TBA’s Onsite Library offers a collection of textual and visual resources at 32 Lisgar Street, one of the main sites for the 2024 Toronto Biennial of Art. Content found within the library is carefully selected to serve as an extension and expansion of the research behind curators Dominique Fontaine and Miguel A. López’s Precarious Joys exhibition and the multi-faceted programmatic intentions of Programs Curator Jenn Goodwin. This year, the Library offers deeper engagement through an array of books by or about exhibition and programs artists, poetry, zines, non-fiction and critical texts, exhibition catalogues, and children’s books.

TBA’s Onsite Library is conceived and organized by Roxanne Fernandes, Production Manager, Public Programming & Learning, and designed for on-site use only.

CURATORIAL CONNECTIONS

Content found within this section has been selected to serve as an extension of the research behind Precarious Joys and the multi-faceted programmatic intentions. While some books are pulled from the pre-existing TBA Library, new editions for 2024 come as direct recommendations from Exhibition Curators Dominique Fontaine and Miguel A. López and Programs Curator Jenn Goodwin. Critical texts, non-fiction, memoirs, and poetry speak to the key directives of “Joy,” “Precarious,” “Home,” “Polyphony,” “Solace,” and “Coded” as well as the thematics of the body as a container of time and a holder of extraordinary wisdom and the strength and intimacy of collective acts (like listening, observing, singing, and creating).

  • Angela Y. Davis, “If They Come in the Morning: Voices of Resistance”
  • Amitav Ghosh, “The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable”
  • bell hooks, “All about Love: New Visions”
  • bell hooks, “Art on my mind: visual politics”
  • bell hooks, “Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope”
  • Byung-Chul Han, “The scent of time”
  • CA Conrad, “A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon a”
  • Chelsea Vowel, “Indigenous Writes: A guide to First Nations”
  • Chelsey Clammer, “Circadian”
  • David Fortin & Adrian Blackwell, “Delineating Nation State Capitalism”
  • Denise Bolduc, “Indigenous Toronto”
  • Esi Edugyan, “Out of the Sun: On Race and Storytelling”
  • Sara Florence Davidson, Robert Davidson, “Potlatch as
  • Pedagogy: Learning Through Ceremony”
  • James Baldwin, “The Fire Next Time”
  • Jenny Odell, “How to do nothing: resisting the attention economy”
  • Julie Crooks, Dominique Fontaine, Silvia Forni (eds.), “Making History: Visual Arts & Blackness in Canada”
  • Katherine McKittrick, “Dear Science and Other Stories”
  • Kathryn Yusoff, “A Billion Black Anthropocenes”
  • Max Liboiron, “Pollution is Colonialism”
  • Ozlem Sensoy and Robin DiAngelo, “Is Everyone Really Equal?”
  • Robin Wall Kimmerer, “Braiding Sweetgrass”
  • Robin Wall Kimmerer, “Braiding Sweetgrass: For Young Adults”
  • Ross Gay, “Inciting Joy”
  • Saidiya Hartman, “Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women and Queer Radicals”
  • Tiffany Lethabo King, “The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies”
  • Tina M. Campt, “Listening to Images”
BY, ABOUT, OR RELATED TO 2024 ARTISTS

These books, catalogues, and experimental publications are by, about, or closely related to an exhibition or programs artist for the 2024 Biennial. They feature past works of artists, the exploration of larger concepts, and influential or referential texts. Together, these books speak to a larger mosaic of knowledge learned, exchanged, and documented—adding to a history of impactful contemporary art and acknowledging the voices that shape it.

