Events

Recommended for participants age 15+

Jatiwangi art Factory (JaF) is an Indonesian artistic collective of over fifty multimedia artists, musicians, and curators whose artistic practice emphasizes local rural life in relation to land and the terracotta industry in the Jatiwangi District of Indonesia.

JaF members Muhammad Pipin Kaspin and Tedi Nurmanto are also part of a terracotta ensemble called Lair. Join them to create flutes and percussion instruments out of clay before coming together to create beautiful music. Get ready for an afternoon of experimentation and collaboration.

We encourage participation from people who are actively engaged in local community building and musicians of all levels. Participants should be open to collaboration and experimentation. This workshop will serve as a social gathering space, prioritizing process over product.

This program will take place March 14-18, 2022 from 2–5pm daily.

Sound of Clay is a part of The Shape of Sound, a curatorial project organized by Sebastian De Line as a part of the 2022 Curatorial Fellowship program, made possible by the generous support of TD Bank Group through the TD Ready Commitment, and made in partnership with the Gardiner Museum.

Aki Onda has channelled the spirit of the late Korean artist Nam June Paik via radio transmission in Nam June’s Spirit Was Speaking to Me (2017/2021). Paik is known for his association with shamanism, a practice that consistently surfaces in his works. With a portable radio in hand, Onda communicates with his spirit from a distance—collecting field recordings of cryptic broadcasts and messages on anonymous radio stations. The series of séances has been conducted in different cities across the globe, beginning in Seoul, Korea in 2010 and continuing in Cologne, Germany in 2012, Wrocław, Poland in 2013, and Lewisburg, United States in 2014. This work was originally commissioned by documenta 14’s radio program Every Time A Ear di Soun in 2017.

From March 26 to June 5, 2022, Aki Onda will present Nam June’s Spirit Was Speaking to Me through microbroadcasting and printed matter at the Toronto Biennial of Art. Broadcasting over two frequencies (88.5 FM and 106.5 FM) that cover the exhibition site of 72 Perth Ave in Toronto, radios are placed as part of the exhibition to symbolize sound waves in the air. The audio work exists as invisible yet discrete and perceptible through the proper medium, recalling the ritual of channeling spirits. Bring your own radio to catch the frequencies.

Onda is also bringing Nam June’s Spirit Was Speaking to Me to the international radio waves in a series of international public programs. The program will play, uninterrupted and in its entirety of 50 minutes. For Onda, those broadcasts are a response to how Nam June Paik spread his ideas through TV cable networks and connected to a large number of people at a global scale.

Made possible by the generous support of The Japan Foundation.

As part of the launch of the 2022 Biennial, members of Indonesian artist collective Jatiwangi art Factory (JaF) come together for a mobile multimedia performance featuring original sound pieces and live activations. JaF’s artistic practice emphasizes local rural life in relation to land and the terracotta industry in the Jatiwangi district, Indonesia. For the people of Jatiwangi, tanah (translated loosely to English as earth, soil, or land) is an essential element that has supported lives and local ecosystems for decades. Using clay derived from the earth to fashion instruments, JaF’s ceramic music ensemble, LAIR, invites audiences to share in a collective celebration and defence of tanah in the face of state development projects that claim occupied spaces and neglect voices of communities. Inspired by the traditional obrog-obrog played each morning throughout the village of Jatisura in West Java, Indonesia to mark the beginning of Ramadan, the performance also ushers in a time of fasting, introspection, and prayer observed by many Muslim community members in Toronto.

Terrakota Route is a part of The Shape of Sound, a curatorial project organized by Sebastian De Line as a part of the 2022 Curatorial Fellowship program, made possible by the generous support of TD Bank Group through the TD Ready Commitment, and in partnership with the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts, and the Gardiner Museum.

Image credit: Jatiwangi art Factory, Terrakotta Route, March 26, 2022. Program held at Small Arms Inspection Building as part of Toronto Biennial of Art 2022. Photography: Rebecca Tisdelle-Macias.

2001-2011, kwe’é díí shighan ńt’ę́ę́, i wonder what this Key opens now? is a durational performance by artist Eric-Paul Riege responding to his immersive, mixed-media installation, a home for Her, on view at the Small Arms Inspection Building. The installation is composed of a series of looms and blankets that together form the outline of the artist’s childhood home, presented alongside weavings created by Eric-Paul with the women of his family. Dressed in intricately-designed, hand-fabricated regalia, he activates elements of the installation and the site as a whole through measured movement, interaction, and moments of stillness—a slow activation during the full opening hours of the space as visitors come and go. Rooted in Hózhó-Diné philosophy and cosmology, both the performance and the work it responds to celebrate ancestral knowledge, spirituality, and familial interconnectedness beyond boundaries of life and death.

Image credit: Eric-Paul Riege, 2001-2011, kwe’é díí shighan ńt’ę́ę́, i wonder what this Key opens now?, March 27, 2022. Program held at Small Arms Inspection Building as part of Toronto Biennial of Art 2022. Photography: Rebecca Tisdelle-Macias.

A gathering. An invitation. A speculative architecture. A sounding. A call.

In Being Future Beings, choreographer and artist Emily Johnson performs a body-based work within and in response to 2022 Biennial artist Jeffrey Gibson’s exhibition, I AM YOUR RELATIVE. The performance marks the second collaboration between the two, who previously worked together on Johnson’s The Ways We Love and The Ways We Love Better – Monumental Movement Toward Being Future Being(s), performed in and around Gibson’s installation, Because Once You Enter My House It Becomes Our House (2020) at Socrates in New York.

I AM YOUR RELATIVE is a multi-purpose installation featuring fifteen moveable stages that populate the first floor of the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto. Over the course of the exhibition, the stages are host to artists’ performances, talks, workshops, and gatherings that amplify community voices past and present and are supported through robust research, coordination, and production.

This program is co-presented by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto (MOCA) and the Toronto Biennial of Art. I AM YOUR RELATIVE (2022) is co-commissioned by MOCA and the Toronto Biennial of Art.

Image credit: Emily Johnson, Being Future Beings, March 27, 2022. Program held at the Museum of Contemporary Art as part of Toronto Biennial of Art 2022. Photography: Roxanne Fernandes.

Join us at the Small Arms Inspection Building in Mississauga for Storytelling sessions led by lwrds duniam and Nicole Markland.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Weekly Schedule
Fridays: 11am–12pm, 2–3pm, and 4–5pm
Saturdays and Sundays: 11am–12pm and 4–5pm

On from April 1st–June 5th, 2022.

American Sign Language Interpretation​
The following Storytelling Sessions at the Small Arms Inspection Building will be accompanied by an ASL–English interpreter:

• Saturday, April 23, 2022, 4-5pm.
• Saturday, May 21, 2022, 11am-12pm.

Image credit: Storytelling at the Small Arms Inspection Building with Jeffrey Gibson’s ALL FOR ONE, ONE FOR ALL, 2015. Photography by Rebecca Tisdelle-Macias.

Join us at 72 Perth Ave for Storytelling sessions led by Jeffrey Canton and Melissa Davidson.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Weekly Schedule
Fridays 11am–12pm, 2–3pm, and 6:30–7:30pm
Saturdays and Sundays from 11am–12pm and 4–5pm

On from April 1st–June 5th, 2022.

