Land Acknowledgement

With each Biennial, the TBA team and board meaningfully revisit our Land Acknowledgement. As a group of newcomers, settlers, immigrants, and people Indigenous to lands across the country, we are reminded of the importance of coming together to align in our care for this place, in our collective dialogue, and in our relations to our communities. This repeated practice echoes that of repolishing the chain, set forward by the Covenant Chain alliances, and upholds values of reciprocity, sustainability, and accountability.

Our 2026 Biennial is framed in the Toronto region by Pearson International Airport on its western edge, the Gursikh Sabha Canada Sikh gurdwara to the northeast, and Harbourfront Centre in the south. This event, now in its fourth edition, has been generative and able to grow thanks to the care that the stewards of these lands and waters have given for thousands of years with a view to future generations.

First and foremost, we acknowledge that all of our Toronto based activities are located on land and near waters that have been sites of human activity for more than 12,000 years. This land is the Treaty 13 land and territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, and the traditional territory of the Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee, and Anishinaabe peoples, and continues to be part of who they are. Passed on by Elders, stories, beliefs, and concepts about the land and water guide, bind, and inspire us. These lands are now home to many Indigenous peoples from across the globe, as well as to those moving to or through Canada to seek refuge and new beginnings.

Entitled Things Fall Apart, this year’s Biennial extends, for the first time, into international sites across the ancestral lands of the Lenape, Iroquois, Eklutna Dena’ina, Osage, Missouria, Illiniwek, Kalinago, and Taino peoples. These lands are now known, respectively, as Nyack and Medina, New York; Anchorage, Alaska; St. Louis, Missouri; Saint Joseph, Martinique; and Detroit, Michigan. Developed with a set of propositions anchored by water—as a medium, material, methodology, and conceptual link—this year’s Biennial acknowledges the impacts of imperialism, climate change, and industry on this resource, which has been a life source and beacon of knowing for thousands of years. We rely on the shared geographies of the Great Lakes as a place of departure to learn from the expansive and interconnected relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people within the geographies of Toronto, the Great Loop, and vast global waterways.

As we write and reflect together, we acknowledge that relationships to land are complex and not always aligned with fixed boundaries. Land acknowledgements have limitations and we approach them with consideration and reflection. Together, we surface current research and understandings, process joy and pain experienced by our communities near and far, and revisit organizational approaches. We (un)learn with artists, partners, colleagues, and our board, attentively resisting the ongoing process of colonialism to the best of our ability. We take in our physical surroundings, countless trails, waterways, and wandering paths, and consider what lies beneath our feet and above our heads. We listen to the sounds and languages that inhabit our landscape, some understandable and some unknowable, embodied reminders of the physical and felt journeys made to get to this place.