  • Daniela Leykam and Christoph Tannert, “Gaëlle Choisne: Temple of Love – To Hide”
  • Alexis Pauline Gumps, “Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals”
  • Alice Wong, “Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-first Century”
  • Arlene Chan, “The Chinese Community in Toronto: Then and Now”
  • Audrey Hudson, Awad Ibrahim, Karyn Recollet, “In This Together: Blackness, Indigeneity and Hip Hop”
  • Billy Ray Belcourt, “This Wound is a World”
  • Cauleen Smith, “Human 3.0_Reading List 2015-2016”
  • Cecilia Vicuña, “Word Weapons”
  • David W. Penney and Gerald McMaster (ed.), “Before and After the Horizon: Annishinaabe artists of the Great Lakes”
  • Dionne Brand, “A Map to the Door of No Return Notes to Belonging”
  • Édouard Glissant, “Poetics of Relation”
  • Fariha Róisín, Britt Wray, Sarah Milroy, “Rajni Perera”
  • Forough Farrokhzad, “Let us believe in the beginning of the cold season”
  • Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, “Flatbread & Flavours”
  • Karen Pheasant-Neganigwane, “Powwow: A Celebration through Song and Dance”
  • Maria Hupield, “Breaking Protocol”
  • Marwan Kaabour (Ed.), “The Queer Arab Glossary”
  • M. NourbeSe Philip, “Zong!”
  • Paul Klee, “Pedagogical Sketchbook: Bauhausbücher 2”
  • Raven Chacon, “For Zitkála-Šá”
  • Robin Wall Kimmerer, “Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses”
  • Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, “Ch’ixinakax utxiwa: On Decolonising Practices and Discourses Critical South”
  • Tanya Lukin Linklater, “Slow Scrape”
BOOKS FOR YOUTH

“Books for Youth” are focused on exploring curatorial themes, artists, and works through educational texts, storytelling, and illustrative books. Focusing on accessible levels of relationality, this collection is an invitation to explore the root of an idea, see it grow, and witness what it can become.

  • Danielle Daniel, “Sometimes I Feel Like A Fox
  • Darren Lebeuf, Ashley Barron, “My City Speaks”
  • David L. Harrison, “The Dirt Book: Poems About Animals That Live Beneath Our Feet”
  • Diane Wilson, Sun Yung Shin, Shannon Gibney, John Coy, “Where We Come From”
  • Esla Beskow, “Children of the Forest”
  • Hazar Elbayya, “My Olive Tree”
  • Jack Wong, “The Words We Share”
  • JaNay Brown-Wood, “Miguel’s Community Garden”
  • Kenesha Seed, “Many Shapes of Clay: A Story of Healing”
  • Kobi Yamada, “Noticing”
  • Kobi Yamada, “What do you do with an idea?”
  • Margarett McBride, “Dominique’s Thrifted Treasures”
  • Susie Brooks, Sirjana Kaur, “The stories & secrets of colours”
A LEARNING EXCHANGE WITH OCAD U ZINE LIBRARY

The OCAD U Zine Library was launched in 2007 by artist Alicia Nauta, a student of OCAD U’s Printmaking program, and continues to be an ever-growing collection of handmade self-publications now numbering over 5000 online. Learning Zone Coordinator Heather Evelyn selected zines from this vast collection in response to the Biennial’s curatorial key directives of “Joy,” “Precarious,” “Home,” “Polyphony,” “Solace,” and “Coded”—terms that encapsulate how TBA artists’ practices amplify political consciousness and reassert the power of aesthetics in shaping collective existence.

Presented in partnership with the Ontario College of Art & Design University Library.

