Toronto is gaining in confidence, in part because it is learning to appreciate the ways it isn’t like anywhere else. Visit a city that lacks this town’s remarkable and yet unselfconscious multicultural mix and it is bound to seem hopelessly retrograde.
The starting pointing for some highly influential art careers (Michael Snow, General Idea, Peaches), Toronto looks to be on the cusp of something more broad-based: becoming an influential art scene in its own right that leads by example. Here are the names and exhibitions set to make waves – in the city and beyond – in the year ahead.
Carl Marin and Veronika Pausova
Franz Kaka, January 11 to February 3
Interesting things happen in this small basement space that’s home to not one but two art galleries that alternate shows. (Towards is the name of the other venture.) Sculptures by Marin and beguiling paintings by Pausova bring together geometric abstraction and surrealist figuration.
Here We Are Here: Black Canadian Contemporary Art
Royal Ontario Museum, January 27 to April 11
The ongoing dialogue between Toronto’s cultural institutions and artists about what Canadian identity looks like today includes earlier efforts at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Art Museum at U of T and the Aga Khan. This presentation at the ROM of works by nine African-Canadian artists features Sandra Brewster, Michèle Pearson Clarke and Chantal Gibson.
Yoko Ono’s The Riverbed
Gardiner Museum, February 22 to June 3
At 84, the artist, musician and social activist is a marvel for her ability to keep the language of conceptual art, which she helped to pioneer, relevant. Small gestures like the chance to mend broken crockery create moments for quiet and contemplation. Accompanying the show is a thoughtful slate of Ono-inspired programming featuring music, lectures and performance art.
Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrors
Art Gallery of Ontario, March 3 to May 27
Art exhibitions that are genuine events happen too rarely in the city. This show, already an international Instagram sensation, gives Toronto a chance to abandon its cool – and the frenzy has already started. Step inside the kaleidoscopic refractions of a Kusama Infinity Room and get an experience of the sublime not based in nature.
Nancy Paterson’s The Future, Before
InterAccess, March 7 to May 5
For its 35th anniversary, this organization for art and technology moves from Ossington to a new, bigger location at 950 Dupont. First up are works by veteran media artist Nancy Paterson, a timely exhibition showcasing this early contributor to discourse about the internet and cyber feminism.
Nadia Belerique
Oakville Galleries in Gairloch Gardens, April 8 to June 3
After getting some significant exposure abroad in two major group exhibitions, this will be the first solo show in a museum for the Toronto-based artist. Belerique forges her own unique aesthetic language by using sculptural installation to reflect on the 2D vocabulary of photography.
Unceded: Voices Of The Land
2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, May 26 to November 25
Renowned Canadian architect Douglas Cardinal and Indigenous co-curators Gerald McMaster (of OCAD University) and David Fortin are taking a team of 18 First Nations designers from Turtle Island (Canada and the U.S.) to Venice. Storytelling is a key component of Indigenous culture and will be used as a framework for looking at architecture and its related issues – like habitat and stewardship.
Helen Cho’s You Remained Dismembered
Trinity Square Video, summer 2018
Cho presents a new video work from a series made with Tai Lam – a fast food worker who came here as a refugee from Vietnam – combined together with words from the video “re-imagined as poetry,” and sculptural works made with vinyl, salt dough and ceramics.
Nuit Blanche in Scarborough
September 29
This year begins the era of the multipolar Nuit Blanche. A portion of the annual all-night event will move outside the core to the east end. The shift recognizes that the vibrancy of the city is not exclusive to its downtown. Participants include Ghana’s Ibrahim Mahama, known for his use of draped jute sacks as a sculptural material.
Untitled art TV show
To be announced
This has yet to be confirmed, but there have been rumblings that a major broadcast network is working on a documentary series focused on artists who call this city home and those who hail from here and are forging significant careers elsewhere. Purportedly hosted by a local talent and ex-child actor who boasts a Degrassi: The Next Generation credit on his resumé.
art@nowtoronto.com | @rosemheather
