Toronto Biennial of Art highlights this week: A Performance by Lawrence Abu Hamdan | TELLINGS: A Post-Human Vocal Concert | What’s up with Gendai?

Toronto Biennial of Art 2019 Highlights.

With just a few weeks remaining to experience Toronto’s very first Biennial, be sure to visit torontobiennial.org and plan your outing today! Don’t miss this unique opportunity to explore multiple exhibitions and more than 60 creative programs across the city—all for free!

From November 15 to 21, visitors can enjoy 100+ artworks, and events ranging from performances and concerts, to talks and workshops.

The Biennial’s programming connects issues, practices, and methodologies related to the Biennial’s first edition, The Shoreline Dilemma, which explores the implications of Toronto’s ever-changing waterfront in the context of a central question: What does it mean to be in relation?

For a complete overview of exhibiting artists, locations, and hours, plus, the Programs and Events calendar, visit the website.

Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Contra Diction, 2015, performance view at Cornerhouse Manchester. Photo: Courtesy the artist

This week’s highlights include:

Isonomia in Toronto

A Performance by Lawrence Abu Hamdan
Program: Currents
Date: Fri, Nov 15
Time: 7–9pm
Location: 259 Lake Shore Blvd E

In Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s performance Contra Diction, he seeks to explore the ways in which our right to silence can be preserved in today’s All-Hearing and All-Speaking society. In his reappraisal of silence and its politics Abu Hamdan will look into the linguistics of Taqiyya, an old piece of islamic jurisprudence practiced only by esoteric minorities that allows a believing individual to deny his faith or commit otherwise illegal acts while they are at risk of persecution or in a condition of statelessness.

Delineating a nation-state: A Conversation
Program: Currents
Date: Sat, Nov 16
Time: 2– 4pm
Location: Small Arms Inspection Building, 1352 Lakeshore Rd. East, Mississauga

Delineating a nation-state is a preview of the forthcoming issue 12 of Scapegoat: Architecture / Landscape / Political Economy, featuring: Roberto Damiani, Irena Latek, and Karyn Recollet, moderated by co-editors David Fortin and Adrian Blackwell. This conversation will examine the relationship between urban morphology and processes of settler colonialism, through the delineation of property in land.

Sinuosity, 2018, Jeneen Frei Njootli & Tsēmā Igharas. Photo by Mike Patten. The Biennale d’art contemporain autochtone (BACA) / Contemporary Native Art Biennial: NÍCHIWAMISKWÉM | NIMIDET | MA SŒUR | MY SISTER, ART MÛR GALLERY

TELLINGS: A Post-Human Vocal Concert
Program: Co-Relations
Date: Sat, Nov 16
Time: 10:30am–7pm
Location: Graduate Gallery of OCADU, 205 Richmond St W

Artists: Erin Gee, Jeneen Frei Njootli, Miya Masaoka, Stephanie Loveless, and Tsēmā Igharas
Co-curated by Maiko Tanaka and Myung-Sun Kim

TELLINGS: A Post-Human Vocal Concert seeks to challenge traditional conceptions of voice. Artists working experimentally with sound—live electronics, deep listening, sound art—perform compositions that explore new modes of vocal production. The experimental vocal compositions in solo and ensemble formats question the way we imagine the body of a voice and the “receiver” as well as the divisions made between nature and technology.

Schedule:

Sonic Meditation with Stephanie Loveless (Registration required)
Time: 10:30–11:45am
Miya Masaoka: Sonifying the Plants (A Performative Talk) (Registration required)
Time: 12pm–1:30pm
TELLINGS: Post-human vocal concert
Time: 3–7pm

What’s up with Gendai?
Program: Co-Relations
Date: Sun, Nov 17
Time: 2:30-4:30pm
Location: 259 Lake Shore Blvd E

Gendai Gallery’s active members are about to retire. In this session, they share the gallery’s organizational history of experimenting with models of collectivity, and workshop your proposals for a takeover.

On their way out, the members would like to draw on their history of generating alternative methodologies for existence in seeking new ways of succession-planning for the gallery.

The View from Here: Reading a Moving Shoreline with Fadi Masoud & Adrian Blackwell
Program: Currents
Date: Mon, Nov 18
Time: 4– 6pm
Location: 259 Lake Shore Blvd E

Fadi Masoud is a landscape architect and planner who focuses on the relationships between large-scale environmental systems, dynamic design, and the instrumentality of planning policies. Adrian Blackwell is an artist, designer, and theorist interested in the relationship between political economy and the production of physical spaces. In the context of Luis Jacob’s two-part installation, The View from Here, Masoud and Blackwell discuss Toronto’s waterfront, drawing attention to the vulnerabilities of urban districts built upon reclaimed land, and the strategies available to mitigate the effects of climate change. Participants join in a mapping exercise, tracing the human and non-human actors transforming the shoreline.

About the Toronto Biennial of Art
The Toronto Biennial of Art (the Biennial/TBA) is a new international contemporary visual arts event that is as culturally connected and diverse as Toronto itself. For 10 weeks every two years, the city will be transformed by exhibitions, talks, and performances that reflect the local context while engaging with the world’s most pressing issues of our time. In an effort to make contemporary art available to everyone, the Biennial’s free, citywide programming aims to inspire people, bridge communities, and contribute to global conversations from a variety of perspectives.

For more information, visit: torontobiennial.org, @torontobiennial, and #TObiennial19 on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

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Media Contacts
For additional information, Libby Mark or Heather Meltzer at Bow Bridge Communications, LLC, Toronto: +1 647-544-8441, New York City, +1 347-460-5566; info@bow-bridge.com.