TBA Residency

At our third Biennial, local multidisciplinary artists have been commissioned as Storytellers to develop participatory sessions informed by their personal insights and experiences of the city and will lead visitors through the exhibition artists’ installations, research, and perspectives. They will offer both booked and drop-in walks and conversations to intergenerational audiences regularly throughout the duration of the Biennial.

Contact us at learning@torontobiennial.org to book a free group Storytelling tour for your school, organization, or community space.

Image Caption: Storytelling at 32 Lisgar St and Park as part of the Toronto Biennial of Art. Photography: Rebecca Tisdelle-Macias.

The Curatorial Encounters program series invites all members of the arts community and the general public to meet and converse with our 2024 exhibition curators, Dominique Fontaine and Miguel A. López.

For the first three Curatorial Encounters, Dominique and Miguel – in dialogue with artists, collaborators, and other TBA staff – hosted iterative conversations focused on the curatorial process and building of the 2024 Biennial.

For this edition of Curatorial Encounters, we celebrate the opening of the Biennial with the first of two public tours by TBA curators, highlighting the impact that the Biennial artists have on Toronto, spanning from the Auto BLDG at 158 Sterling Avenue in the West to the Toronto Sculpture Garden in the East.

East End Tour Schedule:

• 5pm: Tour of Rajni Perera’s installation at Toronto Sculpture Garden
• 5:30pm-5:45pm: Walking to Collision Gallery
• 5:45pm: Tour at Collision Gallery, featuring the works of Ahmed Umar, Cecilia Vicuña, Citra Sasmita, Tessa Mars, and Rajni Perera
• 6:45pm-7pm: Walking to Union Station
• 7pm: Tour of Union Station Toronto, featuring the works of Morris Lum and Nicholas Galanin

Note: Registration is not required to attend, but is strongly recommended and will allow registrants to receive important updates about the Program. Register via Eventbrite.

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For information about Precarious Joys: The West End Tour, taking place on Saturday, October 25, please visit the What’s On page or “Related Programming” below.

Image credit: A Walk Across Space and Time, Toronto Biennial of Art, 2019. Photography: Yuula Benivolski.

At our third Biennial, local multidisciplinary artists have been commissioned as Storytellers to develop participatory sessions informed by their personal insights and experiences of the city and will lead visitors through the exhibition artists’ installations, research, and perspectives. They will offer both booked and drop-in walks and conversations to intergenerational audiences regularly throughout the duration of the Biennial.

Contact us at learning@torontobiennial.org to book a free group Storytelling tour for your school, organization, or community space.

Image Caption: Nicole Markland leading a Storytelling Session at Small Arms Inspection Building for the 2022 Toronto Biennial of Art. Photography: Rebecca Tisdelle-Macias.

This workshop offers an opportunity to explore ceramic hand-building and surface design techniques inspired by the artist Pamila Matharu. Through this creative process, we will explore how art fosters connections and creates shared moments. Participants will craft two shells: one to keep and one to gift. This workshop examines the artist’s relationship with mentorship and encourages self-reflection on personal relationships.

Suitable for both beginners and experienced artists, this workshop aims to deepen appreciation for Pamila’s art while enabling participants to create meaningful pieces. All materials will be provided, and no prior experience is necessary. Participants should be ready to immerse themselves in the artistic process and produce personalized artworks that celebrate the power of connection and community.

Note: This Program has a limited capacity. Register via Eventbrite.

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This Program is part of andbothwith_lively adjacencies + proximal intimacies a series of Public Programs taking place in and around Pamila Matharu’s installation tere naal | with you:

In the spirit of community-engaged place-making and liberatory practices that centre relational healing, artists and thinkers are invited to invoke, inspire and conjure solidarity-building through conversations, activations, and workshops. Pamila offers this series as an śaradhān̄jalī (homage) to her mentor, artist Winsom Winsom, honouring their on-going relationship with each other as artists and teachers.

Image credit: Clay Workshop by Misbah Ahmed. Courtesy of the artist.

