Events

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.

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: Aaron Hernandez

In this site- and environmentally-responsive performance, experimental musicians Sara Constant and Naomi McCarroll-Butler greet Wind Oracle. Presented as a new work by Eduardo Navarro, Wind Oracle stands at Colborne Lodge, an entity with a commanding presence but whimsical intention: an invitation to interact with the wind and consider the animacy of air and deeply entangled relations between humans and the natural world. Engaging with instruments and materials (hand-made and otherwise) Sara and Naomi activate the site–grounding and improvising with the audience–and using the wind as a medium for questions asked and answered.

This program will take place at Eduardo Navarro’s Wind Oracle, situated on the lawn of Colborne Lodge. We encourage participants to bring a blanket and to wear yellow!

Co-commissioned and co-presented by the Toronto Biennial of Art and the City of Toronto with support from Colborne Lodge, Toronto History Museums and ArtworxTO. This exhibition has been supported by Cadillac Fairview Corporation.

Learn more about Wind Oracle here.

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

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, register here

Join us at 72 Perth Avenue in Toronto for a special Storytelling session led by Melly Davidson 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 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.

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

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, musicology and sound studies scholars Sherry Lee and Emily MacCallum ask participants to listen to the landscape. Its goal is to draw attention to sounds, both as determinants of experience and as information sources about the characteristics of place.

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

On the occasion of the second edition of the Toronto Biennial of Art (TBA), TBA and the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) are partnering to present a free public talk by Judy Chicago. Chicago is joined by TBA Senior Curator, Candice Hopkins for a conversation around her celebrated career and major TBA commission, A Tribute to Toronto, moderated by the AGO’s Xiaoyu Weng, Carol and Morton Rapp Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art.

This program is presented in partnership with the Art Gallery of Ontario.

A Tribute to Toronto (2022) is commissioned by the Toronto Biennial of Art and made possible with the generous support of the City of Toronto, ArtworxTO, Waterfront Toronto, Waterfront BIA, Menkes Developments, the Delaney Family Foundation, and the Women Leading Initiative.

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

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, register here

2022 Biennial artist Buhlebezwe Siwani is joined by Dr. George Mahashe for an intimate conversation that brings together Mahashe’s ongoing research at the intersection of artistic practice, archives, and anthropology with Siwani’s work, which interrogates the patriarchal framing of the Black female body and experience within the South African context. Moderated by curator Emilie Croning, this discussion will move through tributaries of thought such as Siwani’s artistic practice on rituality, their collaborations on works such as Siwani’s Sinje Ngamajuba, and the relationship between Christianity and African spirituality with a focus on khelobedu. The program will open with a Chivanhhu-centred opening ceremony led by musician, storyteller, and lecturer Dr. Moyo Rainos Mutamba.

This program is part of We Might Listen for the Shimmerings, a curatorial project organized by Chiedza Pasipanodya, as part of the 2022 Toronto Biennial of Art Curatorial Fellowship program, made possible by the generous support of TD Bank Group, through the TD Ready Commitment, and presented in partnership with Wedge Curatorial Projects, and the Toronto Arts Council.

Join 2022 Biennial artist Syrus Marcus Ware and actors Dainty Smith and Ravyn Wngz for a staged reading of the complete performance of MBL: Freedom (2022), an interactive film experience reflecting on climate change, white supremacy, abolition, and disability justice, currently on view at the Small Arms Inspection Building.

MBL: Freedom presents the newest chapter of Ware’s expansive, interdisciplinary, multi-year project that predicts a near-future taking place between the years 2025 and 2027, wherein Antarctica has become the only habitable place on the planet. In it, three Black, Indigenous, and POC Antarcticans abandon their mission to colonize Antarctica, swimming in icy waters toward the only part of the continent not claimed by a country, “Mary Bird Land,” or MBL. The three set out to create a territory for all activists and abolitionists to be free in, but when they land on the shores of MBL, they make an unexpected discovery that changes their trajectory.

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, 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 Caption: Syrus Marcus Ware, MBL Freedom, 2022. Featuring Ravyn Wngz and Dainty Smith. Photo by Roxanne Fernandes. Courtesy of the artist.

Marking the closing of the 2022 festival, the Toronto Biennial of Art presents a newly commissioned site-specific work by artist Judy Chicago. This one-of-a-kind Smoke Sculpture™ will be visible from the shore of Lake Ontario, as a series of environmentally safe, non-toxic coloured smokes are released from a barge. For this one-time performance, the public is invited to gather at the waterfront to see the lake and sky transformed. Harkening back to Chicago’s Atmospheres photo series of the late 1960s and early 1970s, which sought to soften and “feminize” harsh, man-made environments, A Tribute to Toronto, 2022 works against the tradition of male Land Art artists whose work imposed itself on the earth. Instead, Chicago’s performance offers an alternative and impermanent approach that merges colour with landscape to increase awareness of the beauty of our natural environment.

For additional information on Judy Chicago’s performance, please click here.

A Tribute to Toronto is commissioned by the Toronto Biennial of Art and made possible with the generous support of the City of Toronto, ArtworxTO, the Delaney Family Foundation, Menkes Developments, Waterfront Toronto, the Waterfront BIA, and the Women Leading Initiative.

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

The Toronto Biennial of Art will celebrate the closing of the 2022 edition with a family- and youth- friendly BBQ for neighbours and those further afield. Enjoy great food and an array of participatory activities including Storytelling tours of the exhibition at the Small Arms Inspection Building, interactive walks focusing on the building’s history and the Indigenous history of its grounds, as well as pop-up stations with hands-on, intergenerational art-making workshops. This event also marks the official launch of A Treaty Guide for Torontonians—an activity-based publication by the Talking Treaties Collective examining the complex intercultural roots of treaty relationships in the place we now call Toronto. Lakeview Farmers’ Market will also be on site with stalls featuring sustainable and organic products, which provide an important source of income for local farmers, growers, producers, and artisans.

This event is co-presented in partnership with Art Metropole, Creative Hub 1352, Eagle Spirits of the Great Waters, Jumblies Theatre + Arts, Lakeview Ratepayers, and Small Arms Inspection Building, with the generous support of FRAM + Slokker, and the City of Mississauga.

Writer Lorraine Johnson leads this walk exploring the flora of the West Toronto Railpath. Its goal is to build immediate, emotional connections that help people see themselves as part of the natural world.

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