Artists Fight Global Turmoil at the Toronto Biennale

TORONTO — Aptly titled Precarious joysthe third edition of the Toronto Biennale of Art (TBA) looks at this moment of global political turmoil and the fragile state of the world. Organized by Dominique Fontaine and Miguel A. López, the exhibition, spread across 11 locations across the city, brings together more than 35 artists and collectives from Canada through the Caribbean and Asia, Latin and South America and around the world to reflect on social issues , pressing political and ecological issues such as land conservation, relationships between beings and places, wastelands, resilience, identity and movement. The Biennale is based on six key directives that the artists cited in a series of dialogues with the curators: joy, precarity, home, polyphony, comfort, and “coded” (as in their indirect expression). In these terms, the exhibition “encapsulates how artists’ practices amplify political consciousness and the power of aesthetics in shaping collective life,” according to Fontaine and López’s curatorial statement.

Tong Yan Gaai (or Chinatown in Cantonese) (2012–24), Morris Lum’s series of lightbox photographs highlighting Toronto’s Chinese community, greets visitors to the city’s Union Station and Pearson Airport. The Canadian railway was a major component in the creation of many of the country’s Chinese cities; Lum’s works, which incorporate archival images, vividly depict what TBA aims to present: a world containing layered histories of immigration, migration and belonging that emphasize community building and collective living.

Larger-than-life works such as Léann Herlihy’s ‘to be nowhere’ (2022), a billboard on Abell Street and Queen Street West (part of an ongoing photo series) and Rajni Perera’s sculpture ‘ Vimana (N1 Starfighter)” (2024). ), installed at the Toronto Sculpture Garden, address the theme of space. While Herlihy centers queer and trans experiences to express how these communities occupy and transform space through a massive self-portrait showing their bound chests, Perera’s modern interpretation of a spaceship made of bamboo and rice paper lanterns confronts Western conceptions of advanced aerospace technology through immigration and space travel by fusing science fiction with traditional Buddhist Vesak kūdu.

Group exhibitions at Auto BLDG, 32 Lisgar Street and Collision Gallery demonstrate the sustained dialogue between artists and curators that is part of the collective in the arts. At Collision Gallery, Tessa Mars (“All Islands Touch”, 2024) and Rajni Perera (“Joyous Procession / Infinite Serpent”, 2024) present paintings that address displacement due to ecosystem devastation. Both works depict transformed people moving through an incongruous landscape, where air, land and water are no longer as clearly delineated as what we navigate today. “Truth Bears No Scandal (الـواضِح مو فـاضِح)” (2024) by Ahmed Umar and “Timur Merah Project XII: Light Speed ​​​​and Revelation” by Citra Sasmita show how the past invariably coexists with the present. Umar revisits classic Sudanese songs written about same-sex lovers and injects joy and fun into queer stories that would otherwise be violently criminalized. Suspended in the middle gallery, the installation, composed of traditional Kamasan canvas paintings, neon lamps and python skin, articulates how Balinese myths have the same relevance as modern Western truths.

Upon entering the ninth floor of the former Northern Aluminum Company, highly crafted textile installations coexist perfectly with photography and installations. For “I Lay My Ear Against the Weave’s Ear” (2019 – ongoing), Elina Waage Mikalsen transformed her grandmother’s looms to create new instruments. Disassembled into a harp-like instrument, it will be activated by the artist playing it with stones and adding her voice. It is her way of exploring the friction and connection between heritage, representation, power relations and identity formation. Stina Baudin also uses looms as a communication device, translating data to visualize transient conditions. In “Data Studies: Caribbean-Canadian Geographies 86/96” (2022), a colorful fabric hanging on a white wall deciphers the data to indicate the migratory conditions of the black diaspora, information that, as Baudin says, we are used to accessing . on a computer.

The artists also took advantage of the odd shape of 32 Lisgar Street and closed rooms to present powerful videos and immersive installations and provide a resting space for the public. These works, and those in the various Toronto Biennial locations, speak to the reverberating effects of colonization, signs of resistance, unmasking, rituals, history and erasure, all topics that expand understanding of the six keywords highlighted by the artists and curators.

This edition of TBA is imbued with the awareness that time is not given: if we can spare it, we can take our time with each work, letting its joys, stories and crowds wash over us. Offering viewers various perspectives on world building, Precarious joys demonstrates the potential of aesthetics and beauty to preserve collective histories and memories cut short by neoliberalism and imperialism. We can make a home out of lack and find joy and beauty in the midst of instability.

Toronto Art Biennale: Precarious Joys continues at various Toronto locations until December 1st. It was curated by Dominique Fontaine and Miguel A. López.