Water, Kinship, Belief: Toronto Biennial of Art 2019-2022

The inaugural Toronto Biennial of Art in 2019, titled The Shoreline Dilemma, was the first edition of a two-part biennial that traced interconnected narratives around the city’s ever-changing shoreline. These connections sought to reveal strategies of resistance against industrial-colonial systems, uncover polyphonic histories sedimented around the shoreline, and open up relations between the human and more-than-human. To extend this artistic thinking and expand notions of relationality, in 2022, the second edition, titled What Water Knows, The Land Remembers, moves inland to follow tributaries and ravines, both above ground and hidden, that shape this place. In relation to the two Biennial exhibitions, this publication Water, Kinship, Belief is a “third” site, a place where the continuities, resonances, and dissonances between Biennial editions are extended. Its pages become a means to bring together the artists, artworks, collaborators, and ideas that have together informed the exhibitions, irrespective of chronology, dispensing with categories, and part of a greater whole. Through its content and unique design, it is both a generative guide to the exhibitions and a Biennial site of its own, presenting new artistic relations that course through the book like tributaries. Artists: AA Bronson, Abbas Akhavan, Abel Rodríguez, Adrian Blackwell, Adrian Stimson, Aki Onda, Althea Thauberger, Kite, Amy Malbeuf, Andrea Carlson, Ange Loft, Arin Rungjang, Augustas Serapinas, Aycoobo, Bárbara Wagner, Benjamin de Burca, Brian Jungen, Caecilia Tripp, Camille Turner, Caroline Monnet, Curtis Talwst Santiago, Dana Claxton, Dana Prieto, Denyse Thomasos, Eduardo Navarro, Elder Duke Redbird, Embassy of Imagination, PA System, Eric-Paul Riege, Fernando Palma Rodríguez, Ghazaleh Avarzamani, Hajra Waheed, Hera Büyüktaşcıyan, ᐃᓱᒪ / Isuma, Jae Jarrell, ᔭᓇ ᑭᒍᓯᐊ / Janet Kigusiuq, Jeffrey Gibson, ᔨᐊᓯ ᐅᓈᖅ / Jessie Oonark, Joar Nango, Judy Chicago, Jumana Manna, Kapwani Kiwanga, Laurent Gras