TORONTO BIENNIAL OF ART 2024
Co-curated by Dominique Fontaine
and Miguel A. López
September 21 - December 1, 2024
The Toronto Biennial of Art (TBA/the Biennial) is Canada’s leading visual arts event focused exclusively on contemporary art from around the world. For 10 weeks every two years, local, national, and international Biennial artists transform Toronto and its partner regions with free exhibitions, performances, and learning opportunities. Grounded in diverse local contexts, the Biennial’s city-wide programming aims to inspire individuals, engage communities, and contribute to global conversations. The Toronto Biennial of Art launched in 2019 and was a popular and critical success. The Biennial provides expanded understandings of contemporary art practices and is building a legacy of free, inclusive, and accessible contemporary arts programming in Toronto, Mississauga, and their surrounding communities.
Photo courtesy Toronto Biennial of Art
Toronto Biennial of Art 2024, the third edition of the city-wide art events is co-curated by Dominique Fontaine and Miguel A. López.
TBA worked with a group of prominent art-world leaders including TBA 2019 and 2022 Senior Curator and current Executive Director and Chief Curator of Forge Project Candice Hopkins, to develop a list of international and Canadian curators for consideration.
Toronto Biennial of Art Executive Director Patrizia Libralato said, “We are delighted to welcome Dominique and Miguel, thought leaders who will contribute significant scholarship, innovation, and inspiration as we shape the upcoming Biennial edition and programming. Their areas of research and ongoing commitment to supporting both emerging and established contemporary artists from Canada and around the world will deepen TBA’s connections to local communities and its place in global conversations. Together, we aim to create an event as uniquely diverse, responsive, challenging, and engaging as the city itself.”
The critically acclaimed Toronto Biennial of Art launched in 2019 and attracted over 450,526 visitors to its first two editions. The Biennial provides expanded understandings of contemporary art practices, and its free, citywide programming aims to inspire people, bridge communities, and contribute to global conversations. The Biennial has featured over 76 exhibition artists including powerful works by AA Bronson, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Ghazaleh Avarzamani, Shezad Dawood, Judy Chicago, Jeffrey Gibson, Brian Jungen, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Kapwani Kiwanga, Joar Nango, New Red Order, Jumana Manna, Caroline Monnet, Lisa Reihana, Denyse Thomasos, and Camille Turner.
DOMINIQUE FONTAINE
“It’s a great honor to be invited to curate TBA 2024 with Miguel. I’m thrilled for this opportunity to co-create an event that could resonate with complex issues of our time in relation to the changing realities of Toronto and the praxis of coexistence. I am looking forward to working with artists, who will bring new and fresh ways of thinking and seeing, and the communities as well as TBA’s partners throughout the city. I am enthusiastic and passionate about the next edition of TBA.” -- Dominique Fontaine
DOMINIQUE FONTAINE
Photo courtesy Toronto Biennial of Art
Dominique Fontaine is a curator, joining the TBA team in December 2022 as co-curator of its third edition. She graduated in visual arts and arts administration from the University of Ottawa (Canada), and completed De Appel Curatorial Programme (Amsterdam, the Netherlands).
Dominique Fontaine’s recent projects include Imaginaires souverains, Le présent, modes d’emploi, Maison de la culture Janine-Sutto; Foire en art actuel de Québec 2020; Here We Are Here: Black Canadian Contemporary Art; Dineo Seshee Bopape: and- in. the light of this._______, Darling Foundry; Repérages ou À la découverte de notre monde ou Sans titre, articule; Between the earth and the sky, the possibility of everything, Scotiabank Nuit Blanche Toronto 2014. Dominique Fontaine is co-initiator of the Black Curators Forum; is a member of AICA-Canada, the American Association of Museum Curators (AAMC,) and of the International Contemporary Art Curators Association (IKT); and is also part of Intervals Collective. Dominique Fontaine is laureate of Black History Month of the City of Montreal 2021.
MIGUEL A. LOPEZ
“I am beyond excited to work with the Toronto team and envision a meaningful 2024 Biennial for the artists, the art ecosystem, and especially for the city. I am looking forward to contributing to the local context and encouraging new collaborations with artists, activists, and cultural workers that are posing urgent questions about what forms art can take in the public sphere. I am devoted to bringing art that challenges, inspires, encourages, and connects us.” -- Miguel A. López
MIGUEL A. LOPEZ
Photo courtesy Toronto Biennial of Art
Miguel A. López is a writer and curator, joining the TBA team in December 2022 for its third edition. In his practice, he focuses on the role of art in politics and public life, collective work and collaborative dynamics, and queer and feminist rewritings of history. Prior to joining TBA, Miguel A. López worked as chief curator, and later co-director, at TEOR/éTica (Costa Rica) from 2015 to 2020. In 2019, he curated the retrospective exhibition “Cecilia Vicuña: Seehearing the Enlightened Failure” at the Witte de With (now Kunstinstituut Melly), Rotterdam, which traveled to Mexico City, Madrid, and Bogota. For 2023-2025, he is preparing a new, more comprehensive retrospective entitled “Cecilia Vicuña. Dreaming Water,” that will first open at Fine Arts Museum of Chile, and then travel to MALBA – Latin American Art Museum of Buenos Aires, Pinacoteca Museum of São Paulo, Brazil, and other venues.
Other recent curatorial projects include “Sila Chanto & Belkis Ramírez: Aquí me quedo / Here I Stay” en el ICA-VCU, Richmond (2022), “Hard To Swallow. Anti-Patriarchal Poetics and New Scene in the Nineties” at ICPNA, Lima (2021), “and if I devoted my life to one of its feathers?” at the Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2021), and “21 Bienal de Arte Contemporânea SESC_Videobrasil. Comunidades Imaginadas” at SESC, São Paulo (2019). He is the author of Ficciones disidentes en la tierra de la misoginia [Dissident Fictions in the Land of Misogyny] (2019), and co-editor of The Words of Others: León Ferrari and Rhetoric in Times of War (2017). His texts have been published in journals such as Afterall, Artforum, e-flux Journal, Art in America, Journal of Visual Culture, Manifesta Journal. He was a recipient of the 2016 Independent Vision Curatorial Award.
TORONTO BIENNIAL OF ART