American Sign Language Interpretation
The following Storytelling Sessions at 72 Perth will be accompanied by an ASL–English interpreter:

• Friday, April 29, 2022, 6-7pm.
• Friday, May 13, 2022, 6-7pm
• Friday, May 27, 2022, 2-3pm.

Join us at Arsenal Contemporary Art Toronto for Storytelling sessions led by Emily DiCarlo.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Weekly Schedule
Fridays: 11am–12pm
Saturdays: 11am–12pm and 2–3pm

Note: For the last weekend of the 2022 Biennial, Storytelling will be available on Friday, June 3rd and Sunday, June 5th.

American Sign Language Interpretation
The following Storytelling Session at Arsenal Contemporary Art Toronto will be accompanied by an ASL–English interpreter:

• Saturday, May 21, 2022, 11am-12pm.

On from April 1st–June 5th, 2022.

In this 201 workshop, 2022 Biennial artist Syrus Marcus Ware, along with academic Giselle Dias and activist and writer Sandy Hudson, offer insights into building abolitionist communities rooted in social justice and care and future planning. With light touches into systems theory and systems change, this workshop offers practice insights for how to work to build our own MBL Freedom—free communities that have divested from carceral strategies.

On the first Saturday of each month during the Toronto Biennial of Art, Ware and fellow artists, activists and organizers gather for a hybrid series of workshops and performances that invite participants to consider the future, the stakes at present, and our collective freedoms. Drawing on prevalent concepts explored within Ware’s MBL: Freedom (on view at the Small Arms Inspection Building), participants will be led through a series of critical thinking exercises and activities that will aim to explore abolition, crip and disability justice and futures, climate change, and building futures together where we take care of each other.

Image credit: Syrus Marcus Ware with Giselle Dias and Sandy Hudson, Abolition is Love: How to Live Abolition in Everyday Life, April 2, 2022. Program held at Small Arms Inspection Building as part of Toronto Biennial of Art 2022. Photography: Roxanne Fernandes.

Join us at 5 Lower Jarvis for Storytelling sessions led by Emily DiCarlo.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Schedule:
Sundays from 11am–12pm and 2–3pm

Note: For the last week of the 2022 Biennial, Storytelling will be available at 5 Lower Jarvis on Saturday, June 4th. 

In this talk, 2022 Biennial artist Paul Pfeiffer is joined by artists Stephanie Comilang and Simon Speiser for a conversation touching upon intersecting themes within their practices, including mythology, folklore, and spiritual iconography. Pfeiffer’s Incarnator series, on view at 72 Perth Avenue as part of the Toronto Biennial of Art from March 26-June 5, examines how mass media has shaped contemporary culture and how icons can be interpreted and dissolved, drawing connections between religious worship and pop celebrity fandom. In the exhibition Piña, why is the sky blue?, on view at Gallery TPW from September 8-November 5, Comilang and Speiser present an AI assistant named Piña that has gained consciousness through an upload of customary Filipina and Ecuadorian worldviews. Taking cues from pre-colonial matriarchal lineages, Piña evokes links between ancestral knowledge and imagined futures. Collectively, the works of both exhibitions question and reflect on the evolution of human belief systems and how the technologies of today—and tomorrow—shape our interpretations of the past.

This program is co-created and co-presented with Gallery TPW.

Join us at Arsenal Contemporary Art Toronto for Storytelling sessions led by Emily DiCarlo.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Weekly Schedule
Fridays: 11am–12pm
Saturdays: 11am–12pm and 2–3pm

Note: For the last weekend of the 2022 Biennial, Storytelling will be available on Friday, June 3rd and Sunday, June 5th.

American Sign Language Interpretation
The following Storytelling Session at Arsenal Contemporary Art Toronto will be accompanied by an ASL–English interpreter:

• Saturday, May 21, 2022, 11am-12pm.

On from April 1st–June 5th, 2022.

Join us at the Small Arms Inspection Building in Mississauga for Storytelling sessions led by lwrds duniam and Nicole Markland.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Weekly Schedule
Fridays: 11am–12pm, 2–3pm, and 4–5pm
Saturdays and Sundays: 11am–12pm and 4–5pm

On from April 1st–June 5th, 2022.

American Sign Language Interpretation​
The following Storytelling Sessions at the Small Arms Inspection Building will be accompanied by an ASL–English interpreter:

• Saturday, April 23, 2022, 4-5pm.
• Saturday, May 21, 2022, 11am-12pm.

Image credit: Storytelling at the Small Arms Inspection Building with Jeffrey Gibson’s ALL FOR ONE, ONE FOR ALL, 2015. Photography by Rebecca Tisdelle-Macias.

Join us at 72 Perth Ave for Storytelling sessions led by Jeffrey Canton and Melissa Davidson.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Weekly Schedule
Fridays 11am–12pm, 2–3pm, and 6:30–7:30pm
Saturdays and Sundays from 11am–12pm and 4–5pm

On from April 1st–June 5th, 2022.

American Sign Language Interpretation
The following Storytelling Sessions at 72 Perth will be accompanied by an ASL–English interpreter:

• Friday, April 29, 2022, 6-7pm.
• Friday, May 13, 2022, 6-7pm
• Friday, May 27, 2022, 2-3pm.

Drawing is a task of observation, mark-making, and composition that allows us to understand the world from an embodied perspective. In this workshop led by multidisciplinary artist Francisco-Fernando Granados, participants are invited to explore the medium as an expanded practice in the making of embodied cultural histories. Together with Granados, participants will engage in multidisciplinary experiments with images, movement, and words that aim to open up the possibilities of tracing as a relational instrument with which to engage (and build) archives.

Tracing might be thought of as a counter-archival tool that can connect moments of keen insight with experiences that resist the structures of language. It transcends boundaries of institutional belonging and can enable multidirectional community connections. Tracing may entail the articulation of particular social/political/cultural formations, the timely telling of memories when the present urgently echoes the past, or the careful contouring of what cannot yet be known. The hand may tremble as it traces. It lingers in the spaces around judgement, making room for doubt and slippage as entry points for dialogue, seeking to use the space of the aesthetic in service of equitable futures that must be affirmed, even as they remain unpredictable.

This program is the first of three in a series of artist-led workshops informed by C Magazine’s Experiments in Criticism Facilitator’s Guide, which was developed in 2019 in consultation with experts in critical art pedagogy. These workshops pose critical questions for contemplation and discussion and propose approaches to alternative archival practices that are rooted in community rather than established by an institution.

This program is co-created and co-presented with C Magazine. Please contact info@cmagazine.com with any accessibility requests.

Image credit: Francisco-Fernando Granados

Join us at 5 Lower Jarvis for Storytelling sessions led by Emily DiCarlo.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Schedule:
Sundays from 11am–12pm and 2–3pm

Note: For the last week of the 2022 Biennial, Storytelling will be available at 5 Lower Jarvis on Saturday, June 4th. 

Join us at 72 Perth Ave for Storytelling sessions led by Jeffrey Canton and Melissa Davidson.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Weekly Schedule
Fridays 11am–12pm, 2–3pm, and 6:30–7:30pm
Saturdays and Sundays from 11am–12pm and 4–5pm

On from April 1st–June 5th, 2022.