At our third Biennial, local multidisciplinary artists have been commissioned as Storytellers to develop participatory sessions informed by their personal insights and experiences of the city and will lead visitors through the exhibition artists’ installations, research, and perspectives. They will offer both booked and drop-in walks and conversations to intergenerational audiences regularly throughout the duration of the Biennial.

Contact us at learning@torontobiennial.org to book a free group Storytelling tour for your school, organization, or community space.

Image Caption: Nicole Markland leading a Storytelling Session at Small Arms Inspection Building for the 2022 Toronto Biennial of Art. Photography: Rebecca Tisdelle-Macias.

VIBE Arts returns for the 2024 Biennial season for fun, creative and interactive programming for intergenerational learners, families and caregivers in response to the exhibitions artists and artworks at TBA’s 32 Lisgar Street location. VIBE artists will deliver free, drop-in, public art-making programs to visitors throughout our VIBE Family Days. All programs will be led by an Arts Educator to facilitate a platform to engage in creativity and express shared lived experiences.

VIBE will be present at our opening day festivities on September 21 at Lisgar Park (32 Lisgar Street), and every other Sunday at the same location (weather permitting) ongoing to November 3rd. In inclement weather, Family Days will occur indoors at 32 Lisgar Street. To view these additional Programs, please visit the What’s On page or “Related Programming” below.

This program is drop-in between 11:00am and 4:00pm.

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This program is presented in partnership with VIBE Arts.

VIBE Arts is a charity providing arts education and professional artistic mentorship to the next generation of creatives. Established in 1995, VIBE seeks to increase access and equity to the arts to encourage wellness, resilience and a sense of belonging.

Image credit: VIBE Arts Family Days at 72 Perth Avenue. Toronto Biennial of Art, 2022. Photography: Kesang Nanglu.

Join Storytellers Jingshu and Siki every Sunday at 32 Lisgar St for a drop-in writing circle that will spark your creativity!

Schedule:

• 12:30pm: Meet inside Pamila Matharu’s installation, tere naal _ with you (2024), where Jingshu and Siki will start their tour of the exhibition, highlighting a selection of artworks and artists to inspire the following writing session.
• 1:30-2:30pm: Following the tour, Jingshu and Siki will facilitate a drop-in writing session. After some quiet time for writing, participants will be encouraged to share in a casual discussion, depending on their comfort level.

Everyone is welcome and no prior creative writing experience is required. This program does not require registration and those interested are free to drop in at any time. Writing materials will be provided.

Image credit: Storytelling in Pamila Matharu’s installation tere naal _ with you (2024) at 32 Lisgar St, 2024. Photography: Jingshu Yao.

Ange Loft and Olivia Shortt invite participants to take part in an interdisciplinary workshop that investigates patterns found in pottery shards, unearthed from archaeological sites across the city.

Participants will be guided in developing an understanding of these patterns through a clay sculpting activity and a movement exercise, extending the patterns across mediums to recall and embody Indigenous living histories. Together, participants will carry these historical artworks into the present day, honouring their original creators while finding new meaning and connections to the patterns buried under this city.

Note: Due to the level of instruction given for this workshop, participation is recommended for attendees ages 15 and over.

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This program is part of Keeping Time, a workshop series that centres embodied learning by inviting intergenerational audiences of all abilities to pay special attention to time, space and movement through somatic learning and unlearning.

The program is made possible with generous support from the Lindy Green Family Foundation.

Image Credit: DISH DANCES: Movement Workshop, Toronto Biennial of Art, 2022. Photography: Rebecca Tisdelle-Macias

Led by poet, artist and facilitator Darian Razdar, a landscape hosts something is a workshop to experiment with place-based practices and poetic landscapes.

Referencing a line in Ada Smailbegovic’s “Descriptions of Invisible Objects,” the title of this workshop series, a landscape hosts something, lingers on the idea that landscapes don’t exist a priori, but are created through acts of imagination. Together and independently, we’ll reflect on “landscaping”—how we re-present ecologies and environments through processes of abstraction. Based on deep listening and responding with place, we will re-engage with landscape as a critical site for creativity.

