2024 Biennial

For the third edition of the Toronto Biennial of Art (TBA), titled Precarious Joys, we have been immersed in dialogues and active listening, a crucial element in our curatorial journey traversing national and international landscapes, numerous artist studios, and art encounters in Toronto, throughout Canada, and beyond. Our interactions have traced connections between artistic creations reflecting social and ecological imperatives, resulting in us identifying key directives drawn from the artists’ endeavours: “Joy,” “Precarious,” “Home,” “Polyphony,” “Solace,” and “Coded” are terms that encapsulate how TBA artists’ practices amplify political consciousness and reassert the power of aesthetics in shaping collective existence.

Some of the presented artworks address the various layers of history that define life in Toronto, while others reflect broader social and political structures of inequality and power under global neoliberal governance. Key issues that resonate across the exhibition include environmental justice, sovereignty, self-representation, belonging and migration, land dispossession, collective memory, feminist genealogies, diasporic sonic cultures, sacred plant wisdom, weaving as spiritual listening, resistance and resilience, ancestorship, and queer worldmaking. Rather than presenting a single theoretical assertion, however, Precarious Joys is organized around open dialogues and poetic connections. Together, these many works will conjure sparks that light a fire amidst the fragility of existence.

—Dominique Fontaine and Miguel A. López