American Sign Language Interpretation
The following Storytelling Sessions at 72 Perth will be accompanied by an ASL–English interpreter:

• Friday, April 29, 2022, 6-7pm.
• Friday, May 13, 2022, 6-7pm
• Friday, May 27, 2022, 2-3pm.

Join us at Arsenal Contemporary Art Toronto for Storytelling sessions led by Emily DiCarlo.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Weekly Schedule
Fridays: 11am–12pm
Saturdays: 11am–12pm and 2–3pm

Note: For the last weekend of the 2022 Biennial, Storytelling will be available on Friday, June 3rd and Sunday, June 5th.

American Sign Language Interpretation
The following Storytelling Session at Arsenal Contemporary Art Toronto will be accompanied by an ASL–English interpreter:

• Saturday, May 21, 2022, 11am-12pm.

On from April 1st–June 5th, 2022.

Join us at the Small Arms Inspection Building in Mississauga for Storytelling sessions led by lwrds duniam and Nicole Markland.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Weekly Schedule
Fridays: 11am–12pm, 2–3pm, and 4–5pm
Saturdays and Sundays: 11am–12pm and 4–5pm

On from April 1st–June 5th, 2022.

American Sign Language Interpretation​
The following Storytelling Sessions at the Small Arms Inspection Building will be accompanied by an ASL–English interpreter:

• Saturday, April 23, 2022, 4-5pm.
• Saturday, May 21, 2022, 11am-12pm.

Image credit: Storytelling at the Small Arms Inspection Building with Jeffrey Gibson’s ALL FOR ONE, ONE FOR ALL, 2015. Photography by Rebecca Tisdelle-Macias.

Join us at 5 Lower Jarvis for Storytelling sessions led by Emily DiCarlo.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Schedule:
Sundays from 11am–12pm and 2–3pm

Note: For the last week of the 2022 Biennial, Storytelling will be available at 5 Lower Jarvis on Saturday, June 4th. 

Join us at Arsenal Contemporary Art Toronto for Storytelling sessions led by Emily DiCarlo.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Weekly Schedule
Fridays: 11am–12pm
Saturdays: 11am–12pm and 2–3pm

Note: For the last weekend of the 2022 Biennial, Storytelling will be available on Friday, June 3rd and Sunday, June 5th.

American Sign Language Interpretation
The following Storytelling Session at Arsenal Contemporary Art Toronto will be accompanied by an ASL–English interpreter:

• Saturday, May 21, 2022, 11am-12pm.

On from April 1st–June 5th, 2022.

Join us at the Small Arms Inspection Building in Mississauga for Storytelling sessions led by lwrds duniam and Nicole Markland.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Weekly Schedule
Fridays: 11am–12pm, 2–3pm, and 4–5pm
Saturdays and Sundays: 11am–12pm and 4–5pm

On from April 1st–June 5th, 2022.

American Sign Language Interpretation​
The following Storytelling Sessions at the Small Arms Inspection Building will be accompanied by an ASL–English interpreter:

• Saturday, April 23, 2022, 4-5pm.
• Saturday, May 21, 2022, 11am-12pm.

Image credit: Storytelling at the Small Arms Inspection Building with Jeffrey Gibson’s ALL FOR ONE, ONE FOR ALL, 2015. Photography by Rebecca Tisdelle-Macias.

Join us at 72 Perth Ave for Storytelling sessions led by Jeffrey Canton and Melissa Davidson.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Weekly Schedule
Fridays 11am–12pm, 2–3pm, and 6:30–7:30pm
Saturdays and Sundays from 11am–12pm and 4–5pm

On from April 1st–June 5th, 2022.

American Sign Language Interpretation
The following Storytelling Sessions at 72 Perth will be accompanied by an ASL–English interpreter:

• Friday, April 29, 2022, 6-7pm.
• Friday, May 13, 2022, 6-7pm
• Friday, May 27, 2022, 2-3pm.

In this participatory performance art workshop, participants delve into experiences, ideas, and questions about the lifespan and spirit life of archival materials. Objects perform in past, present, and future, inhabiting all dimensions and directions, with new resonance and meaning available in every possible context.

Participants will bring three items that they consider to be part of their personal or community archive and through sensory, embodied, and energetic encounters, we will collaboratively explore connections and intersections of live performance, documentation, and archival practice. Prompts and discussions will have us consider: How can archival materials be used in the creation of new work? How might we understand performance documentation as an artistic practice and as a potential tool with which to write archives differently?

All artists, archivists, activists, finders, keepers, scholars, collectors, witches, and mystics are welcome.

How to prepare: please bring three items that are meaningful to you or your community for exploration within this workshop.

This program is the second of three in a series of artist-led workshops informed by C Magazine’s Experiments in Criticism Facilitator’s Guide, which was developed in 2019 in consultation with experts in critical art pedagogy. These workshops pose critical questions for contemplation and discussion and propose approaches to alternative archival practices that are rooted in community rather than established by an institution.

This program is co-created and co-presented with C Magazine. Please contact info@cmagazine.com with any accessibility requests.

Image Credit: Jess Dobkin, Conjuring the Archive, April 22, 2022. Program held at 72 Perth Ave as part of Toronto Biennial of Art 2022. Co-created and co-presented with C Magazine. Photography: Kesang Nanglu.

Join us at 5 Lower Jarvis for Storytelling sessions led by Emily DiCarlo.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Schedule:
Sundays from 11am–12pm and 2–3pm

Note: For the last week of the 2022 Biennial, Storytelling will be available at 5 Lower Jarvis on Saturday, June 4th. 

Join us at Arsenal Contemporary Art Toronto for Storytelling sessions led by Emily DiCarlo.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Weekly Schedule
Fridays: 11am–12pm
Saturdays: 11am–12pm and 2–3pm

Note: For the last weekend of the 2022 Biennial, Storytelling will be available on Friday, June 3rd and Sunday, June 5th.

American Sign Language Interpretation
The following Storytelling Session at Arsenal Contemporary Art Toronto will be accompanied by an ASL–English interpreter:

• Saturday, May 21, 2022, 11am-12pm.

On from April 1st–June 5th, 2022.

Join us at the Small Arms Inspection Building in Mississauga for Storytelling sessions led by lwrds duniam and Nicole Markland.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Weekly Schedule
Fridays: 11am–12pm, 2–3pm, and 4–5pm
Saturdays and Sundays: 11am–12pm and 4–5pm

On from April 1st–June 5th, 2022.

American Sign Language Interpretation​
The following Storytelling Sessions at the Small Arms Inspection Building will be accompanied by an ASL–English interpreter:

• Saturday, April 23, 2022, 4-5pm.
• Saturday, May 21, 2022, 11am-12pm.

Image credit: Storytelling at the Small Arms Inspection Building with Jeffrey Gibson’s ALL FOR ONE, ONE FOR ALL, 2015. Photography by Rebecca Tisdelle-Macias.

Join us at 72 Perth Ave for Storytelling sessions led by Jeffrey Canton and Melissa Davidson.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Weekly Schedule
Fridays 11am–12pm, 2–3pm, and 6:30–7:30pm
Saturdays and Sundays from 11am–12pm and 4–5pm

On from April 1st–June 5th, 2022.