Participants can expect to engage in facilitated discussions around this theme, semi-structured fieldwork activities, and sharing of one’s own work in a welcoming context. Shaped as a 3-hour workshop in and around Rajni Perera’s newly commissioned work, Vimana (N1 Starfighter), at the Toronto Sculpture Garden, participants will leave the workshop with new and evolving connections, ideas, and practices related to landscapes and the environment.

Each participant will also receive a list of readings and resources to engage with before and after the workshop. The first set of registered participants will receive a notebook, postcard, and guiding pamphlet. This program has a limited capacity. Register via Eventbrite.

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a landscape hosts something is organized by Sarah Edo, Programs Curatorial Fellow. The 2024 Toronto Biennial of Art Curatorial Fellowship Program is made possible by the generous support of TD Bank Group, through the TD Ready Commitment.

Image credit: a landscape hosts something collage. Courtesy of Darian Razdar.

Join us as we launch the 2024 Biennial catalogue, Precarious Joys, co-published by the Toronto Biennial of Art, Art Metropole, and Goose Lane Editions. Edited by the Biennial’s 2024 curators, Dominique Fontaine and Miguel A. López, this landmark publication includes conversations between artists, curators, and community members, as well as reproductions of work by featured artists. Together, the texts and images offer readers insights into how artistic practices can amplify political consciousness and reassert the power of aesthetics in shaping collective existence.

In conversation with artists and special guests, Dominique and Miguel will delve into the catalogue’s focus on dialogue and the impact of active listening on development of TBA’s third edition.

Note: This program has a limited capacity. Register via Eventbrite.

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This program is presented in partnership with Art Metropole and Goose Lane Editions.

Image credit: The Cover image for the Toronto Biennial of Art publication Precarious Joys, 2024. Designed by Otami Studios.

The workshop on Thursday, October 3 will take place in the East Common Room (located on the first floor) and the workshop on Thursday, October 10 will take place in the Music Room (located on the second floor).

In this movement-based workshop led by Angela, participants will experience her embodied practices in connecting with the more-than-human world, and explore possibilities for entering into bodily resonance with plants. This workshop, facilitated in a group setting, will be a space for knowledge-sharing. Participants are invited to create physical movements that allow for a reciprocity with plants, land, and other beings that exist within a shared ecology. Participants will be stepping softly into the ebb and flow of primal bio rhythms—rhythms that we share with everything there is in the world—and identifying how and where they fit within it. No previous experience is required. The artist encourages participation to those with an openness and interest in subtle attunement with plants.

Note: Participants are not required, but are encouraged, to attend both workshops. See “Related Programming” below for more information.

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MOSSBELLY is an intergenerational performance and choreographic meditation on our human connection to land, plant life, nature and time.

This program is part of Keeping Time, a workshop series that centres embodied learning by inviting intergenerational audiences of all abilities to pay special attention to time, space and movement through somatic learning and unlearning.

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This program is presented in partnership with Hart House and the Institute for Dance Studies.

Image credit: Courtesy of Angela Vitovec.

At our third Biennial, local multidisciplinary artists have been commissioned as Storytellers to develop participatory sessions informed by their personal insights and experiences of the city and will lead visitors through the exhibition artists’ installations, research, and perspectives. They will offer both booked and drop-in walks and conversations to intergenerational audiences regularly throughout the duration of the Biennial.

Contact us at learning@torontobiennial.org to book a free group Storytelling tour for your school, organization, or community space.

Image Caption: Storytelling at 32 Lisgar St and Park as part of the Toronto Biennial of Art. Photography: Rebecca Tisdelle-Macias.

At our third Biennial, local multidisciplinary artists have been commissioned as Storytellers to develop participatory sessions informed by their personal insights and experiences of the city and will lead visitors through the exhibition artists’ installations, research, and perspectives. They will offer both booked and drop-in walks and conversations to intergenerational audiences regularly throughout the duration of the Biennial.

