by anna freeman, phd candidate
ONE FOR ALL, 2015. Listening to a
TBA Storyteller at the
Small Arms Inspection Building.
In the summer of 2022, I attended the second iteration of the Toronto Biennial of Art (TBA) with Dr. Richard Finlay Fletcher’s class Ways of Listening & Learning at the Toronto Biennial of Art. Unlike traditional biennials that change themes every festival year, TBA 2019 and 2022 presented a unique two-part biennial model that effectively emphasized continuity by exposing a myriad of narratives in the city center.
The first iteration, The Shoreline Dilemma, centered on Toronto’s waterfront. The growing population and supporting infrastructure on the waterfront led curators to ask artists to respond to the following question, “What does it mean to be in relation?” The second iteration, What Water Knows, the Land Remembers, drew visitors’ attention to the biennial exhibition sites in proximity to rivers and hidden tributaries. Over the course of these two exhibitions, artists, curators, and educators encouraged residents and visitors to reflect on the city’s waterways and forgotten narratives, specifically those related to Indigenous and Black presence.
Prior to our study abroad trip, our class met online with existing and former members of the TBA team including artist Ange Loft, curator Clare Butcher, Katie Lawson, and Deputy Director & Director of Programs Ilana Shamoon. Speakers shared their biennial experience, challenges, and hopes for the growing festival. These visits prepared our class to engage with the organizational structure of the biennial, and the artists’ visions, work, and perspective of Toronto.
The highlight was attending Camille Turner’s two-day workshop, Following the Afronautic Trail. Turner and her siblings invited visitors to survey the University of Toronto campus setting and archives to recover Black presence. Each day Turner began the workshops with a brief water ceremony and informed us of the four workshop rules: “Blackness is central, time is non-linear, silence is not absence, and imagination is a tool for world-making.” I am grateful to have experienced Turner’s workshop emphasizing embodied learning, Indigenous and Black futurity, and re-storying. In many ways, my research aligns with Turner’s work, as it focuses on hidden narratives, specifically the experience of Indigenous artists and art educators at land grant institutions.
WHISPER INTO A HOLE
In the spring of 2022, I worked alongside Indigo Gonzales, Rebecca Copper, and Dr. Richard Finlay Fletcher (a.k.a Minus Plato) to curate the Whisper into a Hole exhibition. Following the call to unsettle institutions, we found ways to share the critical work of Indigenous artists, writers, activists, and scholars. All in all, this exhibition was a reflective experience that emphasized relationality, collaboration, and participation.
The exhibition aligned with the issues I explored with my students in my undergraduate course, ARTEDUC 2600: Visual Culture: Investigating Diversity and Social Justice. This course briefly explored several political movements, including Civil Rights Movement, Black Lives Matter, Red Power Movement, and the Land Back Movement. My students engaged with the exhibition texts, explored the Potu Faitautusi Library, and created readers that were photocopied and left in the gallery space for others to view. Afterward, several students expressed that they were unaware that the gallery existed on campus, and others thanked me forsharing the content with them.
