Call for Submissions – Tkaranto Wiigwaasabak: East to West

S’mad Offsite Nuit Blanche 2024, The present is everything: Future to past. Photo: Guinevere Pura

Call for Submissions
Tkaranto Wiigwaasabak: East to West

Submission Deadline: Friday, September 6, 2025, 11:59pm ET
Exhibition Dates:
Saturday, October 4, 2025, Time TBC
Sunday, October 5, 2025, Time TBC

Artists are invited to submit up to three (3) pieces for consideration in the exhibition, Tkaranto Wiigwaasabak: East to West, which will be held at John McKenzie House in Willowdale, North York. This historic site, home to the Ontario Historical Society, houses over 5,000 titles related to Ontario’s diverse history, including books, journals, and ephemera.

Selected visual artists of different medium including paintings, drawings, photography, new media, sculptures, ceramics, textiles will be exhibited inside the John Mckenzie House.

Selected artists who have larger sculptures which are outdoor proof may have consideration for exhibition outside within the property of the John Mckenzie House.

Selected artists’ video works will be projected onto scroll-like displays on the building’s exterior, creating a dynamic dialogue between the artwork and the surrounding space.

Selected artists who wish to engage in any performance art may be considered for performances in an indoor coach house that opens its doors for public view or on an outdoor elevated patio.

About the Exhibition:

This offsite Nuit Blanche exhibition in Toronto explores themes of immigration, integration, and Toronto’s evolving cultural identity. The exhibition, Tkaranto Wiigwaasabak: East to West, focuses on the interplay between newcomers, Indigenous communities, and those with colonial ancestry, examining how these groups connect to Toronto’s natural spaces, ravines, waterways, and green spaces.

Cultural and Historical Context:

The name Tkaranto derives from the Mohawk phrase meaning “where there are trees standing in the water,” a reference to fishing weirs built by Indigenous peoples in Lake Ontario and its waterways. These natural spaces have long been sites of sustenance and gathering for generations, from Indigenous communities to waves of newcomers who bring their own interpretations of nature and urban life.

Today, Toronto is experiencing its largest migration wave in history, adding new layers to this relationship. People from diverse cultural backgrounds connect with the city’s land through traditions, environmental stewardship, and artistic expression, shaping Toronto’s identity as a global city.

Scrolls as Cultural Expressions:

Scrolls, as a medium, hold deep historical and cultural significance across various traditions:

• Eastern scrolls often tell stories through poetry, landscapes, and imagery, reflecting philosophical harmony between heaven, earth, and humanity.
• Western European scrolls were primarily ceremonial, used for legal, religious, or administrative purposes, often featuring minimal text.
• Indigenous scrolls, known as Wiigwaasabak, were created by the Anishinaabe people using birch bark. These sacred objects recorded spiritual teachings, rituals, songs, and ancestral knowledge for healing and community life.

Scrolls, across cultures, serve as a transmission of knowledge—a resilient symbol of survival, identity, and spirituality. Indigenous Wiigwaasabak encoded complex spiritual knowledge, preserving teachings through a symbolic language etched into birch bark and bound with cedar or spruce roots.

S’mad Offsite Nuit Blanche 2024, The present is everything: Future to past. Photo: Guinevere Pura

Artistic Call:

Artists are invited to reinterpret the concept of scrolls through their cultural lens.

Artists create “scrolls” with their artwork which interpret concepts and ideas that resonate with the creator with a similar cultural spirit that documents cultural ideas to transmit meaning to an audience to evoke time, and reflection to engage viewers to absorb meaning in layers and translation like a visual manuscript merging word, image, feeling and form.

These artistic interpretations of “scrolls” can take the form of paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs, or videos, acting as a means of communication beyond the physical boundaries of traditional scrolls.

Through their work, artists will transmit cultural ideas and explore their identity and relationship to the city. These visual manuscripts will evoke reflection, engage audiences, and translate cultural language into art, merging word, image, feeling, and form.

Artists are asked to consider:

• How can your artwork illustrate knowledge of your cultural identity and its connection to the city?
• How can your work act as a translation of cultural language, metaphorically or literally?

This exhibition challenges creators to explore their cultural artistic expressions and to document and share their ideas with the same spirit as traditional scrolls.

S’mad Offsite Nuit Blanche 2024, The present is everything: Future to past. Photo: Guinevere Pura

Eligibility:

• Open to artists (18 years of age and older) residing in the Toronto area and open to the rest of Canada and internationally if digital media i.e. video content TBC
• All works must be original and created by the submitting artist

Terms of Entry:

• Application Fee: $10 per submission of 3 images/videos ( non-refundable)
• Artists are responsible for transportation of artwork to and from John Mckenzie House
• Only work selected by Jurors will be included in the exhibition

Selection Process:

• Submissions will be reviewed by Vera Kabo Tse, founder of S’mad, Sustainable market art + design
• External Juror: Heidi Russell, founder of The International Women Artists’ Salon, New York, IWAS @womenartsalon

Timeline:

• Submission Deadline: September 6, 2025, 11:59pm ET
• Artists Notified: week of September 22, 2025
  ◦  Digital Mediums (example video): September 26, 2025
  ◦  Performance Art Piece: September 26, 2025 for outline of proposal and staging requirements with separate onsite meeting
• Installation Date and Artwork Drop Off: October 3, 2025, Time TBC
• Exhibition Dates: October 4 & 5, 2025, Time TBC

Artist Exhibition Fees:

Once selected, a non-refundable artist fee of $45 CAD is required upon acceptance into the exhibition. This fee helps cover administrative and promotional costs.

How to Submit:

Please review the details and submit your work via the online submission form.

For additional information or questions, please contact:
Vera Kabo Tse, S’mad, Sustainable Market Art + Design
smad.artdesign@gmail.com, 437-855-5389

S’mad
1 St. Clair West, #402
Toronto, ON M4V 1K6
smadartdesign.ca

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