Contact us at learning@torontobiennial.org to book a free group Storytelling tour for your school, organization, or community space.

Image Caption: Nicole Markland leading a Storytelling Session at Small Arms Inspection Building for the 2022 Toronto Biennial of Art. Photography: Rebecca Tisdelle-Macias.

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

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

Notes to Belonging: An Adaptation features performances from Courtenay McFarlane, Amaka Umeh, and Patrick Teed.

Note: This program has a limited capacity. Register via Eventbrite.

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Notes to Belonging: An Adaptation is curated by Sarah Edo, Programs Curatorial Fellow and is presented in partnership with the National Gallery of Canada and The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery. The 2024 Toronto Biennial of Art Curatorial Fellowship Program is made possible by the generous support of TD Bank Group, through the TD Ready Commitment.

Image credit: Poster designed by ayo tsalithaba.

At our third Biennial, local multidisciplinary artists have been commissioned as Storytellers to develop participatory sessions informed by their personal insights and experiences of the city and will lead visitors through the exhibition artists’ installations, research, and perspectives. They will offer both booked and drop-in walks and conversations to intergenerational audiences regularly throughout the duration of the Biennial.

Contact us at learning@torontobiennial.org to book a free group Storytelling tour for your school, organization, or community space.

Image Caption: Nicole Markland leading a Storytelling Session at Small Arms Inspection Building for the 2022 Toronto Biennial of Art. Photography: Rebecca Tisdelle-Macias.

Join Storytellers Jingshu and Siki every Sunday at 32 Lisgar St for a drop-in writing circle that will spark your creativity!

Schedule:

• 12:30pm: Meet inside Pamila Matharu’s installation, tere naal _ with you (2024), where Jingshu and Siki will start their tour of the exhibition, highlighting a selection of artworks and artists to inspire the following writing session.
• 1:30-2:30pm: Following the tour, Jingshu and Siki will facilitate a drop-in writing session. After some quiet time for writing, participants will be encouraged to share in a casual discussion, depending on their comfort level.

Everyone is welcome and no prior creative writing experience is required. This program does not require registration and those interested are free to drop in at any time. Writing materials will be provided.

Image credit: Storytelling in Pamila Matharu’s installation tere naal _ with you (2024) at 32 Lisgar St, 2024. Photography: Jingshu Yao.

An intergenerational performance and choreographic meditation on our human connection to land, plant life, nature and time, MOSSBELLY combines the movement of the body with methods of encountering plant-life. Emerging from her long-term and deep engagements with moss, artist Angela Vitovec asks, “What does moss look like when it dances?

Through the lens and in the spirit of the moss plant, dancers move, connect and support each other just as moss supports the ecosystems of a forest. This is a choreography of horizontal harmony with no centre, just rhythms that embrace us and develop a new and entirely sensual poetry of bodies and their presence. MOSSBELLY is a slow, studied, and soothing performance that, like moss, inhabits time and space like a forest and quietly integrates itself into the cracks of daily urban concrete spaces.

Note: This program has limited capacity. Check back here for a registration link.

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This program is a part of Your Timing is Perfect: Moments and Movements of Inquiry, a performance series in which artists investigate the body as a living archive, exploring its extraordinary strength and resilience, as well as its tenderness, vulnerability, and limitations.

This program is co-presented with The Music Gallery and Dancemakers. The program is made possible with generous support from the Lindy Green Family Foundation.

Image credit: MOSSBELLY by Angela Vitovec. Photography: Dorothea Tuch.

At our third Biennial, local multidisciplinary artists have been commissioned as Storytellers to develop participatory sessions informed by their personal insights and experiences of the city and will lead visitors through the exhibition artists’ installations, research, and perspectives. They will offer both booked and drop-in walks and conversations to intergenerational audiences regularly throughout the duration of the Biennial.

Contact us at learning@torontobiennial.org to book a free group Storytelling tour for your school, organization, or community space.