  • Angel Pang, “Let’s go picnic” (2019)
  • Brandi Bird (Ed.); [various authors], “Together Apart Zine: Issue 4: Bodies” (2020)
  • Brandi Bird (Ed.); [various authors], “Together Apart Zine: Issue 5: Home” (2020)
  • Braudie Blais-Bille, “Indige zine: healing: issue 2″ (2017)
  • Claire Urbanski, “Stuck in place: some thoughts on belonging” (2013)
  • Cleo, “Kingston is for Lesbians”
  • Cindy Milstein, “Reclaim the Cities: From Protest to Popular Power” (2010)
  • Doctor, Kesheena, “Going Places: the realities of being Native American” (2015)
  • Emma Percy, “All Together: a primer for connecting to place + cultivating citizenship” (2017)
  • It’s Going Down, “Reclamation: The Indigenous Struggle For Lan and Autonomy in Chiapas” (2016)
  • Jasmine G (Ed.); [various authors], “Loose Leaf: Volume 5: Summer” (2018)
  • Josh MacPhee, “Pound the Pavement #31: Graphics from the Sleeves of Vinyl Records of Palestinian Resistance and Existence” (2024)
  • John Redhouse, “Geopolitics of the Navajo-Hopi ‘Land Dispute’” (2016)
  • Kara Sievewright; David Cunningham, “A Beautiful Storm Has Come” (2011)
  • Leila Abdelrazaq, “The Fig Tree” (2018)
  • Lina Wu; [various authors], “Quaranzine” (2021)
  • Llud (Ed.); [various authors], “Social War On Stolen Native
  • Land: Anarchist Contributions” (2016)
  • Meegan Estelle Lim; Connie Lai, “(Red) Pocket Recipes (enclosed in red envelope + gold tape)” (2020)
  • Naomi Moyer, “Black Women & Self Care: Thoughts on Mental Health, Oppression & Healing” (2015)
  • Natalie Mark, “Diasporic Memory: Remembering Without Really Remembering”
  • Occupied Duwamish Territory, “Resist: The Front Line Is Everywhere” (2017)
  • Research & Destroy Land & Liberty: “Against The New City” (2014)
  • Sabrina Scott, “Community Ritual and Transformative Change” (2013)
  • Shakti Women of Colour Collective, “Colours of Resistance” (2001)
  • Sharan Dhaliwal (Ed.); [various authors], “burnt roti: issue 2” (2018)
  • Sharan Dhaliwal (Ed.); [various authors], “burnt roti: issue 3” (2020)
  • Unist’Ot’En Camp, “Heal The People, Heal The Land” (2018)
  • Whitney French, “Writing While Black” (2015)
THE AESOP QUEER LIBRARY

his year, TBA hosts a small collection of books donated by Aesop’s “Queer Library,” an ongoing celebration of Pride and Queer voices through literature. Instituted in 2021 in select stores across Canada and the US, it is now an annual global celebration of bibliophiles of all stripes. These donations, in collaboration with the ethos of TBA’s Onsite Library, speaks to creating “spaces of solace and freedom” within Precarious Joys—utilizing resources that allow us to see the power of Queer and marginalized voices that shape collective existences.

Copies available, free of charge, at the Front Desk of 32 Lisgar St. while supplies last.

Presented in partnership with Aesop.

  • Audre Lorde, “The Cancer Journals”
  • Bryan Washington, “Family Meal”
  • Jiaming Tang, “Cinema Love”
  • Malinda Lo, “Last Night at the Telegraph Club”
  • Mark Ford (ed.), “Frank O’Hara Selected Poems”
  • Maurice Vellekoop, “I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together”
  • Ocean Vuong, “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous”
  • Seán Hewitt and Luke Edward Hall, “300,000 Kisses”
  • Trung Le Nguyen, “The Magic Fish” Vanessa Lawrence, “Ellipses”
EPHEMERA LIBRARY

The Ephemera Library is a direct response to the key directive “Polyphony” and speaks to how the archives of past editions of the Toronto Biennial (curated by Candice Hopkins, Katie Lawson, and Tairone Bastien) can be in conversation with the curatorial journey enacted by Dominique Fontaine and Miguel A. López towards the formulation of Precarious Joys.

Musically, polyphony is an interweaving of two or more musical textures, engaging and presenting multiplicities. It can present different ideologies alongside one another—voices in harmony or opposition. In Precarious Joys, the accompanying curatorial publication, Dominique describes the polyphonic as “inspired by dialogic pedagogy as a way to listen to multiple voices, create respectful relations/collaborations, and provide a platform.” Living together, these materials speak to a call for a greater (and in ways, a pressingly omnipresent) significance. They spur memory and conversation, form relationalities to the works currently exhibited, and contribute to a dialogue that traverses across the city of Toronto.