American Sign Language Interpretation
The following Storytelling Sessions at 72 Perth will be accompanied by an ASL–English interpreter:

• Friday, April 29, 2022, 6-7pm.
• Friday, May 13, 2022, 6-7pm
• Friday, May 27, 2022, 2-3pm.

In this workshop, Erika DeFreitas will share her process of working with found images, sharing space with their subjects, and attempting to unearth narratives through research, writing, and imaginings. How might the artist’s archive—the accumulation of images and items they gather as inspiration for art, life, or both—reveal stories that have yet to be centred? What lies beneath the surface? How do we unfold, uncover, and complicate institutional archives “once immobilized for preservation”? How can we forge artistic archival practices?

We graciously request that participants prepare by:

• Reading ‘The Camera Made Me Do It’: Nicole Jolicoeur, Female Identity and Troubling Archives by Patricia Levin and Jeanne Perrault (from which the citation above is drawn).
• Bringing one or more images that stir their curiosity and/or have contributed to their practice, research, thinking. Hard copies are recommended, but accessing on a device is also welcome.
• Bringing a device with which research can be conducted if needed and/or any existing research or work related to the images (e.g., notes, journal entries, articles, sketches, etc.).

We will spend time with these images individually and as a group, engaging in different frameworks for writing with, to, about, and through them. If comfortable, participants will be encouraged to share.

This program is last of three in a series of artist-led workshops informed by C Magazine’s Experiments in Criticism Facilitator’s Guide, which was developed in 2019 in consultation with experts in critical art pedagogy. These workshops pose critical questions for contemplation and discussion and propose approaches to alternative archival practices that are rooted in community rather than established by an institution.

This program is co-created and co-presented with C Magazine. Please contact info@cmagazine.com with any accessibility requests.

If registration for the program is at capacity, please email programmingandlearning@torontobiennial.org to be added to the waitlist.

Image Credit: Erika DeFreitas, arriver avant moi, devant moi (No. 2), 2019-2020

Join Toronto Biennial of Art artist Susan Schuppli and critical legal theorist Dr. Brenna Bhandar as they discuss ideas emerging out of Schuppli’s series COLD CASES in relation to their shared ongoing and trans-disciplinary research queries.

On view at 5 Lower Jarvis, COLD CASES is an exploration into the weaponization of cold as an instrument of policing and exercising control over Indigenous and migrant bodies. Human rights violations always result from entanglements between human and more-than-humans: bodies, technologies, institutions, material spaces, and environmental conditions. Yet evidence for events, especially historic wrongs, is often dispersed, willfully neglected, or resides only within intergenerational memories or with the land itself. Recovering these traces requires acts of patient re-assembly and new assembly to determine who and what counts as a witness to pertinent socio-economic events.

Both Schuppli’s and Bhandar’s research examines contemporary human rights violations as well as settler-colonial histories that run parallel to and intersect with our present political condition, drawing connections between multiple contexts and geographies to highlight patterns of abuse and oppression that connect seemingly disparate temporalities and spaces.

Participants will receive a link to view the COLD CASES videos before the talk. Read more about the project and Schuppli’s larger work, Learning from Ice.

If registration for the program is at capacity, please email programmingandlearning@torontobiennial.org to be added to the waitlist.

Image Credit: Susan Schuppli

Join us at 72 Perth Ave for Storytelling sessions led by Jeffrey Canton and Melissa Davidson.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Weekly Schedule
Fridays 11am–12pm, 2–3pm, and 6:30–7:30pm
Saturdays and Sundays from 11am–12pm and 4–5pm

On from April 1st–June 5th, 2022.

American Sign Language Interpretation
The following Storytelling Sessions at 72 Perth will be accompanied by an ASL–English interpreter:

• Friday, April 29, 2022, 6-7pm.
• Friday, May 13, 2022, 6-7pm
• Friday, May 27, 2022, 2-3pm.

Join us at the Small Arms Inspection Building in Mississauga for Storytelling sessions led by lwrds duniam and Nicole Markland.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Weekly Schedule
Fridays: 11am–12pm, 2–3pm, and 4–5pm
Saturdays and Sundays: 11am–12pm and 4–5pm

On from April 1st–June 5th, 2022.

American Sign Language Interpretation​
The following Storytelling Sessions at the Small Arms Inspection Building will be accompanied by an ASL–English interpreter:

• Saturday, April 23, 2022, 4-5pm.
• Saturday, May 21, 2022, 11am-12pm.

Image credit: Storytelling at the Small Arms Inspection Building with Jeffrey Gibson’s ALL FOR ONE, ONE FOR ALL, 2015. Photography by Rebecca Tisdelle-Macias.

Curated by 2019 and 2022 Biennial contributors Jane Wolff and Susan Schwartzenberg, Toronto Landscape Observatory is both an installation and a collection of tools, walks, workshops, and conversations designed to help Biennial visitors recognize, acknowledge, and understand their relationships to this place—and to other people who care about it. From May 1–June 5, 2022, the Observatory will host weekly programs to investigate the surroundings of the Biennial site at 72 Perth Avenue and draw attention to processes, phenomena, and connections that often go unnoticed. In examining the land and its relationships as they are today, the Observatory looks toward a future made uncertain by local and global change, from development pressures to the climate emergency. It invites visitors to contribute their own observations to an open vocabulary for imagining possibilities that are kinder, more just, and more resilient than the status quo.

Toronto Landscape Observatory is supported by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and Office of the Vice-President, International, University of Toronto.

Programming

Toronto Landscape Observatory walks and workshops are held every Sunday from 2-4pm for the duration of the installation at 72 Perth Avenue. For a full list of programs, see below:

May 1: A Conversation about Language and Landscape with James Bird

May 8: An Observing Walk with Jane Wolff and Susan Schwartzenberg

May 15: A Conversation about Being in Place with Dr. Jennifer Wemigwans

May 22: Workshop: Measuring a Leaf with Alexander Moyle 

May 29: A Listening Walk with Sherry Lee and Emily MacCallum

June 5: A Walk to Greet Plants with Lorraine Johnson

Image credit: Toronto Landscape Observatory space, May 1–June 5, 2022. Installation view, 72 Perth Ave as part of Toronto Biennial of Art 2022. Photography: Rebecca Tisdelle-Macias.

Join us at 5 Lower Jarvis for Storytelling sessions led by Emily DiCarlo.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Schedule:
Sundays from 11am–12pm and 2–3pm

Note: For the last week of the 2022 Biennial, Storytelling will be available at 5 Lower Jarvis on Saturday, June 4th. 

Can you imagine the sounds of all the frozen rivers you have stood beside, walked across?

In May, new audio recordings arrive at 2022 Biennial artist Susan Schuppli’s multi-year project and installation Learning from Ice at 5 Lower Jarvis. To mark the occasion, composer Anne Bourne offers a collective workshop for participants to gather together, slow their pulses and perceive incrementally. Enveloped in sound, participants will listen and create a response in a spacious environmental dialogue to the swiftly changing ecosystem in the arctic.

Listening as a temporal and imagined space has been defined by Pauline Oliveros (the composer who developed the practice of Deep Listening), as listening for the beginnings and endings of sound. Responding to the sounds of disappearing glaciers, the program seeks to merge in empathy to the more than human and non-human elements of imagined glacier streams as they vibrate with life.