Image Caption: Storytelling at 32 Lisgar St and Park as part of the Toronto Biennial of Art. Photography: Rebecca Tisdelle-Macias.

Note: Please be advised that this program takes place at The Bentway Studio, located at 55 Fort York Blvd, Toronto, beside Canoe Landing Park.

As disabled people, our bodies hold infinite knowledge about our experiences. However, all too often, disabled people are encouraged to disconnect from and/or ignore the knowledge that our bodies share with us through our experiences with pain, fatigue and limitations.

In this workshop facilitated by artist Shay Erlich, participants are invited to reach through the ableist forces that seek to separate disabled people from their embodied experiences and to rediscover their bodies and internal experiences as sites of wisdom and information to be honoured and respected.

Participants are offered the time and space to reflect on the ways that they have experienced this pressure to disconnect from their bodies. Then, drawing from active mindfulness practices, participants will be guided as a group to experience the wisdom of our bodies and will have the opportunity to reflect on and develop strategies for how they can make more space to be present and embody experiences in their day-to-day lives.

Accessibility accommodations are available for this program. If you have questions about attending a program, would like assistance securing tickets, or have accessibility requests, please email programs@torontobiennial.org.

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This program is part of Keeping Time, a workshop series that centres embodied learning by inviting intergenerational audiences of all abilities to pay special attention to time, space and movement through somatic learning and unlearning.

This program is presented in partnership with The Bentway.

At our third Biennial, local multidisciplinary artists have been commissioned as Storytellers to develop participatory sessions informed by their personal insights and experiences of the city and will lead visitors through the exhibition artists’ installations, research, and perspectives. They will offer both booked and drop-in walks and conversations to intergenerational audiences regularly throughout the duration of the Biennial.

Contact us at learning@torontobiennial.org to book a free group Storytelling tour for your school, organization, or community space.

Image Caption: Nicole Markland leading a Storytelling Session at Small Arms Inspection Building for the 2022 Toronto Biennial of Art. Photography: Rebecca Tisdelle-Macias.

At our third Biennial, local multidisciplinary artists have been commissioned as Storytellers to develop participatory sessions informed by their personal insights and experiences of the city and will lead visitors through the exhibition artists’ installations, research, and perspectives. They will offer both booked and drop-in walks and conversations to intergenerational audiences regularly throughout the duration of the Biennial.

Contact us at learning@torontobiennial.org to book a free group Storytelling tour for your school, organization, or community space.

Image Caption: Nicole Markland leading a Storytelling Session at Small Arms Inspection Building for the 2022 Toronto Biennial of Art. Photography: Rebecca Tisdelle-Macias.

VIBE Arts returns for the 2024 Biennial season for fun, creative and interactive programming for intergenerational learners, families and caregivers in response to the exhibitions artists and artworks at TBA’s 32 Lisgar Street location. VIBE artists will deliver free, drop-in, public art-making programs to visitors throughout our VIBE Family Days. All programs will be led by an Arts Educator to facilitate a platform to engage in creativity and express shared lived experiences.

VIBE will be present at our opening day festivities on September 21 at Lisgar Park (32 Lisgar Street), and every other Sunday at the same location (weather permitting) ongoing to November 3rd. In inclement weather, Family Days will occur indoors at 32 Lisgar Street. To view these additional Programs, please visit the What’s On page or “Related Programming” below.

This program is drop-in between 11:00am and 4:00pm.

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This program is presented in partnership with VIBE Arts.

VIBE Arts is a charity providing arts education and professional artistic mentorship to the next generation of creatives. Established in 1995, VIBE seeks to increase access and equity to the arts to encourage wellness, resilience and a sense of belonging.

Image credit: VIBE Arts Family Days at 32 Lisgar St and Park as part of the Toronto Biennial of Art. Photography: Rebecca Tisdelle-Macias.

Join Storytellers Jingshu and Siki every Sunday at 32 Lisgar St for a drop-in writing circle that will spark your creativity!

