Welcome Letters

We are beyond excited to launch our second edition of the Toronto Biennial of Art: What Water Knows, The Land Remembers. Our curatorial team, Candice Hopkins, Katie Lawson, and Tairone Bastien, along with Curatorial Fellows Chiedza Pasipanodya and Sebastian De Line, have expanded on the themes of the 2019 Biennial to create a second edition that speaks directly to many facets of Toronto’s contexts, geography, and culture that inform what our city is today.

At the beginning of the pandemic, a TBA friend and donor told us that the Biennial could be a beacon of hope, a role we took very seriously as we continued with so many unknowns. As an organization, we needed, and were expected, to play a significant role in the city’s recovery by bringing artists, people, and communities together again.

The 2022 Biennial is intended to be a moment of inclusion, of kinships new and old, and of deep reflection. It is also a bold and thoughtful exhibition and series of programs that looks toward extending the thinking, curating, and artist projects of the first Biennial. This is reflected in our first exhibition publication, Water, Kinship, Belief, a culmination of the artistic and curatorial thinking over two Biennials.

It’s not a Biennial until you’ve done it twice! This has been my tagline for the last two years as it felt like an accurate yet humorous way to empower our collaborators and us toward 2022. Over the many years of my Biennial work, and ever so deeply this year, I have been humbled and inspired by our team, artists, partners, colleagues, and trusted donors who have stayed the course with us, collectively dreaming and looking forward to our second edition. I have immense gratitude for you all and cannot wait to welcome you this spring.