Marginalia.
A journal of contemporary art

The page where the ink arrives as you read.

Marginalia is a reading surface for criticism, interviews, and the work itself. Nothing is shouted. The emphasis is drawn, one phrase at a time, the way a reader would mark a sentence worth keeping.

IssueNo. 14 — Summer
SectionPainting · Print · Paper
Reading timeAbout nine minutes
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01 — The Read

Criticism that earns its emphasis instead of borrowing it.

A magazine spends its whole life deciding what to make you notice. Marginalia hands that decision back to the sentence: the highlight is the argument's own gesture, not a layout flourish dropped on top of it.

On reserve

The body stays plain — warm paper, off-black ink, a single column kept to a comfortable measure. Restraint is the point: the eye should rest until a phrase asks it not to.

On the mark

When a passage matters, the marker draws across it once, left to right, and the words underneath turn to read against it. It happens at reading pace — never faster, never twice.

From the editor's letter
Every issue is an argument about what deserves your attention — and how little it takes to point.
— Hélène Brassard, Editor-in-chief
03 — Dispatch

The colour the journal keeps for itself.

On these pages the marker inverts — cream drawn across the blue, the words turning back to ink. Same gesture, read in negative. It marks the editorial voice apart from the work it carries.

One accent, two states

Klein blue is the only colour the interface owns. On paper it is the ink of the marker; on a blue field it becomes the reserve. The works are free to be anything.

A reading pace

Reveals fire once, when a line settles into view. Scroll back up and nothing re-performs. The page behaves like paper that remembers where you've already been.

04 — The next issue

No. 15 lands in September.

A season of paper, print and the rooms in between. Subscribers read each issue first, with the full criticism and the artists' notes. One letter a month, nothing else.