Schedule:

• 12:30pm: Meet inside Pamila Matharu’s installation, tere naal _ with you (2024), where Jingshu and Siki will start their tour of the exhibition, highlighting a selection of artworks and artists to inspire the following writing session.
• 1:30-2:30pm: Following the tour, Jingshu and Siki will facilitate a drop-in writing session. After some quiet time for writing, participants will be encouraged to share in a casual discussion, depending on their comfort level.

Everyone is welcome and no prior creative writing experience is required. This program does not require registration and those interested are free to drop in at any time. Writing materials will be provided.

Image credit: Storytelling in Pamila Matharu’s installation tere naal _ with you (2024) at 32 Lisgar St, 2024. Photography: Jingshu Yao.

An intergenerational performance and choreographic meditation on our human connection to land, plant life, nature and time, MOSSBELLY combines the movement of the body with methods of encountering plant-life. Emerging from her long-term and deep engagements with moss, artist Angela Vitovec asks, “What does moss look like when it dances?

Through the lens and in the spirit of the moss plant, dancers move, connect and support each other just as moss supports the ecosystems of a forest. This is a choreography of horizontal harmony with no centre, just rhythms that embrace us and develop a new and entirely sensual poetry of bodies and their presence. MOSSBELLY is a slow, studied, and soothing performance that, like moss, inhabits time and space like a forest and quietly integrates itself into the cracks of daily urban concrete spaces.

Note: This program has limited capacity. Check back here for a registration link.

–

This program is a part of Your Timing is Perfect: Moments and Movements of Inquiry, a performance series in which artists investigate the body as a living archive, exploring its extraordinary strength and resilience, as well as its tenderness, vulnerability, and limitations.

This program is co-presented with The Music Gallery and Dancemakers. The program is made possible with generous support from the Lindy Green Family Foundation.

Image credit: MOSSBELLY by Angela Vitovec. Photography: Dorothea Tuch.

An intergenerational performance and choreographic meditation on our human connection to land, plant life, nature and time, MOSSBELLY combines the movement of the body with methods of encountering plant-life. Emerging from her long-term and deep engagements with moss, artist Angela Vitovec asks, “What does moss look like when it dances?

Through the lens and in the spirit of the moss plant, dancers move, connect and support each other just as moss supports the ecosystems of a forest. This is a choreography of horizontal harmony with no centre, just rhythms that embrace us and develop a new and entirely sensual poetry of bodies and their presence. MOSSBELLY is a slow, studied, and soothing performance that, like moss, inhabits time and space like a forest and quietly integrates itself into the cracks of daily urban concrete spaces.

Note: This program has limited capacity. Check back here for a registration link.

–

This program is a part of Your Timing is Perfect: Moments and Movements of Inquiry, a performance series in which artists investigate the body as a living archive, exploring its extraordinary strength and resilience, as well as its tenderness, vulnerability, and limitations.

This program is co-presented with The Music Gallery and Dancemakers. The program is made possible with generous support from the Lindy Green Family Foundation.

Image credit: MOSSBELLY by Angela Vitovec. Photography: Dorothea Tuch.

This program takes place in the Hart House Debates Room, located on the main floor of the building, near the building’s west entrance (located on Tower Road).

Accompanying artist Maria Hupfield’s installation for TBA 2024, The Supernatural Powers of Fabulous Panther (Biimskojiwan), this panel discussion creates space to gather and reflect on her work and practice with special guests curator and educator Professor Mikinaak Migwans (Anishinaabe; Wiikwemikoong Unceded Territory), second wave jingle dress dancer and writer Professor Karen Pheasant Neganigwane (Anishinaabekwe; Wiikwemikoong Unceded Territory), and director and curator of moving image at Walker Arts Center Pablo de Ocampo.

Together, they will move through conversation about their shared and respective practices and proximities to culture, art, and the jingle with a public audience. They will also explore pertinent relationalities to Maria’s work around sounding the body, and the collective voice and resonance of spirals when gathering and arranged in various configurations.

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This program is presented in partnership with Hart House and the Indigenous Creation Studio, UTM.

