Programs Overview

TBA Programs bridge Biennial editions by providing ongoing exploration of the artistic practices and ideas running through and between our bi-annual events. A Biennial is defined as “an event happening every two years.” The term also refers to a “plant that lives for two years, producing seeds and flowers in its second year.” In relation to TBA Programs, this second interpretation is particularly relevant: our accessible public and learning programs engage visitors, artists, partners, and collaborators year-round, with a particularly generative period during each Biennial. 

Artist-led, participatory, responsive, and research-based programs both inform, and are informed by, each Biennial edition’s curatorial direction. In 2019, for our inaugural Biennial entitled The Shoreline Dilemma, our public and learning programs were guided by the question, “How do we learn and listen with the lake?” Our programs subsequently centred the complex, relational contexts explored in the 2022 Biennial, What Water Knows, The Land Remembers, focusing on terms from the curatorial lexicon that shaped that edition’s lines of inquiry. 

As we engage in and learn from year-round programs, TBA continues to invite visitors to gather, reflect, and exchange through artist projects and commissions. We support time-based, sometimes iterative projects that invite artists to expand their practice and experiment with process-driven work. The diverse contexts of the Toronto area further inspire meaningful connections for intergenerational audiences participating in conversations, workshops, performances, storytelling sessions, walks, and more. 

TBA is currently preparing the third Biennial edition, curated by Dominique Fontaine and Miguel A. López and opening on September 21, 2024. We invite you to explore our active public programming and learning streams:

Programs & Events is a platform for artist-led programming that invites visitors to engage directly with the creative and critical processes at work within, and between, Exhibition editions.

The Mobile Arts Curriculum (MAC) is a collection of commissioned learning resources that have been co-created with artists and collaborators while building upon the curatorial ideas explored in a given TBA Exhibition. 

TBA’s Storytelling Program creates a hybrid model of contemporary art mediation for TBA Exhibitions and learning activities, which combines modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses to the artworks presented in the Biennial. 

School Programs are active year-round both virtually and in-person. Through these activities, students and educators engage with contemporary art through learning tools and Storytelling sessions both during and in-between Biennial editions. 

The TBA Podcast series is a forum for curator-led conversations with Exhibition artists that approaches reflection, listening, and learning with an engaging and experiential lens.

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