Miriam El Abbassi | Arts Editor
Featured Image: Fifty per cent of the creators featured at the Toronto Biennial Of Art are BIPOC. | Courtesy of Miriam El Abbassi
Members of the GTA can now experience a wide variety of different art exhibits and performance events all across the city, absolutely free of charge. This is all a part of a widespread cultural event by the name of the Toronto Biennial Of Art — a collection of contemporary exhibits meant to inspire this generation and to add to the bigger conversation at hand.
Diversity is one of the themes addressed throughout this event, and Toronto is revered as one of the most diverse cities in the world, home to over 250 ethnicities. The Biennial mirrors this by highlighting its incredibly diverse creators, over 50 per cent of which are BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour). This event is done in partnership with the Art Gallery of York University (AGYU), as well as with many other galleries across the city.
At the AGYU, located within the Accolade East buildings, viewers can expect to see two exhibits: Caecilia Tripp: Going Space and Other Worlding, curated by Emelie Chlangur, and Jae Jarrell, curated by Candice Hopkins and Tairone Bastien. Both exhibits deal with the concept of creation, but both examine through two slightly differing perspectives.
Other university art galleries that have partnered with the Biennial include the Ryerson Image Centre and the Art Museum at the University of Toronto. The Image Centre features the installation, Ancestors, Can You Read Us? (Dispatches from the Future), which focuses on an imagined future where the next generation of activists offer insight to the new world affected by climate change. This installation was created by Syrus Marcus Ware, a French-Canadian artist living in Toronto.
The Art Museum at the University of Toronto features Qaggiq: Gathering Place, a collection of videos by the artist collective, Isuma, which touches on the ideas of colonialism and Inuit autonomy in current negotiations concerning land and resources. Isuma was founded in 1990, and it consists of artists Zacharias Kunuk, Paul Apak Angilirq, and Norman Cohn, who are all based in Igloolik, Nunavut, Canada.
The Toronto Biennial Of Art will be running until December 1. The full list of exhibition partners is available at https://torontobiennial.org
