10 extremely personal and entirely subjective picks for the top arts and culture of 2022

Movies, art shows … a 12-foot zombie dressed up like a 19th century soldier. Our team saw a lot in 2022, certainly more than the last couple years of the pandemic — and it wasn't all TV. But of everything we caught during a busy year, these were our favourite things: the best arts and culture we consumed in 2022. 

Shary Boyle, Outside the Palace of Me

I trekked to the Gardiner Museum in the opening weeks of Outside the Palace of Me, a travelling exhibition by the Toronto artist Shary Boyle. When I think back on that visit, the first thing I remember is a feeling of utter shock. White Elephant, Boyle's towering animatronic sculpture, was partly the cause. The creature twitches to life without warning, its oversized head spinning on its axis like an albino Linda Blair, and the surprise of it all got the other visitors talking — to each other, imagine that — a more startling thing, I'd argue, than White Elephant itself. This is No Fun Toronto, after all, and it had been awhile since anyone would have even had the opportunity to chit-chat with strangers. The last lockdown was mere weeks behind us.

• The 22 artists who salvaged 2022

At a time when I was still warming to the idea of doing something, anything, in public again, Outside the Palace of Me was an extraordinary reintroduction to the sort of lazy Sunday excursion I'd taken for granted pre-pandemic. "It's hard to think of a museum experience better tailored for the Great Re-opening," I wrote at the time, reflecting on the exhibition in this piece for CBC Arts, and nine months later, that feeling's still with me — though now it's a memory of the strange way we began this year. 

Boyle began developing the exhibition long before the pandemic, it's worth noting. It is not a "COVID story" whatsoever. But the show includes a wide-ranging collection of works that nevertheless nailed the anxious moment: ceramics, drawings, animatronic figures and more — art "influenced by ideas of alienation and loneliness and solitude," as she told me in an interview this spring. Each piece is beautiful and fascinating in its own way, but it's the experience of walking through the entire exhibition that left me thinking about the show both now and then, and how Boyle and collaborator Shannon Lea Doyle (a Dora Award-winning set designer) created the sense that you were more than a passive viewer, but a crucial part of the experience itself.

The structure of the exhibition was almost daring people to play — insomuch as anyone can, given the white-cube setting. An innovative yet subtle floorplan really lent itself to that effect. One of the first sections of the show is installed on an elevated platform, effectively making each visitor a performer, putting them "on stage" for everyone to see. When you step down from the catwalk, your role changes: you're a member of the audience — and then, should you feel the urge, you can play conductor too, DJ-ing for the room using a pre-loaded iPad playlist. That was another favourite memory of mine, actually: feeling the mood shift as I toggled between tracks.

If you missed the show's run at the Gardiner, there's still time to make it one of the best things you'll see in 2023. It's at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts through Jan. 15, and this spring it'll head west, opening at the Vancouver Art Gallery March 4. 

-Leah Collins/senior writer

The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival

Obviously, this is a bit of a cheat. The Toronto International Film Festival is literally hundreds of events — screenings, panels, parties, etc. — that happen over the course of 11 days in September. But collectively, it was undeniably a major 2022 highlight for me. For two years, the festival was primarily digital, and having it back in full force was such a wonderful reminder of a) how much it elevates Toronto and b) how much I missed discovering new movies in packed cinemas.

Regarding the latter point, the standouts included Sarah Polley's Women Talking, Steven Spielberg's The Fabelmans, Martin McDonagh's The Banshees of Inisherin and Charlotte Wells's Aftersun — all of which I highly recommend seeing in a movie theatre when and if you can. One of my least favourite things about art in 2022 was watching how "smaller" films were struggling to find audiences in actual cinemas, to which I say going into 2023: vive le cinéma … and vive le TIFF!

-Peter Knegt, producer

L.S. Dunes, Past Lives Tour (Velvet Underground, Toronto)

If you love music from the early 2000s, it's probably been a good decade and a half since you've been able to say, "I was there when…" But one unseasonably warm night in November, a handful of lucky people got to say they were there when some of post-hardcore's most celebrated musicians packed into a crowded Toronto room for one of the most intimate shows any of us will ever see them play.

