals and galleries as both artist and curator.

  • Yaniya Lee: Writing as Witnessing

    Yaniya Lee: Writing as Witnessing

    In October of 2025, writer Yaniya Lee spent a week in Edmonton at the invitation of the Mitchell Gallery. Across her week here, she spent time getting to know artists and the artistic community, all the while working to situate and place these Edmonton artists’ methods and approaches within larger contexts. Near the end of…

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  • Taking Care

    Taking Care

    Since the beginning of our friendship, we have exchanged emails—long, meandering emails that rarely feel conclusive and are always part of one ongoing conversation we are having about everything from art to politics to the bad streaming television we sometimes watch. When it came time to decide how best to introduce…

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  • Masthead

    Masthead COI is a publication bridging the relationship between art and culture, offering a nuanced space for understanding the current moment through the lens of artistic expression. Each season features essays that respond to or engage with artistic practice from the perspective of the Canadian Prairies. At this point, COI isn’t taking submissions. Our email:…

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  • Season One

    Season One: Contours of Identity When we started working on this project, one of the characteristics we kept emphasizing was that of place—be it the city, region, or biome that we are from. In many of our conversations, “Prairies” became the word—the catchall—for the complexity of the place we were trying to encapsulate. As the…

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  • Community Threads

    Community Threads: Community Threads has changed! Community Threads was an experiment, we wanted it to be a space for us all to engage in discussion, get to know one another better, and share thoughts and ideas. We thought of Community Threads as a sort of group chat; our idea was that, each month, we would…

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  • Subscribe

    Subscribe to COI While all content on COI is free to access online, we value the support of subscribers. COI hopes to shape a community of engaged readers — subscribers help support the work we do. Subscriptions to COI are season based, no matter when your subscription start date begins. Subscribe to support our project…

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  • Join Mailing List

    Join our mailing list! Sign up to receive the latest news and/or subscribe to support COI. COI is a publication bridging the relationship between art and culture, offering a nuanced space for understanding the current moment through the lens of artistic expression. Each season features essays that respond to or engage with artistic practice from…

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  • About

    About COI: COI is a publication bridging the relationship between art and culture, offering a nuanced space for understanding the current moment through the lens of artistic expression. Each season features essays that respond to or engage with artistic practice from the perspective of the Canadian Prairies. About our name: In the context of our…

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