Dates

September 21 to December 1, 2019

Curatorial Statement

Shorelines resist conventional mapping. Ever-shifting and fractal, they have no well-defined perimeter and evade attempts at quantification. The shoreline dilemma (also called the “coastline paradox”) implies the breakdown of scientific conventions in the face of nature’s complexities. In Toronto, this dilemma has been amplified by the radical reshaping of the city’s waterfront, which calls into question the rights of land and water in light of accelerated development.

The implications of the changing shoreline—evidence of an increasingly anthropocentric world—prompted us to ask invited artists: What does it mean to be in relation?

Human and non-human relations can reaffirm connections and generate ecosystems, but they can also breed distrust, anxiety, and alienation. When rational systems fail, other knowledges and relations emerge. At stake is the responsibility to respect multiple subjectivities and diverse conceptions of freedom, dignity, and sovereignty for living creatures, land, and water, as reflected by the rich perspectives and histories in the Exhibition’s artworks.

Toronto’s inaugural Biennial embraces the unquantifiable, fugitive, and unknowable, and like the shoreline, resists the systems that seek to discipline and control.

Curated by Candice Hopkins & Tairone Bastien

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Water, Kinship, Belief

Edited by Tairone Bastien, Candice Hopkins, and Katie Lawson. Co-published by the Toronto Biennial of Art and Art Metropole.

In relation to the 2019 and 2022 Biennial exhibitions, this publication is a place where the continuities, resonances, and dissonances between editions are made evident. Water, Kinship, Belief is a means to bring the artists, artworks, collaborators, and ideas that have informed the exhibitions together, irrespective of chronology and part of a greater whole. Through its content and unique design, this publication is both a generative guide to the exhibitions and a Biennial site of its own that creates new artistic relations through text and images that course through the book like tributaries.

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2019 Visitor Guide

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2019 Evaluation Report

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Exhibitions

Exhibition Sites Overview

The inaugural 2019 Toronto Biennial of Art featured over 20 new commissions and more than 100 works of art by Canadian, Indigenous, and international artists.

For a comprehensive list of all artworks in the 2019 Toronto Biennial of Art, click HERE.

259 Lake Shore Blvd East

Art Gallery of Ontario (2019)

Art Gallery of York University (AGYU)

Art Museum at the University of Toronto

Harbourfront Centre

Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto (2019)

Ontario Place - Cinesphere

Ontario Place - Marina

Riverdale Park West

Ryerson Image Centre

Small Arms Inspection Building (2019)

The Port Lands

The Power Plant

Toronto Sculpture Garden (2019)

Union Station (2019)

Programs

Programs Overview

Led by Ilana Shamoon and co-curated by Clare Butcher and Myung-Sun Kim, the five programming streams—Co-Relations, Currents, Storytelling, Tools for Learning, and the Toronto Biennial of Art Residency—activated the two main Exhibition sites, 259 Lake Shore Blvd E and the Small Arms Inspection Building, and also connected with projects around the city. Through storytelling, conversations, performative interventions, workshops, and readings, Programs invited visitors to gather and learn together in responsive and engaging formats along the water’s edge and beyond.

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Co-Relations

Currents

Performance Program: Isonomia in Toronto

Storytelling

TBA Residency

Tools for Learning

Donors: 2019-2022 Our Team: 2019-2022