This in-person workshop will have two time-slots available for booking:

• 1–2pm
• 3–4pm

Participants are strongly encouraged to wear masks for this indoor workshop.

If registration for the program is at capacity, please email programmingandlearning@torontobiennial.org to be added to the waitlist.

Image Credit: Anne Bourne, Listening to Ice: Environmental Listening and Sounding, May 1, 2022. Program held at 5 Lower Jarvis as part of Toronto Biennial of Art 2022. Photography: Roxanne Fernandes.

In this open conversation, carpenter, architect, and PhD candidate at the University of Toronto, James Bird addresses ways in which Indigenous languages like Dene rest on and support their speakers’ relationships to land.

Curated by 2019 and 2022 Biennial contributors Jane Wolff and Susan Schwartzenberg, Toronto Landscape Observatory is a collection of tools, walks, workshops, and conversations designed to help Biennial visitors recognize, acknowledge, and understand their relationships to this place—and to other people who care about it. From May 2–June 5, 2022, the Observatory will host weekly programs to investigate the surroundings of the Biennial site at 72 Perth Avenue and draw attention to processes, phenomena, and connections that often go unnoticed. In examining the land and its relationships as they are today, the Observatory looks toward a future made uncertain by local and global change, from development pressures to the climate emergency. It invites visitors to contribute their own observations to an open vocabulary for imagining possibilities that are kinder, more just, and more resilient than the status quo.

If registration for the program is at capacity, please email programmingandlearning@torontobiennial.org to be added to the waitlist.

Toronto Landscape Observatory is supported by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and Office of the Vice-President, International, University of Toronto.

Image credit: Aaron Hernandez

Join us at the Small Arms Inspection Building in Mississauga for a generative, safe gathering in connection with artist Derya Akay’s installation Queer Dowry. Through their cooking and care, Derya invites participants to come together after years apart, to share space for conversation, nourishment, and exchange.

Queer Dowry is a deeply personal exploration of Derya’s ancestry, geographic roots, and personal relationship to their family histories, queer histories therein, and heirlooms, especially textiles.

We encourage people with a connection to Peel to attend, and each event invites community members as follows:

May 3rd, 6–8pm, for queer and trans Muslims from/connected to Peel.
May 4th, 2–5pm for queer and trans folks from/connected to Peel.
May 5th, 6–8pm, for QTBIPOC (queer, trans, Black, Indigenous and people of colour) folks from/connected to Peel.

Please contact programmingandlearning@torontobiennial.org or qtbipocsauga@gmail.com for any accessibility requests. If registration for an event is at capacity, please email programmingandlearning@torontobiennial.org to be added to the waitlist.

This program is co-created and co-presented with Muslim Pride Toronto and QTBIPOC sauga.

Image credit: Derya Akay, Queer Dowry: Sikma Gunu, May 3–5, 2022. Program held at Small Arms Inspection Building as part of Toronto Biennial of Art 2022. Photography: Rebecca Tisdelle-Macias.

Join us as we launch the publication Water, Kinship, Belief, co-published by the Toronto Biennial of Art and Art Metropole. Spanning the 2019 Biennial, entitled The Shoreline Dilemma, as well as our 2022 edition, What Water Knows, The Land Remembers, this book is a “third” site, a place where the continuities, resonances, and dissonances between editions are made evident. Water, Kinship, Belief is a means to bring together the artists, artworks, collaborators, and ideas that have informed the exhibitions and programs.

Inviting visitors to consider the publication through its lexicon—a shared vocabulary that has grounded curatorial thinking and ongoing processes of exhibition-making for the last two years—TBA 2022 Curators Tairone Bastien and Katie Lawson read from this series of terms. The lexicon is based upon the relationships between its entries as an alternative to fixed definitions; key terms like ancestor, conspiracy, and inheritance form a vocabulary that holds resonant ideas and offers a way to follow threads that are both knotted and braided together over time.

Image: Tairone Bastien and Katie Lawson, TBA Publication Launch and Reading: “Water, Kinship, Belief”, May 4, 2022. Program held at 72 Perth Ave as part of Toronto Biennial of Art 2022. Photography: Roxanne Fernandes.

2022 Biennial artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan is joined by art historian Tina Sherwell for a conversation in connection with the film and exhibition 45th Parallel by Abu Hamdan. In this context, they discuss the challenge and opportunity of creating work across borders.

This program is presented in partnership with Mercer Union as part of fORUM, Mercer Union’s ongoing series of free talks, lectures, interviews, screenings and performances. 45th Parallel (2022) is co-commissioned by the Toronto Biennial of Art; Mercer Union, Toronto; Spike Island, Bristol; and Western Front, Vancouver. The film is produced by LONO Studio and made possible with the generous support of Arts Council England, the Canada Council for the Arts, Maureen Paley, and the Ford Foundation.

Join us at Arsenal Contemporary Art Toronto for Storytelling sessions led by Emily DiCarlo.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Weekly Schedule
Fridays: 11am–12pm
Saturdays: 11am–12pm and 2–3pm

Note: For the last weekend of the 2022 Biennial, Storytelling will be available on Friday, June 3rd and Sunday, June 5th.

American Sign Language Interpretation
The following Storytelling Session at Arsenal Contemporary Art Toronto will be accompanied by an ASL–English interpreter:

• Saturday, May 21, 2022, 11am-12pm.

On from April 1st–June 5th, 2022.

Join us at the Small Arms Inspection Building in Mississauga for Storytelling sessions led by lwrds duniam and Nicole Markland.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Weekly Schedule
Fridays: 11am–12pm, 2–3pm, and 4–5pm
Saturdays and Sundays: 11am–12pm and 4–5pm

On from April 1st–June 5th, 2022.

American Sign Language Interpretation​
The following Storytelling Sessions at the Small Arms Inspection Building will be accompanied by an ASL–English interpreter:

• Saturday, April 23, 2022, 4-5pm.
• Saturday, May 21, 2022, 11am-12pm.

Image credit: Storytelling at the Small Arms Inspection Building with Jeffrey Gibson’s ALL FOR ONE, ONE FOR ALL, 2015. Photography by Rebecca Tisdelle-Macias.

Join us at 72 Perth Ave for Storytelling sessions led by Jeffrey Canton and Melissa Davidson.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Weekly Schedule
Fridays 11am–12pm, 2–3pm, and 6:30–7:30pm
Saturdays and Sundays from 11am–12pm and 4–5pm

On from April 1st–June 5th, 2022.

American Sign Language Interpretation
The following Storytelling Sessions at 72 Perth will be accompanied by an ASL–English interpreter:

• Friday, April 29, 2022, 6-7pm.
• Friday, May 13, 2022, 6-7pm
• Friday, May 27, 2022, 2-3pm.

Join us at 72 Perth Avenue in Toronto for a special Storytelling session led by Emily DiCarlo and accompanied by an American Sign Language English interpreter.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

This program is presented in partnership with Toronto Sign Language Interpreter Service (TSLIS).