L.S. Dunes is a newly formed supergroup featuring members of My Chemical Romance, Circa Survive, Thursday, and Coheed and Cambria, and their Toronto show at Velvet Underground was one of just a dozen performances they gave in 2022. Guitarist Frank Iero's last visit to Toronto had been for a sold-out show at the Scotiabank Arena with My Chemical Romance. Now here he was — crammed up against a brick wall in a 400-cap local venue we'd all been to a million times. It was electrifying.

Everyone there that night knew how special it was to be witnessing this. The band's members hail from some of the most influential groups the genre has ever seen. When would we ever have another chance to see them play from just a few feet away? You could tell it felt like a treat for them too — returning to the kind of small room they all got their start in decades ago. Amidst the screaming and controlled chaos, there was a sense of profound appreciation.

They played a tight and short set because they're all in their 40s now and the rest of us are getting pretty old too, if we're being honest. But watching these veteran musicians rip through new songs they had written purely for the love of it all, I think everyone felt a little younger again.

-Eleanor Knowles, producer

Barbarian

Barbarian is the most fun I've had watching a movie in a long time so I had to write about it. I went in knowing very little about this film, which, it turns out, is probably the best way to watch it. With that in mind, all I am going to say here is that it's a horror-thriller that opens with a woman named Tess (Georgina Campbell) who is checking in at a very ominous Airbnb in Detroit. She arrives during a thunderstorm to find that someone is already there: a mysterious man named Keith (Bill Skarsgård, whom you may recognize as Pennywise from the recent It films).

That's just the beginning. There are so many twists and turns in this movie from writer-director Zach Cregger that I was on the edge of my seat the entire time. And while jump scares abound, it's a movie with humour and substance as well. I watched (and loved) a lot of long, heavy films in 2022, but Barbarian stands out as the most entertaining and easiest to watch — even if I was watching through my fingers half the time.

-Mercedes Grundy, producer

Drift long sleeve T-shirt, Alex Bierk

One of my favourite artworks of 2022 arrived in my mailbox in the first few days of January. It was an image — masterfully painted and ever so slightly sinister — showing a powerfully built automobile, of a style not produced since I was a kid, stopped hair-raisingly close to the broadside of an SUV.

The breathless scene came printed on the front of a black long sleeve T-shirt. And I've worn the hell out of that shirt this year.

The image is a reproduction of Drift by the Peterborough, Ont.-based painter Alex Bierk that I bought from the artist over Instagram. It is not the first artist's shirt I've owned, and not even the first by Bierk. Truth be told, I am basically powerless to a good artist shirt. I have little hope of ever owning an original painting with a four- or five-figure price tag, but my collection of artist shirts is appreciable. It's like a print you can wear to the grocery store.

Ever since I started collecting my first band tees, I've felt that a T-shirt was a serious and sincere endorsement. It's a way of saying, "I think this thing is cool," while sending some support back to the artist too. Whenever I wear my Alex Bierk shirt I get a charge; I rev a little higher, just like that mean machine rolling down the street. 

-Chris Hampton, writer

Bedroom Rapper: Cadence Weapon on Hip-Hop, Resistance and Surviving the Music Industry

Rollie Pemberton, a.k.a. Cadence Weapon, has consistently been a creative force to be reckoned with, releasing album after album of music as complex as it is smart and thought-provoking. (Read: very.) But he took his gifts even further in 2022 with the publication of his first book, Bedroom Rapper: Cadence Weapon on Hip-Hop, Resistance and Surviving the Music Industry, a stunning memoir that is personal, sharp and a testament to the power of vulnerability. (I think I read it in about two days.)

Something that makes Pemberton's work — in all its forms — even more special is his commitment to bringing others along with him. Teaming up with the Featured Artists Coalition and the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers, he's been crusading to bring an end to merch cuts at North American venues and festivals so that artists have a shot of making money on the road. His ambition lies less in reaching his own benchmarks, but helping to create spaces in which other artists can grow. It's yet another reason we're all so lucky to have Pemberton share his work and self with us, and I can't wait to see how he conquers 2023.

