Nuit Blanche Toronto 2025: Art Across the City

October 4 – 5, 2025 | 7pm – 7am
Free | Across Toronto
toronto.ca/NuitBlanche

Nuit Blanche Toronto returns October 4 under the theme Translating the City, inviting audiences to explore how art interprets and transforms urban life. This year’s event features over 200 artists and unfolds across neighbourhoods citywide, each offering a distinct perspective.

Lucid Flow by Ivan Rys

Etobicoke

The From here, there, everywhere exhibition along with Independent Projects sited across Exhibition Sponsor: Humber Polytechnic’s Lakeshore campus, offers a dynamic hub of creativity. Cassils’ Undersight confronts surveillance and power through a visceral performance with a high-powered beam of light, while asinnajaq’s River Piece (Etobicoke), brings the rhythms of the north to the exterior of Assembly Hall. Laurence Philomène, Noor Khan, sy gomes, Tommy Truong and Alize Zorlutuna contribute works exploring queer, trans, and diasporic experience, translating identity and visibility into forms that ripple across the exhibition spaces.

Emerging voices extend the dialogue: Ivan Rys’ Lucid Flow turns weather data into shifting light, Niloo Inalouei’s Woven Words suspends poetry across fabric, Alina Ponce’s ¿Habla Español? maps Latin American neighbourhoods through animation, and the Nuit Blanche Fellowship’s interactive Domus Nexus reimagines home as both structure and feeling.

Nearby, Mabelle Arts presents Signal, featuring additional projects that amplify community voices and foster participation.

Dead Ringer by Dave Dyment, 2022

Downtown

The downtown core exhibition, Poetic Justice examines Toronto’s layered histories of land, treaty, justice and migration. Annie Wong and Hannia Cheng’s the sound of lions in Chinatown amplifies community memory through an immersive installation and procession. Shellie Zhang’s Tower of Babel reflects on language and belonging, while Quinn Hopkins’ Sacred Tags bridges graffiti with ancient petroglyphs. Across the front of City Hall, Demian DinéYazhi’s epic installation Protect the Sacred Voice asserts Indigenous sovereignty in civic space. Nearby, Alexis Nanibush-Pamajewong’s For the Youth honours generational Indigenous resilience. The city’s centre turns into a gathering place for memory, resilience and renewal through works by Dave Dyment, Ellen Pau, sponsored by Arts in Hong Kong and the project The People’s Dancefloor, sponsored by Chelsea Hotel, Toronto.

Spadina–Fort York & Waterfront

At Harbourfront Centre, A Lake Story conjures water as a vessel of memory and migration. Along the lakeshore, the Canada Malting Silos come alive with Dissolving Boundaries, transforming industrial ruins into dreamlike portals. Nearby, Faisal Anwar’s A Place I Call Home, sponsored by CityPlace and Fort York BIA uses responsive technology to explore belonging in relation to place.

Fort York Visitor Centre hosts Jordan Shaw’s Ephemeral Presence, while Stackt Market becomes a site for Jason van Horne’s The City, Tong Lam’s Where there is no room for fiction, and Anupa Khemadasa’s Home, Sweet Home. Just west, at Waterworks, WhyWithCai’s Letters to Your Ex, Marc Nair’s The Poetry Dispensary and Tara Rose Morris’ MOVES invite personal exchanges.

The Bentway, Withrow Common and 401 Richmond extend this area with a mix of major institution and artist-run projects, ranging from monumental projections to intimate participatory experiences.

North York

Mel Lastman Square anchors the Collective Composition exhibition, transforming civic sites into spaces of shared creativity. Shilpa Gupta’s We Change Each Other emphasizes interconnection, while Blessyl Buan’s The Dream Weave invites the public to add their aspirations into a communal tapestry.

Rimini Protokoll’s 100% [City] transforms the Civic Centre Council Chambers with a participatory installation, inviting residents to share perspectives on Toronto. Tangled Art + Disability’s project, The Nuit Blanche Remote Access Hub extends the experience city-wide through an in-person and online experience. Surrounding works by Action Hero with Mia + Eric, Studio Rat, sponsored by GWL Realty Advisors, and Philippe Dépelteau in collaboration with Toronto Dance Theatre, explore civic possibility, transformation, and connectivity.

Programming at Gibson House, Meridian Arts Centre and North York Centre stretches this cluster of projects further. Crossroads Theatre’s The Good Stuff in York South–Weston highlights everyday legacies, adding another chapter to the North York area.

East End & Don Valley

The Danforth and Don Valley become stages for ritual, storytelling and remembrance. Through East End Arts, DJ Kookum presents Shake the Bush, merging Haudenosaunee dance with pulsing electronic beats, while Yasmeen Nematt Alla animates storefronts with ritual gestures in Opening of the Mouth. Saretta Khan’s Adhar – Space (textile experience) draws from her mother’s Bangla poetry. IN VIEW: Danforth Translated inscribes poetic texts along the streetscape, turning walking into an encounter with layered stories.

At the Aga Khan Museum, Voices of the City amplifies narratives of belonging and displacement, and at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre, The Shape of Loss contemplates heritage, grief, and renewal. This east-end corridor threads together movement, voice and ritual, offering audiences space to reflect on continuity and transformation.

Image courtesy of Kalpit Patel

Additional Neighbourhoods: Bonus Chapters

Beyond the main exhibition areas, independent projects and major institution programs appear across the city. At Youngplace, Moira Clark presents Dark Landscapes. Trinity St. Paul’s hosts Rojin Shafiei’s One Day…, Neeraja Ramani’s Rejection, and Rhonda Weppler & Trevor Mahovsky’s Take the Weather With You. Nina Jeffares-Levitt memorializes lost LGBTQ+ spaces in Disappearing Acts at Sankofa Square, while xLq’s playful Wishing Well: Alphabet Soup activates Buddies in Bad Times. In the Spadina–University neighbourhood, Oksana Hawrylak & Marta Iwanek present Crafting Connections: Didukh as a Cultural Conversation at St. Volodymyr Institute.

Other works include Kalpit Patel’s પડછાયો (Paḍachāyō) – The Shadow Within, Leslie Ting Productions’ What Brings You In, AWYAH’s Secret Handshake, and Dylan Alsop, Elle Morris & James Jordan’s Diatomic States, among many more, weaving the city together like chapters in a living book.

Each neighbourhood translates Toronto differently. Nuit Blanche invites you to move, listen, notice, and find your place within its unfolding story.

Learn more and plan your night: toronto.ca/NuitBlanche

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Accessibility:
Learn more about Nuit Blanche 2025 accessibility at toronto.ca/NuitBlanche

Image Descriptions:
1. A light-based installation, emanating different rings of colours, resembling a rainbow gradation.
2. A person crouched in front of a television, with the CN Tower on the screen.
3. A close-up of a hand creating a rangoli design with coloured sand, forming circular and spiral patterns in pink, blue, green, and white.

Akimbo is a media partner of Nuit Blanche 2025.