The Toronto Biennial of Art Mobile Arts Curriculum (MAC) was conceived to bring artists and arts-based learning – and unlearning – to communities everywhere, making it accessible to all. The MAC is an evolving series of artist-led and -developed learning tools, available year-round as free downloads on our website.
Through artistic inquiry, imagining, and gathering, we generate new ideas and creative solutions together in response to climate and civic crises, working to build socially responsible and sustainable futures. Developed by contemporary artists, these learning tools centre decolonial practices through the arts and facilitate critical dialogue in response to our current contexts; commissioned artists share lived experiences from historically marginalized perspectives and respond thoughtfully to the local and Indigenous contexts of Tkaronto/Toronto and its surrounding regions.
We invite facilitators, principals and teachers to contact us at info@torontobiennial.org to learn more about bringing MAC tools to your schools and community gatherings in-person, in the form of facilitated workshops or printed learning resources.
This program is generously supported by Canada Council for the Arts.
2024: Precarious Joys
The 2024 Biennial aimed to showcase the ways in which artists from different localities respond to the impact and aftermath of colonialism in everyday life. Taking cues from artists, the curators Dominique Fontaine and Miguel A. López were guided by their practices, including the development of key directives drawn from the artists’ creative labours:
“Joy” “Precarious” “Home” “Polyphony” “Solace” “Coded”
The 2024 Mobile Arts Curriculum, developed in collaboration with the artists, responds to these contexts through listening, movement, dance, attunement and celebratory moments of gathering, creating a collective dialogue in response to the urgent issues of our time.
2024 Resource Guides were designed by Tetyana Herych.
Suggested Age: Intergenerational
Artist Tanya Lukin Linklater offers a multipart learning tool based on the Indigenous stewardship practices of High Park’s Black Oak Savannah.
In this audio piece voiced by the artist Charles Campbell, listeners connect with a loss, whether it be a loved one, a treasured object, a home, or something internal – and find healing through visualisation and breathwork techniques.
Featuring contributions from Pamila Matharu’s mentors, this zine explores counter-archiving as activism in the context of the 1992 Yonge Street Uprising and Fresh Arts — a mentorship program formed to amplify anti-racism and social reform for Black and Indigenous youth.
This limited edition print poster featuring stamped leftovers from Sameer Farooq’s installation of the same title, explores the migration stories of 11 flatbreads—plus a conversation between Farooq and Rima Zughaiyer of Toronto’s Palestine Bake Shop.
In this tool, learners are invited to contribute to Sonia Boyce’s ongoing project, the Devotional Collection by reflecting on Canadian BIPOC women artists and submitting their names and songs to be added to the growing archive.
2022: What Water Knows, the Land Remembers
What Water Knows, The Land Remembers draws from polyphonic histories sedimented in and around Toronto, revealing entangled narratives and ecologies across time and space. This second edition of a two-part biennial extends and deepens concepts of the 2019 Biennial: relationality and expansive forms of kinship with the human and more-than-human. Exhibition and programming sites for the 2022 Biennial move inland from the shoreline, following the tributaries, above ground and hidden, which shape this place.
To read more about the 2022 curatorial vision for the exhibition What Water Knows, the Land Remembers, please see here.
View the Printing Guide & Tips for information on how to print and bind specific tools and toolkits. Designed by Tetyana Hetrych, Archive Books, and artists.
Suggested Age: K-12, Families, Intergenerational
What is a Biennial?
“What is the Toronto Biennial of Art?”, “Where are we?”, “Why “tools”?” Exploration of these questions helps provide a context for the artist-led Mobile Arts Curriculum within What Water Knows, The Land Remembers exhibition, and the many approaches that have informed the second iteration of the Biennial.
Download: Introduction
Written by Camille Turner and Yaniya Lee the Black History Navigational Toolkit presents as a deck of cards guiding readers through Toronto’s Black histories and personal narratives by neighbourhood, theme, or history — and simply ways in which Black people have existed in the city and beyond.
Engineered by Timothy Yanick Hunter in collaboration with Chiedza Pasipandya, DARE joins Hunter’s ongoing project “True & Functional”, which explores “shimmerings” and how we may look and listen for them. Hunter uses archival sound from Black diasporic and African artists, novelists, and collectives to tell a story of Black culture, resilience, and art.
In collaboration with the Talking Treaties Collective and their publication “Treaty Guide for Torontonians” (2022), Your Tkaronto Companion Guide is a series of three booklets lead by Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) artist Ange Loft, unpacking place- and arts-based explorations of the complex and contested ways the city of Toronto was established.
In collaboration with Moccasin Identifier, Whose Land? asks visitors the question: “How will you know who was here before us?” This learning tool is a two part activity: a reflection piece and a stencil activity, exploring the actions of land kinship and stewardship alongside the original caretakers of this land.
Derya Akay invites guests to their installation, a celebration of ancestral, queer, and matriarchal forms. This booklet offers a colouring book, a treasure hunt, and a recipe from the artist’s own grandmother.
How do you “walk”? At a pace? With wheels? With purpose? Are you a runner? Take a walk with the Toronto Landscape Observatory, as they invite you to re-examine your perspectives and your relationship with the land. All you need is a paper frame and a tennis ball!
Art Chats asks you to consider women & mentorship as you embrace the in-between, with Inuit Nunavut artists Jessie Oonark (1906–1985) and her daughters, Janet Kigusiuq (1926–2005) and Victoria Mamnguqsualuk (1930–2016) — through four works which highlight a highly distinctive art form called nivingajuliaat.
2019: Tools for Learning
Developed from works featured in first edition of the Toronto Biennial of Art, The Shoreline Dilemma, the 2019 Tools for Learning series presents a toolbox of resources, references and activities that celebrate and complicate the many learnings from Biennial contributors and their projects.
Suggested Age: Intergenerational