Syrus Marcus Ware, MBL: Freedom, 2021. Video still of Dainty Smith as Jessica, Ravyn Wngz as Sabian, and Yousef Kadoura as Marcus. MBL: Freedom. Director: Syrus Marcus Ware. Director of Photography: Mishann Lau, 2022.
Toronto Biennial of Art 2022
What Water Knows, The Land Remembers
March 26, 2022 – June 5, 2022
https://torontobiennial.org
The Toronto Biennial of Art (the Biennial/TBA) has announced the confirmed Canadian and international artists participating in the second edition of the Biennial, on from March 26 to June 5, 2022.
As the curatorial team has worked on two editions of the Biennial, a number of artists from 2019 are returning in 2022 as part of a longer-term engagement, including Aycoobo (Wilson Rodríguez), Judy Chicago, Shezad Dawood, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Ange Loft with Jumblies Theatre & Arts, Jumana Manna, Abel Rodríguez, Susan Schuppli, and Syrus Marcus Ware.
Commissioned and invited artists contributing to TBA 2022 exhibitions and programs include: Derya Akay, Ghazaleh Avarzamani, Andrea Carlson, Jeffrey Gibson, Hanyaterra | Jatiwangi Art Factory*, Marguerite Humeau, Timothy Yanick Hunter*, Tsēmā Igharas and Erin Siddall, Janet Kigusiuq, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Amy Malbeuf, Victoria Mamnguqsualuk, Anne Zanele Mutema*, Joar Nango, Eduardo Navarro, Aki Onda, Jessie Oonark, Paul Pfeiffer, Dana Prieto, Augustas Serapinas, Buhlebezwe Siwani*, and Denyse Thomasos. They join the following list of previously announced 2022 Biennial artists: Nadia Belerique, Brian Jungen, Waqas Khan, Mata Aho Collective, Eric-Paul Riege, and Camille Turner.
*Artists invited by Chiedza Pasipanodya and Sebastian de Line, Curatorial Fellows for TBA 2022.
In total, the Biennial will bring together 37 local and international artists, hailing from over 18 places of origin including Argentina, Canada, England, France, Germany, Indonesia, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Lebanon, Lithuania, Norway, Pakistan, South Africa, Trinidad and Tobago, United States, and Zimbabwe, as well as Indigenous communities in Canada, Colombia, Aotearoa | New Zealand, Norway, and the United States. The range of contributors reflects Toronto’s status as one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world and the Biennial’s commitment to inspire people, bridge communities, and contribute to global conversations. Additional participants will be announced in February 2022 along with details for the Biennial’s extensive public programs and creative partnerships.
TBA 2019, titled The Shoreline Dilemma, was the first chapter of the two-part biennial, tracing various interconnected narratives and ecologies of the ever-changing shoreline of Lake Ontario. These connections revealed systems of resistance against and movement away from industrial colonial culture, uncovering polyphonic histories embedded in and around the shoreline.
The second chapter of the Biennial, What Water Knows, the Land Remembers, will explore locations near above-ground and hidden tributaries that channel water into Lake Ontario, as well as the ravines that shape the city’s geography. Extending the interconnections of those locations and expanding the notions of the central question from 2019, “What does it mean to be in relation?,” the curators envision expansive forms of kinship—with each other, their collaborators and the more-than-human, a belief that humans are in deep relation with other living beings. To frame and help guide their collaboration, the curators have generated a lexicon—a shared vocabulary—to ground their thinking and ongoing processes of exhibition-making.