Printed booklet with scores, 2019
Created for the artwork by Althea Thauberger + KITE, exhibited at the Small Arms Inspection Building. Presented to and in partnership with Her Majesty’s Canadian Ship HMCS York.

For their 2019 commission Call to Arms, Thauberger + KITE worked closely with Her Majesty’s Canadian Ship (HMCS), which boasts the country’s only conch shell sextet. In addition to the audio and video recordings of rehearsals featured at Small Arms Inspection Building for the 2019 Toronto Biennial of Art, the HMCS also performed four scores written by KITE during opening weekend. This booklet of scores was created as a gift to The HMCS York Band—guidance and prerogative to listen and feel the sounds and voices of yourself and others.

Natural fibre bags, 2019
Created for the exhibition artwork Garrison Creek by Maria Thereza Alvez, exhibited at 259 Lakeshore Blvd. E. Utilized for the public program Night Walk with the Lost Rivers and Rivers Rising featuring Lost Rivers, Nicholas Power, Rivers Rising, Setayesh Babaei, and Tsiktsinensawe Yakonkwe/Rhonda Lucy

“In walking the paths of former tributaries, Maria Thereza similarly connected with Bickford Park as a site that holds traces of what was formerly Garrison Creek. The ravine that the creek traced was covered over by infill from residential development, but along the southern edge of the park, the parapet of the former Harbord Street Bridge remains visible. Maria Thereza then proposed a participatory project in which groups gathered at the site to enact a communal unearthing of one of Toronto’s lost rivers. For the installation of Garrison Creek at 259 Lake Shore Boulevard East, small bags of excavated dirt were collected and accumulated below a textile printed with an archival image of the Harbord Street Bridge from 1910.”

— Katie Lawson. From “Water, Kinship, Belief,” 2019 (Eds. Candice Hopkins, Katie Lawson, and Tairone Bastien)

Collective drawing exercise, 2019
Created by participants of the public program An Educator Exchange led by PA System (Patrick Thompson✝ and Alexa Hatanaka) at 259 Lakeshore Blvd. E.

On October 31, 2019, PA System (Alexa Hatanaka and Patrick Thompson) began a series of Art Educator Exchanges. In these sessions, they brought together local educators to discuss alternative and collaborative learning methodologies present through their work with youth in Kinngait, Nunavut in the collective project Embassy of Imagination.

In this session, participants were invited to engage directly with PA System’s exercises and processes to interrogate the role of collective artistic approaches in place-making, challenging expectations of youth-engaged art. This album is a result of a round of “Telephone Pictionary,” a game in which a phrase is created, drawn, and then that drawing is captioned by a new person, drawn by another, and so forth. The drawings and phrases are passed along, the meaning or approach continually challenged by individual perception.

Prints, 2019
Presented in conjunction with the public program What’s Up With Gendai? and the installation Gendai Mobile Unit, both held at 259 Lakeshore Blvd. E.

Since its inauguration in 2000, the Toronto-based micro arts organization Gendai has been supporting East Asian artists and artists of colour through collective models and practice of reconfigurability, collaboration, and adaptability. On November 17, 2019, the community program What’s Up With Gendai? took place in the Programming & Learning Hub at 259 Lakeshore Blvd. E with the intention to find new leadership for Gendai in order to sustain its future. This session featured a talk with original members, speaking to experimental methodologies for existence and creation, including but not limited to: film, modular furniture, publications, treehouse dinner parties, newspapers, screenings, haikus, neighbourhood survey actions, a lemonade stand, musical jingles, and collective readings.

This ephemera is presented in two parts:

  • Function Follows Use, an essay by Yam Lau
  • The 2019 request for proposals, outlining the requirements for continuing the legacy of Gendai Gallery.

Gendai Gallery is currently led by Marsya Maharani and Petrina Ng.