Join artist Azadeh Pirazimian for family-friendly art activities every Saturday at 72 Perth. Azadeh will be leading a multimedia workshop with a focus on stencil printmaking. Participants will make sketches of one simple object or visual element that has captured their attention and mind among the artworks of the exhibit. They will then cut out their sketches on transparent stencil sheets to make a print. The printed work reflects a specific memory of their visit to the exhibit through their own lens.

Drive The Vibe is an outreach initiative community sharing program by VIBE Arts that engages in diverse communities within the Greater Toronto Area and its outskirts to provide a platform to discuss current social issues and shared lived experiences. Led by an Arts Educator and assisted by a youth artist, Drive The Vibe provides free public art-making to communities in and out of the GTA.

Schedule
Saturdays at 72 Perth – May 7, 14, 21, 28
11am to 5pm

• 11:30am – 12:30pm: Workshop 1
• 12:30 – 1:30pm: Workshop 2
• 1:30 – 2:30pm: Break
• 2:30 – 3:30pm: Workshop 3
• 3:30 – 4:30pm: Workshop 4

This program is presented in partnership with VIBE Arts as part of their Drive The Vibe initiative, a mobile artist-driven arts program that goes wherever children and youth are.

Set in 2040, this afternoon performance – conceived by 2022 Biennial artist Syrus Marcus Ware and featuring performers Aeshna Ware-Huff, Janice Lee, Jaz Fairy J, Troy Jackson, and LAL – takes place in the future community of MBL Freedom and offers a mind-expanding performance exploring disability justice, queer and crip magic.

On the first Saturday of each month during the Toronto Biennial of Art, Ware and fellow artists, activists and organizers gather for a hybrid series of workshops and performances that invite participants to consider the future, the stakes at present, and our collective freedoms. Drawing on prevalent concepts explored within Ware’s MBL: Freedom (on view at the Small Arms Inspection Building), participants will be led through a series of critical thinking exercises and activities that will aim to explore abolition, crip and disability justice and futures, climate change, and building futures together where we take care of each other.

If you are facing accessibility barriers getting to the site, please contact programmingandlearning@torontobiennial.org.

Image credit: Syrus Marcus Ware with Aeshna Ware-Huff, Janice Lee, Jaz Fairy J, Troy Jackson, and LAL, The Cafe at the end of the future: A crip performance extravaganza, May 7, 2022. Program held at Small Arms Inspection Building as part of Toronto Biennial of Art 2022. Photography: Kesang Nanglu.

Join us at 5 Lower Jarvis for Storytelling sessions led by Emily DiCarlo.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Schedule:
Sundays from 11am–12pm and 2–3pm

Note: For the last week of the 2022 Biennial, Storytelling will be available at 5 Lower Jarvis on Saturday, June 4th. 

Join artists Akshata Naik and Jenny Chen for family-friendly art activities every Sunday at the Small Arms Inspection Building in Mississauga. Akshata and Jenny will be leading multimedia workshops focusing on painting and collage.

Drive The Vibe is an outreach initiative community sharing program by VIBE Arts that engages in diverse communities within the Greater Toronto Area and its outskirts to provide a platform to discuss current social issues and shared lived experiences. Led by an Arts Educator and assisted by a youth artist, Drive The Vibe provides free public art-making to communities in and out of the GTA.

Schedule
Sundays at Small Arms Inspection Building – May 8,15, 22 and 29
11am to 5pm

• 11:30am – 12:30pm: Workshop 1
• 12:30 – 1:30pm: Workshop 2
• 1:30 – 2:30pm: Break
• 2:30 – 3:30pm: Workshop 3
• 3:30 – 4:30pm: Workshop 4

This program is presented in partnership with VIBE Arts as part of their Drive The Vibe initiative, a mobile artist-driven arts program that goes wherever children and youth are.

In this walk, Toronto Landscape Observatory curators Jane Wolff and Susan Schwartzenberg reveal evidence of the dynamic processes at work in everyday landscapes. Its goal is to situate the neighbourhood of 72 Perth Avenue in the contexts of space and time.

Curated by 2019 and 2022 Biennial contributors Jane Wolff and Susan Schwartzenberg, Toronto Landscape Observatory is a collection of tools, walks, workshops, and conversations designed to help Biennial visitors recognize, acknowledge, and understand their relationships to this place—and to other people who care about it. From May 2–June 5, 2022, the Observatory will host weekly programs to investigate the surroundings of the Biennial site at 72 Perth Avenue and draw attention to processes, phenomena, and connections that often go unnoticed. In examining the land and its relationships as they are today, the Observatory looks toward a future made uncertain by local and global change, from development pressures to the climate emergency. It invites visitors to contribute their own observations to an open vocabulary for imagining possibilities that are kinder, more just, and more resilient than the status quo.

If registration for the program is at capacity, please email programmingandlearning@torontobiennial.org to be added to the waitlist.

Toronto Landscape Observatory is supported by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and Office of the Vice-President, International, University of Toronto.

Image credit: Aaron Hernandez

Join us at 72 Perth Ave for Storytelling sessions led by Jeffrey Canton and Melissa Davidson.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Weekly Schedule
Fridays 11am–12pm, 2–3pm, and 6:30–7:30pm
Saturdays and Sundays from 11am–12pm and 4–5pm

On from April 1st–June 5th, 2022.

American Sign Language Interpretation
The following Storytelling Sessions at 72 Perth will be accompanied by an ASL–English interpreter:

• Friday, April 29, 2022, 6-7pm.
• Friday, May 13, 2022, 6-7pm
• Friday, May 27, 2022, 2-3pm.

Join us at the Small Arms Inspection Building in Mississauga for Storytelling sessions led by lwrds duniam and Nicole Markland.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Weekly Schedule
Fridays: 11am–12pm, 2–3pm, and 4–5pm
Saturdays and Sundays: 11am–12pm and 4–5pm

On from April 1st–June 5th, 2022.

American Sign Language Interpretation​
The following Storytelling Sessions at the Small Arms Inspection Building will be accompanied by an ASL–English interpreter:

• Saturday, April 23, 2022, 4-5pm.
• Saturday, May 21, 2022, 11am-12pm.

Image credit: Storytelling at the Small Arms Inspection Building with Jeffrey Gibson’s ALL FOR ONE, ONE FOR ALL, 2015. Photography by Rebecca Tisdelle-Macias.

Join us at Arsenal Contemporary Art Toronto for Storytelling sessions led by Emily DiCarlo.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Weekly Schedule
Fridays: 11am–12pm
Saturdays: 11am–12pm and 2–3pm

Note: For the last weekend of the 2022 Biennial, Storytelling will be available on Friday, June 3rd and Sunday, June 5th.

American Sign Language Interpretation
The following Storytelling Session at Arsenal Contemporary Art Toronto will be accompanied by an ASL–English interpreter:

• Saturday, May 21, 2022, 11am-12pm.

On from April 1st–June 5th, 2022.

In Following the Afronautic Trail, artist Camille Turner invites participants on a two-day, multisensory exploration and interrogation of sites and monuments within the vicinity of the University of Toronto’s downtown campus. A part of the durational narratives explored within Turner’s body of work, including her 2022 Biennial works Nave and the Black Historical Navigational Toolkit co-authored with Yaniya Lee, this program brings often forgotten histories to the forefront—specifically, the evidence of Canada’s colonial linkages between the transatlantic trade of enslaved Africans and its ongoing legacies.

