Bonavista Biennale 2025: String Games

August 16 – September 14, 2025
Various locations, Bonavista Peninsula, Newfoundland
www.bonavistabiennale.com

Ajaraaq. Na’atl’o’. Ayatori. Cat’s Cradle. String Games are one of the oldest forms of play and handcraft, invented by cultures around the world. Through the careful manipulation of strings of thread, fiber, or sinew, fleeting shapes are formed to tell stories and share wisdom. They are woven through time and space and passed down through generations, intertwining the past with the present. With endless possibilities bound in a single loop, these games speak to skill, resourcefulness, the spark of imagination, and collaborative world-building.

This edition of Bonavista Biennale invites artists and visitors to consider what ties them to place. Many of the featured artists are from islands or remote locales, where isolation has fostered close-knit communities, ingenuity, and interdependence. Across 17 sites, they foreground local histories, customary practices, and land-based knowledge. Collaboration, connection, and the joy of creativity are celebrated. Together, the artists in String Games invite us to experience something enduring yet ephemeral, through the images, forms, sounds, and movements that they share.

For the first time, artists from multiple international locations have been invited to participate. Hailing from Hawai’i, Japan, Kalaallit Nunaat / Greenland, and Sápmi / Norway and Sweden, they share resonant contexts, histories and contemporary realities with artists from Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland) and Nunatsiavut and Nitassinan (Labrador).

Sancia Miala Shiba Nash, kuroshio, 2025, video still, 2-channel video with sound, 20 minutes. Courtesy of the artist.

Participating Artists:

Brian Amadi | Sarah Baikie | Dáiddadállu | Eastern Owl | Andrea Flowers | Clara Clayton Gough | Maureen Gruben | Michael Massie | Ethan Murphy | Lisa Myers | Marianne Nicolson | Douglas Penney | Toby Rabinowitz | Daniel Rumbolt | Sancia Miala Shiba Nash | Inuuteq Storch | Haruna Sugisaki | Melissa Tremblett | Larry Weyand | Nellie Winters | The Women’s Institute

The Biennale is animated by a full program of events, including live performances, artist demos, talks, tours, a hike, and festive gatherings. A 2-day series of conversations to mark the Biennale’s milestone fifth edition will take place, August 17–18. Capacity is limited, register here.

Maureen Gruben, still from Stitching My Landscape, 2017, video, 6:10 minutes. Commissioned by Partners In Art for Landmarks/Repères 2017. Courtesy of the artist.

String Games is organized by Dr. Heather Igloliorte, Curator; Rose Bouthillier, Artistic Director; and Sue Balint, Executive Director. A special exhibition of artists from Nunatsiavut is co-curated by Vanessa Flowers, Ella Jacque, and Jessica Winters.

The 2025 Biennale is being produced, in part, in partnership with Igloliorte’s Canada Excellence Research Chair in Decolonial and Transformational Indigenous Art Practices and the Taqsiqtuut Indigenous Research-Creation Lab at the University of Victoria.

Other programming partners include Curating Change, Fogo Island Arts, Discovery UNESCO Global Geopark, Union House Arts, Heritage NL, Riddle Fence, and Port Rexton Brewery.

Bonavista Biennale’s lead supporters are Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada Council for the Arts, ArtsNL, Partners in Art, Fortis, and TD Bank.

Brian Amadi, Middle Cove Beach, 2025, digital image featuring Kabaso and Jessica. Courtesy of the artist.

About Bonavista Biennale

Bonavista Biennale is an innovative, rural-based, public art event occurring every two years on Newfoundland’s Bonavista Peninsula. It provides a unique platform for artists and audiences to explore, exchange and challenge different ideas and perspectives. Biennale visitors experience artworks alongside the complex and compelling histories, economies, geological features and environments that shape the Bonavista Peninsula. Projects are realized in unconventional outdoor and indoor sites, including historic and industrial buildings, outport villages, beaches and cliffsides. The 2023 Biennale saw attendance figures of nearly 20,000.

www.bonavistabiennale.com
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Bonavista Biennale gratefully acknowledges that the land on which we gather is Ktaqmkuk, traditional unceded Mi’kmaw territory. We further acknowledge with respect the diverse histories and cultures of the Beothuk, Mi’kmaq, Innu and Inuit of this province, and the ongoing connections with the past, present and future in our relationships with Indigenous and other peoples in Newfoundland and Labrador.