Image credit: The Supernatural Powers of Fabulous Panther (Biimskojiwan), Maria Hupfield, 2024. Toronto Biennial of Art 2024. Photography: Toni Hafkenscheid. Courtesy of the artist and the Toronto Biennial of Art.

At our third Biennial, local multidisciplinary artists have been commissioned as Storytellers to develop participatory sessions informed by their personal insights and experiences of the city and will lead visitors through the exhibition artists’ installations, research, and perspectives. They will offer both booked and drop-in walks and conversations to intergenerational audiences regularly throughout the duration of the Biennial.

Contact us at learning@torontobiennial.org to book a free group Storytelling tour for your school, organization, or community space.

Image Caption: Storytelling at 32 Lisgar St and Park as part of the Toronto Biennial of Art. Photography: Rebecca Tisdelle-Macias.

The Curatorial Encounters program series invites all members of the arts community and the general public to meet and converse with our 2024 exhibition curators, Dominique Fontaine and Miguel A. López.

For the first three Curatorial Encounters, Dominique and Miguel – in dialogue with artists, collaborators, and other TBA staff – hosted iterative conversations focused on the curatorial process and building of the 2024 Biennial.

For this final edition of Curatorial Encounters, we celebrate the opening of the Biennial with the second of two public tours by TBA curators highlighting the impact that the Biennial artists have on Toronto, spanning from The Auto BLDG at 158 Sterling Ave in the West to the Toronto Sculpture Garden in the East.

West End Tour Schedule:

• 5pm: Tour at Gallery TPW, featuring the works of Abraham O. Oghobase, Manuel Mathieu, Nicholas Galanin
• 6-6:30pm: Walking to The Auto BLDG at 158 Sterling Ave
• 6:30-7:30pm: Tour of The Auto BLDG at 158 Sterling Ave, featuring the works of Angelica Serech, Cristina Flores Pescorán, Elina Waage Mikalsen, Gaëlle Choisne, Hangama Amiri, Rudy Loewe, Sameer Farooq, Santiago Yahuarcani, Sandra Brewster, Stina Baudin

Note: Registration is not required to attend, but is strongly recommended and will allow registrants to receive important updates about the Program. Registration opens August 21!

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For information about Precarious Joys: The East End Tour, taking place on Saturday, October 4, please visit the What’s On page or “Related Programming” below.

This program is co-presented with Gallery TPW.

Image credit: A Walk Across Space and Time, Toronto Biennial of Art, 2019. Photography: Yuula Benivolski.

At our third Biennial, local multidisciplinary artists have been commissioned as Storytellers to develop participatory sessions informed by their personal insights and experiences of the city and will lead visitors through the exhibition artists’ installations, research, and perspectives. They will offer both booked and drop-in walks and conversations to intergenerational audiences regularly throughout the duration of the Biennial.

Contact us at learning@torontobiennial.org to book a free group Storytelling tour for your school, organization, or community space.

Image Caption: Nicole Markland leading a Storytelling Session at Small Arms Inspection Building for the 2022 Toronto Biennial of Art. Photography: Rebecca Tisdelle-Macias.

In this two-day program, 2024 Biennial artist Karen Tam and Toronto-based photographer May Truong invite members of Chinese-Canadian communities in Toronto and the Greater Toronto Area to participate in a family photoshoot within Karen’s immersive installation Scent of Thunderbolts. Evoking the historic San Francisco photo studio, May’s Studio, that photographed Cantonese opera performers throughout the early-mid 1900s, this project invites participants to contribute to a community-built archive and define what family and home means to them through the act of having their photograph taken.

We invite participants to consider the meaning of “family” broadly, transcending beyond only immediate, blood relatives to also include intergenerational extended families, chosen kin, and those you share home and time with.

Each participant will be sent a digital copy of their portrait and, with their permission, a copy will be deposited within an archive specializing in Chinese Canadian history (details forthcoming).

Sessions will be available in fifteen-minute intervals and will be booked on a first-come first-serve basis. Sign up below via Google Form.