Beginning with a walk exploring the campus through guided visual and textual prompts, visitors will return to campus the following day and enter The Afronautic Research Lab—a futuristic reading room designed by Turner and performed by Outerregion, a group of performers including Karen Turner and Lee Turner. Being Afronautic researchers and social practitioners, Outerregion offers perception-altering experiences that bring into view what is hidden in plain sight. In Following the Afronautic Trail, participants are invited to become co-investigators, joining us in unearthing the silenced and suppressed Black past embedded in geographic space and in the archive. Through a workshop investigating archival resources, participants will have the opportunity to revisit their prompts in a new context to make palpable connections between the past and present.

This two-part program will take place May 13 and 14, 2022 from 12–2pm each day. If registration for the program is at capacity, please email programmingandlearning@torontobiennial.org to be added to the waitlist.

This program is co-presented with the Art Museum at the University of Toronto and supported by the Toronto Arts Council, the City of Toronto, ArtworxTO, and Women Leading Initiative.

Image credit: Camille Turner, Following the Afronautic Trail, May 13–14, 2022. Program held at Art Museum at the University of Toronto as part of Toronto Biennial of Art 2022. Photography: Roxanne Fernandes.

Join us at 72 Perth Avenue in Toronto for a special Storytelling session led by Jeffrey Canton and accompanied by an American Sign Language English interpreter.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

This program is presented in partnership with Toronto Sign Language Interpreter Service (TSLIS).

Join artist Azadeh Pirazimian for family-friendly art activities every Saturday at 72 Perth. Azadeh will be leading a multimedia workshop with a focus on stencil printmaking. Participants will make sketches of one simple object or visual element that has captured their attention and mind among the artworks of the exhibit. They will then cut out their sketches on transparent stencil sheets to make a print. The printed work reflects a specific memory of their visit to the exhibit through their own lens.

Drive The Vibe is an outreach initiative community sharing program by VIBE Arts that engages in diverse communities within the Greater Toronto Area and its outskirts to provide a platform to discuss current social issues and shared lived experiences. Led by an Arts Educator and assisted by a youth artist, Drive The Vibe provides free public art-making to communities in and out of the GTA.

Schedule
Saturdays at 72 Perth – May 7, 14, 21, 28
11am to 5pm

• 11:30am – 12:30pm: Workshop 1
• 12:30 – 1:30pm: Workshop 2
• 1:30 – 2:30pm: Break
• 2:30 – 3:30pm: Workshop 3
• 3:30 – 4:30pm: Workshop 4

This program is presented in partnership with VIBE Arts as part of their Drive The Vibe initiative, a mobile artist-driven arts program that goes wherever children and youth are.

In Following the Afronautic Trail, artist Camille Turner invites participants on a two-day, multisensory exploration and interrogation of sites and monuments within the vicinity of the University of Toronto’s downtown campus. A part of the durational narratives explored within Turner’s body of work, including her 2022 Biennial works Nave and the Black Historical Navigational Toolkit co-authored with Yaniya Lee, this program brings often forgotten histories to the forefront—specifically, the evidence of Canada’s colonial linkages between the transatlantic trade of enslaved Africans and its ongoing legacies.

Beginning with a walk exploring the campus through guided visual and textual prompts, visitors will return to campus the following day and enter The Afronautic Research Lab—a futuristic reading room designed by Turner and performed by Outerregion, a group of performers including Karen Turner and Lee Turner. Being Afronautic researchers and social practitioners, Outerregion offers perception-altering experiences that bring into view what is hidden in plain sight. In Following the Afronautic Trail, participants are invited to become co-investigators, joining us in unearthing the silenced and suppressed Black past embedded in geographic space and in the archive. Through a workshop investigating archival resources, participants will have the opportunity to revisit their prompts in a new context to make palpable connections between the past and present.

This two-part program will take place May 13 and 14, 2022 from 12–2pm each day. If registration for the program is at capacity, please email programmingandlearning@torontobiennial.org to be added to the waitlist.

This program is co-presented with the Art Museum at the University of Toronto and supported by the Toronto Arts Council, the City of Toronto, ArtworxTO, and Women Leading Initiative.

Image credit: Camille Turner, Following the Afronautic Trail, May 13–14, 2022. Program held at Art Museum at the University of Toronto as part of Toronto Biennial of Art 2022. Photography: Roxanne Fernandes.

Join us at 5 Lower Jarvis for Storytelling sessions led by Emily DiCarlo.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Schedule:
Sundays from 11am–12pm and 2–3pm

Note: For the last week of the 2022 Biennial, Storytelling will be available at 5 Lower Jarvis on Saturday, June 4th. 

Join artists Akshata Naik and Jenny Chen for family-friendly art activities every Sunday at the Small Arms Inspection Building in Mississauga. Akshata and Jenny will be leading multimedia workshops focusing on painting and collage.

Drive The Vibe is an outreach initiative community sharing program by VIBE Arts that engages in diverse communities within the Greater Toronto Area and its outskirts to provide a platform to discuss current social issues and shared lived experiences. Led by an Arts Educator and assisted by a youth artist, Drive The Vibe provides free public art-making to communities in and out of the GTA.

Schedule
Sundays at Small Arms Inspection Building – May 8,15, 22 and 29
11am to 5pm

• 11:30am – 12:30pm: Workshop 1
• 12:30 – 1:30pm: Workshop 2
• 1:30 – 2:30pm: Break
• 2:30 – 3:30pm: Workshop 3
• 3:30 – 4:30pm: Workshop 4

This program is presented in partnership with VIBE Arts as part of their Drive The Vibe initiative, a mobile artist-driven arts program that goes wherever children and youth are.

In this talk, researcher and media producer, Jennifer Wemigwans and Grandmother Jacque Lavallée introduce Wendigo – The Dirty Talker, an Augmented Reality teaching. For Grandmother Lavallée, being Anishnaabe is to be kind and to always carry sacred tobacco: it is these two things that keep us connected to everything. Through the Wendigo, Grandmother Lavallée asks participants to look back to the north of this land and remember the ice.

Curated by 2019 and 2022 Biennial contributors Jane Wolff and Susan Schwartzenberg, Toronto Landscape Observatory is a collection of tools, walks, workshops, and conversations designed to help Biennial visitors recognize, acknowledge, and understand their relationships to this place—and to other people who care about it. From May 2–June 5, 2022, the Observatory will host weekly programs to investigate the surroundings of the Biennial site at 72 Perth Avenue and draw attention to processes, phenomena, and connections that often go unnoticed. In examining the land and its relationships as they are today, the Observatory looks toward a future made uncertain by local and global change, from development pressures to the climate emergency. It invites visitors to contribute their own observations to an open vocabulary for imagining possibilities that are kinder, more just, and more resilient than the status quo.

If registration for the program is at capacity, please email programmingandlearning@torontobiennial.org to be added to the waitlist.

Toronto Landscape Observatory is supported by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and Office of the Vice-President, International, University of Toronto.

