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Toronto Biennial of Art opens second edition on march 26

Exhibitions and Programs showcase range of work by artists from Canada and around the globe at the Biennial on view through June 5, 2022 

Toronto, ON…What Water Knows, The Land Remembers, the second edition of the #torontobiennialofart (the Biennial/TBA), opens on Saturday, March 26, 2022. The Biennial’s free Exhibitions and Programs, presented across several sites throughout the 72-day event, remain on view through June 5, 2022. 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 relationality, envisioning an expansive form of kinship—between curators, with artists and collaborators, and with the human and more-than-human. Exhibition and programming sites for the 2022 Biennial move inland from the shoreline of Lake Ontario, following the tributaries, above ground and hidden, which shape this place.

More than 70 Canadian and international participants will be featured responding to and expanding on resonant ideas through artworks and programming. Ghazaleh Avarzamani, Nadia Belerique, Judy Chicago, Jeffrey Gibson, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Marguerite Humeau, Jatiwangi art Factory (JaF), Brian Jungen, Jumana Manna, Eduardo Navarro, Paul Pfeiffer, Eric-Paul Riege, and Buhlebezwe Siwani are among the participating artists. Please see the opening week schedule below and visit this link for a full list of Biennial participants.

Biennial participants are 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 Biennial’s Exhibitions and Programs are collaboratively developed by Exhibitions Curators Tairone Bastien, Candice Hopkins, Katie Lawson, the Programs team comprising Roxanne Fernandes, Mary Kim, Kesang Nanglu, Emily Schimp, and Ilana Shamoon, as well as former Programs Curators Clare Butcher and Myung-Sun Kim. The inaugural TD Curatorial Fellows, Sebastian De Line and Chiedza Pasipanodya, present their projects as a part of the Biennial. Whether in-person, outdoors, or online, Biennial Exhibitions and Programs create opportunities for learning and active engagement across the city with established art institutions, artist-run centres, arts organizations, community organizations, and educational institutions to engage a wide audience.

Most Exhibitions and Programs will be held at the Biennial’s two main Exhibition venues—72 Perth Avenue in the Junction neighborhood and the Small Arms Inspection Building in nearby Mississauga—and will also occur at site-specific locations throughout the city. Other programming sites include 5 Lower Jarvis Street; Arsenal #contemporaryart; Colborne Lodge; Fort York National Historic Site, #toronto History Museums; High Park; Museum of #contemporaryart #toronto (MOCA); and Textile Museum of Canada. Visit this link for more information on all Biennial sites.

Opening Week Events

Jatiwangi art Factory (JaF) with LAIR clay music ensemble: Andzar Agung Fauzan, Pipin Muhammad Kaspin, Tedi Nurmanto, Kiki Rasmadi Permana, Tamyiz Noor Ramadhan, and Ika Yuliana

Terrakota Route

Performance – In person

Date: March 26, 2022 | Time: 11:00am

Location: Small Arms Inspection Building

As part of the launch of the 2022 Biennial, members of Jatiwangi art Factory (JaF) come together in Terrakota Route for a mobile multimedia performance featuring original sound pieces and live activations. As a collective, their artistic practice emphasizes local rural life in relation to land and the terracotta industry in the Jatiwangi district, Indonesia. Clay, which is central to all of their artistic and cultural activities in the spirit of community empowerment, also serves as a material for fashioning instruments used by JaF’s music ensemble, LAIR. Inspired by the traditional obrog-obrog played each morning throughout the village of Jatisura in West Java to mark the beginning of Ramadan, LAIR’s performance ushers in a time of fasting, introspection, and prayer observed by many Muslim community members in #toronto.

Terrakota Route is a part of The Shape of Sound, a curatorial project organized by Sebastian De Line as a part of the Curatorial Fellowship program, made possible by the generous support of TD Bank Group through the TD Ready Commitment and in partnership with the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts, and the Gardiner Museum.

Further information in the press release to download