-Anne T. Donahue, writer

Maria Hupfield, Manidoowegin (and just about everything else she did this year)

Maria Hupfield is on a roll, and there's no stopping her. The Toronto-based visual and performance artist was behind the two best exhibitions I saw this year, and they were almost 10 months and 500 kilometres apart from each other. 

It started in January with Manidoowegin at Diagonale in Montreal, an artist-run centre dedicated to contemporary fibre and textile arts. Hupfield presented garment-like objects made with felt, cloth and other materials, creating sculptural arrangements with her now iconic neon colour accents. An Anishinaabe-kwe of Wasauksing First Nation, the artist's unequivocal gift for storytelling instantly transported me into her environment of mischief and play to denounce settler colonialism. I felt compelled to be with the objects and learn from them, with Hupfield's magnetic presence as their maker and activator lingering in the fabric.

In September, Hupfield opened another knockout solo exhibition, Protocol Break, at Patel Brown in Toronto. This eye-catching project garnered attention for Hupfield's impressively detailed felt objects — from traffic cones to a rotary phone. Standing in the custom-made felt room at the back of the gallery, staring with glee at a perfectly made felt door knob, I couldn't help but wonder at what she will do next.

-Didier Morelli, contributing writer

Triangle of Sadness

I find cringey moments on screen more intolerable than most. When watching a show at home, the first sign of awkwardness is my cue to check IMDb, or head to the kitchen for a snack. It's a subconscious attempt to dull the discomfort, but adds up to a pretty shallow viewing experience. 

The film Triangle of Sadness is an unsparing collection of uncomfortable moments. In addition to its numerous on-the-nose metaphors for inequality, highlights include gross-out gags and an eye-roll-inducing political argument between a libertarian oligarch and a Marxist ship captain as they get outrageously drunk. At home, I might have been on my phone through these scenes, feeling progressively annoyed. Watching it in a movie theatre, however, was sublime. There was nothing to save me from my emotions except popcorn, and when that ran out I surrendered completely to the cringe. 

Broken into three parts, the movie opens with a male model at a casting — thumping house music, bright lights and petty sexual humiliation — which sets the scene for a charged argument over dinner with his more successful model girlfriend. There's nothing harder to watch than a wounded male ego. The couple's vacation on a luxury yacht leads to a Lord of the Flies scenario where all the carefully constructed hierarchies among the cast are upended and everyone's principles are tested. It's probably the funniest movie I saw this year and one that's worth seeing without a second screen to blunt its emotional impact.

-Aaron Leaf, senior producer

Iron Maiden, Legacy of the Beast World Tour (Scotiabank Arena, Toronto)

On paper, Iron Maiden are corny. There's just no getting around it. And before Maiden fans come for me, please understand: I'm saying this as someone who has seen the band four times. 

If you try to describe an Iron Maiden show to someone who wasn't there, you sound like your 12-year-old nephew if he had a medically inadvisable number of Monster Energy drinks. "And then there was a fighter plane on stage! And then the lead singer had a sword fight with a monster! And then he had a flamethrower! And then he went 'YEEEEEOWWWW!'"

All these things happened, by the way. A replica Second World War Spitfire was suspended above the stage. Vocalist Bruce Dickinson, an accomplished fencer, did fight a 12-foot-high version of the band's zombie-like mascot, Eddie, who was dressed like a Crimean War-era soldier. Dickinson did have a flamethrower at one point. If someone doesn't yell "YEEEEEOWWWW!" it's just not power metal. And I'm not even mentioning the multiple costume changes, or the changing set pieces, or when Eddie came out dressed as a samurai.

Again, describing this, it sounds ridiculous. But when you're actually there, it's incredible. It's utterly captivating. You buy into what is happening 1,000 per cent. Each song is its own little play, and every single one of them is fantastic. 

It's a metal show, it's musical theatre, and it's not not a religious experience. Don't believe me? Well, you've clearly never sung along to "Fear of the Dark" with 20,000 people who have been waiting all night to do the same.

This year, I went to a lot of live shows — more than I had in the two or three years prior to the pandemic. While everything was shut down, I realized how much live music meant to me — how, as incredible as some virtual experiences can be, and as much as our ability to bring people and art together through technology has advanced, there are some things that just need to be experienced in person. Iron Maiden is one of those things.

-Chris Dart, web writer