Image credit: Aaron Hernandez

Quebecoise and Wolastoq (Maliseet) artist Ivanie Aubin-Malo presents a dance workshop drawn from her experiences in powwow circles and in connecting with other wolastoqiyik communities. Together with Aubin-Malo, participants will take part in a warm-up routine incorporating techniques from powwow dance, followed by various movement exercises inspired by Wolastoqey language and cultural elements. This workshop promotes the revitalisation of Wolastoqey culture and offers participants the opportunity to learn about the richness and vitality of Indigenous cultures while on the territory that gave birth to them.

How to prepare: we recommend that participants arrive wearing comfortable clothing and shoes and bring a water bottle for personal use.

The recommended age for this workshop is 8 years and older. If registration for the program is at capacity, please email programmingandlearning@torontobiennial.org to be added to the waitlist.

Yaliyat cocahq is co-presented by the Toronto Biennial of Art and Oakville Galleries on the occasion of their respective projects, TBA 2022 and the exhibition My mind is with the weather by Tanya Lukin Linklater.

Photo by Magdalena Marszalek.

On Sunday, May 15, the Biennial will host an outdoor screening of 3 episodes of Post-Capitalist Architecture-TV in the outdoor courtyard of 72 Perth Ave, beginning just before dusk at 8:30 pm.

Toronto’s ravine system is both location and subject for Joar Nango and Ken Are Bongo’s new artwork, jointly commissioned and presented by AGYU, Evergreen, and TBA.

Nango is an artist and architect, and Bongo a filmmaker and producer, who collaboratively produce Post-Capitalist Architecture-TV, a thematic video series exploring Indigenous architectures from Sámi fishing huts to their nomadic environments while defining, questioning and embodying decoloniality as a global manifestation. The TV series began in 2020 following Nango’s travels across northern Norway in an aging and modified cargo van as he interviewed indigenous scholars, artists and architects, staged performances for the camera, and held screenings for live audiences. Currently there are 5 episodes, which address a variety of themes such as nomadism and flow, resource economy, and decolonization and architecture.

This screening is presented in collaboration with the Art Gallery of York University (AGYU) and Evergreen Brick Works (Evergreen). This project is supported generously by ERA Architects.

Image Caption: Joar Nango & Ken Are Bongo. Video still from “Post-Capitalist Architecture TV Part 3 – On decolonization and architecture” 2020.

Join us at 72 Perth Ave for Storytelling sessions led by Jeffrey Canton and Melissa Davidson.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Weekly Schedule
Fridays 11am–12pm, 2–3pm, and 6:30–7:30pm
Saturdays and Sundays from 11am–12pm and 4–5pm

On from April 1st–June 5th, 2022.

American Sign Language Interpretation
The following Storytelling Sessions at 72 Perth will be accompanied by an ASL–English interpreter:

• Friday, April 29, 2022, 6-7pm.
• Friday, May 13, 2022, 6-7pm
• Friday, May 27, 2022, 2-3pm.

Join us at the Small Arms Inspection Building in Mississauga for Storytelling sessions led by lwrds duniam and Nicole Markland.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Weekly Schedule
Fridays: 11am–12pm, 2–3pm, and 4–5pm
Saturdays and Sundays: 11am–12pm and 4–5pm

On from April 1st–June 5th, 2022.

American Sign Language Interpretation​
The following Storytelling Sessions at the Small Arms Inspection Building will be accompanied by an ASL–English interpreter:

• Saturday, April 23, 2022, 4-5pm.
• Saturday, May 21, 2022, 11am-12pm.

Image credit: Storytelling at the Small Arms Inspection Building with Jeffrey Gibson’s ALL FOR ONE, ONE FOR ALL, 2015. Photography by Rebecca Tisdelle-Macias.

Join us at Arsenal Contemporary Art Toronto for Storytelling sessions led by Emily DiCarlo.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Weekly Schedule
Fridays: 11am–12pm
Saturdays: 11am–12pm and 2–3pm

Note: For the last weekend of the 2022 Biennial, Storytelling will be available on Friday, June 3rd and Sunday, June 5th.

American Sign Language Interpretation
The following Storytelling Session at Arsenal Contemporary Art Toronto will be accompanied by an ASL–English interpreter:

• Saturday, May 21, 2022, 11am-12pm.

On from April 1st–June 5th, 2022.

Join artist Azadeh Pirazimian for family-friendly art activities every Saturday at 72 Perth. Azadeh will be leading a multimedia workshop with a focus on stencil printmaking. Participants will make sketches of one simple object or visual element that has captured their attention and mind among the artworks of the exhibit. They will then cut out their sketches on transparent stencil sheets to make a print. The printed work reflects a specific memory of their visit to the exhibit through their own lens.

Drive The Vibe is an outreach initiative community sharing program by VIBE Arts that engages in diverse communities within the Greater Toronto Area and its outskirts to provide a platform to discuss current social issues and shared lived experiences. Led by an Arts Educator and assisted by a youth artist, Drive The Vibe provides free public art-making to communities in and out of the GTA.

Schedule
Saturdays at 72 Perth – May 7, 14, 21, 28
11am to 5pm

• 11:30am – 12:30pm: Workshop 1
• 12:30 – 1:30pm: Workshop 2
• 1:30 – 2:30pm: Break
• 2:30 – 3:30pm: Workshop 3
• 3:30 – 4:30pm: Workshop 4

This program is presented in partnership with VIBE Arts as part of their Drive The Vibe initiative, a mobile artist-driven arts program that goes wherever children and youth are.

Join us at the Small Arms Inspection Building in Mississauga for a special Storytelling session led by lwrds duniam and accompanied by an American Sign Language English interpreter.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

This program is presented in partnership with Toronto Sign Language Interpreter Service (TSLIS).

Image credit: Storytelling at the Small Arms Inspection Building with Jeffrey Gibson’s ALL FOR ONE, ONE FOR ALL, 2015. Photography by Rebecca Tisdelle-Macias.

In Dish Dances Movement Workshop, 2022 Biennial artist Ange Loft (Kanien’kehá:ka) and Jumblies Theatre + Arts present a project history and sample movement facilitation. Through a guided, low-stakes, individual movement activity complemented by a presentation, participants will build their familiarity with the symbols, embodied gestures and land-based knowledge held in the Dish With One Spoon agreement. The resulting movement outcome will unfold across Historic Fort York’s Garrison Commons supported by Indigenous Dish Dances performing team.

Loft is lead artist of the Talking Treaties Collective, a multidisciplinary group of Indigenous and settler artists/researchers whose projects artfully share Indigenous history and awareness of the place now called Toronto. In June 2022, the collective will release A Treaty Guide for Torontonians, published by Jumblies Press and Toronto Biennial of Art in partnership with Art Metropole.

Participants will meet at the Fort York Visitor Centre at 250 Fort York Blvd.

If registration for the program is at capacity, please email programmingandlearning@torontobiennial.org to be added to the waitlist.

Image credit: Ange Loft with Jumblies Theatre & Arts, Dish Dances Movement Workshop, a Talking Treaties movement education initiative, May 21, 2022. Program held at Fort York National Historic Site as part of Toronto Biennial of Art 2022. Photography: Rebecca Tisdelle-Macias.

Join us at 5 Lower Jarvis for Storytelling sessions led by Emily DiCarlo.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Schedule:
Sundays from 11am–12pm and 2–3pm

Note: For the last week of the 2022 Biennial, Storytelling will be available at 5 Lower Jarvis on Saturday, June 4th.