• Sign up for October 26
• Sign up for October 27

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Note: As a part of Karen’s larger artistic practice and research, this Program is reserved for Chinese-Canadians within the GTA. Learn more about Karen’s work Scent of Thunderbolts.

Image credit: Installation view of the chrysanthemum has opened twelve times by Karen Tam, Koffler Centre of the Arts, Toronto, 2020. Photography: Toni Hafkenschied.

Experience the vivid history and enduring contemporary presence of Cantonese Opera in this workshop led by Alice Chan, Director of Starlight Chinese Performing Arts Centre. With accompanying Starlight students, Alice will lead participants through a brief introduction to Cantonese opera, followed by a series of movement exercises using theatre props and costumes from Starlight’s extensive and culturally rich collections. Attendees will then witness a brief demo of a performance by Starlight students, showcasing the traditions and versatility of Cantonese opera as a mode of storytelling and an active art form practiced in Chinese communities across Canada.

Note: This Program has a limited capacity. Register via Eventbrite.

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This program is made possible through the generous support of the Power Corporation of Canada and Eleanor & Francis Shen.

Image credit: Starlight Chinese Opera performing. Photo courtesy of Starlight Chinese Opera Performing Arts Centre.

At our third Biennial, local multidisciplinary artists have been commissioned as Storytellers to develop participatory sessions informed by their personal insights and experiences of the city and will lead visitors through the exhibition artists’ installations, research, and perspectives. They will offer both booked and drop-in walks and conversations to intergenerational audiences regularly throughout the duration of the Biennial.

Contact us at learning@torontobiennial.org to book a free group Storytelling tour for your school, organization, or community space.

Image Caption: Nicole Markland leading a Storytelling Session at Small Arms Inspection Building for the 2022 Toronto Biennial of Art. Photography: Rebecca Tisdelle-Macias.

Join Storytellers Jingshu and Siki every Sunday at 32 Lisgar St for a drop-in writing circle that will spark your creativity!

Schedule:

• 12:30pm: Meet inside Pamila Matharu’s installation, tere naal _ with you (2024), where Jingshu and Siki will start their tour of the exhibition, highlighting a selection of artworks and artists to inspire the following writing session.
• 1:30-2:30pm: Following the tour, Jingshu and Siki will facilitate a drop-in writing session. After some quiet time for writing, participants will be encouraged to share in a casual discussion, depending on their comfort level.

Everyone is welcome and no prior creative writing experience is required. This program does not require registration and those interested are free to drop in at any time. Writing materials will be provided.

Image credit: Storytelling in Pamila Matharu’s installation tere naal _ with you (2024) at 32 Lisgar St, 2024. Photography: Jingshu Yao.

In this two-day program, 2024 Biennial artist Karen Tam and Toronto-based photographer May Truong invite members of Chinese-Canadian communities in Toronto and the Greater Toronto Area to participate in a family photoshoot within Karen’s immersive installation Scent of Thunderbolts. Evoking the historic San Francisco photo studio, May’s Studio, that photographed Cantonese opera performers throughout the early-mid 1900s, this project invites participants to contribute to a community-built archive and define what family and home means to them through the act of having their photograph taken.

We invite participants to consider the meaning of “family” broadly, transcending beyond only immediate, blood relatives to also include intergenerational extended families, chosen kin, and those you share home and time with.

Each participant will be sent a digital copy of their portrait and, with their permission, a copy will be deposited within an archive specializing in Chinese Canadian history (details forthcoming).

Sessions will be available in fifteen-minute intervals and will be booked on a first-come first-serve basis. Sign up below via Google Form.

• Sign up for October 26
• Sign up for October 27

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Note: As a part of Karen’s larger artistic practice and research, this Program is reserved for Chinese-Canadians within the GTA. Learn more about Karen’s work Scent of Thunderbolts.

Image credit: Installation view of the chrysanthemum has opened twelve times by Karen Tam, Koffler Centre of the Arts, Toronto, 2020. Photography: Toni Hafkenschied.