We are proud to present the second edition of TBA’s Curatorial Fellowship Program, made possible with the generous support of TD Bank Group through the TD Ready Commitment. The program offers an experimental and collaborative process through which emerging curators cultivate personal curatorial methodologies, and realize a substantial curatorial project within the framework of the 2024 Toronto Biennial of Art. Conceived as a reciprocal mentorship model, TBA’s Fellows engage, teach, and learn with artists, Biennial staff, and fellow culture workers, as well as connect with local, national and international audiences. TBA has conceived of two roles for the Exhibition and Programs teams respectively: 2024 Curators Dominique Fontaine and Miguel A. López selected Nima Esmailpour as the Exhibition Curatorial Fellow, while Programs Curatorial Fellow Sarah Edo was selected to develop public programs alongside TBA Programs Curator Jenn Goodwin.

As TBA’s Programs Curatorial Fellow, Sarah Edo shares a timely and poignant program entitled Notes on Belonging: An Adaptation. In Sarah’s own words: 

“Critically acclaimed director, playwright and scholar Jaye Austin Williams introduces a live stage adaptation of Toronto-based poet Dionne Brand’s renowned non-fiction book, ‘A Map to the Door of No Return’ published in 2001. Adapted and directed by Austin Williams with excerpts from Brand’s book, this program is staged as a ‘concert recitation:’ an intimate performance and dramatized reading by three local actors.

Held within 2024 Biennial artist Charles Campbell’s installation, How many colours has the sea, the program will highlight overlapping themes between Campbell’s work and Brand’s groundbreaking book, which both anchor the ocean and sea as sites of contemplation on Black being, ancestral memory, rupture, and mourning. While this adaptation contains excerpts from Brand’s book, it is not meant as a substitute and is instead offered as a visceral “tasting” by way of reframing passages from the book in a theatrical space, allowing for new and different interpretations. This performance explores the legacy that “A Map to the Door of No Return” created in articulating Black contemporary life in Canada, but also an incredible expansion and reimagining of Brand’s breathtaking and ruminative literary work through visual and performance art.”

Nima Esmailpour, TBA’s Exhibitions Fellow, has curated the presentation of artist Morehshin Allahyari for the third edition of TBA. Nima writes:

“Along with the key directives of the Toronto Biennial of Art, Iranian Kurdish artist Morehshin Allahyari, represents Kabous, the Right Witness and the Left Witness, a VR installation from her long-term project She Who Sees the Unknown. The parallels are drawn by reflecting on the joyous act of embracing the monstrosity of jinn figures by the artist, employed in the process of “re-figuring” myths against our precarious historical backdrop. For her, reclaiming history through “re-figuration” involves reinventing material forms while preserving the immaterial, achieved through three stages: decolonial exploration, digital fabrication, and queer fabulation.

The eponymous figure in the work, Kabous (which literally translates to “nightmare” in Farsi) is a jinn that is known to bring sleep paralysis and night terror to humans during their sleep. Resonating with this precarious encounter with Kabous, the installation being presented at the biennial calls in the viewer to immerse in the dream space of the artist through VR. The ocular experience invokes an analogy between the jinn as a “dividing persona” and the paralysis caused by technological devices such as VR as a possessive medium in conveying meaning through vision.”