What to see at Nuit Blanche Toronto 2023
The city's all-night art thing returns Saturday. Look for these ambitious projects!
Who's ready for some serious sleep debt?! Nuit Blanche Toronto returns Saturday, Sept. 23, running from sunset to sunrise all over the city, and if it feels as if I'm making that announcement about a week too early, your internal Moleskine planner is correct. Traditionally, the all-night art party happens a little later in the season, but the 2023 edition promises to be as sprawling as ever, with more than 80 projects for visitors to explore.
There's a unifying theme tying everything together. That theme? Breaking Ground — a concept that was set by the city as a sort of prompt for participating artists, inviting them to think about issues including climate change and the impact of urban development on both the land and us folks who live on it. And to further expand on those ideas, Nuit Blanche features three specially curated zones in downtown Toronto, Etobicoke and Scarborough. That's where you'll find most of the action, and you can plot your itinerary using the interactive map on the event's website.
But 80 plus free public art projects is more than I'm personally capable of cramming into a sleepless 12-hour night, so I reached out to the Nuit Blanche curators for some advance info on this year's biggest attractions. Here are their picks for the most ambitious projects coming soon to Nuit Blanche.
Downtown!
Kari Cwynar is the curator for the downtown exhibition, and when she learned about this year's theme, she went looking for signs of nature amid the concrete of the financial district: "I wanted to look for places where the land may have persisted, you know?" She was hunting for grassy parkettes, weeds — anything. "There are lots of corporate plazas with a few sad little trees, but I didn't find what I was looking for," she laughed. And so her exhibition became a reaction to that fact. "What are the systems and decisions and histories that have obscured the land in the area?" The projects appearing downtown tap into that question.
Your Wish is Your Command and A Practical Guide by Divya Mehra
Divya Mehra, winner of the 2022 Sobey Art Award, has two works appearing downtown for Nuit Blanche, including an original commission (Your Wish is Your Command): a towering golden lamp straight out of Aladdin, which will smoke all night in the TD Centre plaza without ever producing a genie.
Both of Divya's pieces are giant inflatable sculptures, and the second, A Practical Guide (located outside 390 Bay St.), is an enormous plastic bag. "On first look, you might think of garbage or litter and the effect on the environment," said Kari. "But when Divya made the bag, she was really thinking about the sort of marginalized businesses that often distribute plastic bags that say 'thank you.' She wanted to kind of reverse that message.… encouraging people to take what they're owed." The artist isn't telling anyone to actually go on a late-night looting spree, Kari said. "It is something to be taken with a grain of salt, but I think she's trying to get at [this]: what are the power relationships between commercial businesses in the downtown core?"
Wellspring by Jenine Marsh
In and around city hall, Kari said you'll find three of the most ambitious projects appearing downtown — "ones I hope will encourage visitors to look at familiar places with new perspectives." Wellspring is arguably the centrepiece of the three, and for the project, local artist Jenine Marsh will dig up Nathan Phillips Square, removing much of the concrete to reveal decades of detritus, plus an assortment of original sculptures: life-size flowers and feet, plus a couple of burbling fountains. (Feel free to make a wish.)
The project was inspired by a little-known nugget of Toronto history: the square was originally designed to be an ever-changing public space, and the ground itself is a modular system of concrete slabs which can be lifted and shifted to make room for parks, buildings — whatever the city might imagine. Until now, however, that's never really happened. "It struck Jenine as a story about the failure of a certain utopic vision for the city," said Kari.
Eclipse by Naomi Rincón Gallardo
Beneath city hall, in the underground loading dock at 100 Queen St. W, artist Naomi Rincón Gallardo will be screening her film Eclipse. The subterranean location is perfect for the piece, said Kari. The film's about the climate apocalypse — "but in a very amusing and fun way, if I can say that," Kari laughed — and it features a cast of singing and dancing performers, all dressed as bats and possums and other spooky critters. Just for Nuit Blanche, Naomi has built an animatronic butterfly creature that will be installed inside the loading dock. There, it'll be flapping its wings (made of knives!) all night long.
Assemblies by Eve Tagny
Upon emerging from the loading dock, you'll be steps from the Hagerman Street Parking Lot, where Eve Tagny will be leading a 12-hour dance performance featuring a cast of nine performers. For the project, Eve has built a set that suggests a deconstructed amphitheatre, and the dancers will be carrying sacks of soil, which they'll be distributing all night. "It's a metaphor for labour, and whose labour the financial district is built for," Kari said.
Scarborough!
Toronto-based curator Noa Bronstein heads up the Scarborough section (In the Aggregate). "I'm interested in projects and artworks where the artists are really thinking about ideas of friendship, collectivity, allyship — especially in this kind of fraught moment," she said.
Balangay Starfleet by Leeroy New
Toronto is getting its very own space station, and you can find it at Scarborough Town Centre. Balangay Starfleet is a new installation by Leeroy New (previously seen here), an artist known for building wildly imaginative sci-fi-inspired structures from colourful trash. "This particular project is thinking about an imagined future where the Philippines has been sort of subsumed with garbage," Noa said. "How do people deal with that? How do they make a new future through that?"
Leeroy will be building the structure out of bamboo and locally salvaged materials, and just for Nuit Blanche, he's invited some "aliens" to the party. Watch for performers dressed in Leeroy's wearable sculptures. They'll be in the mall to greet visitors of the project.
If you're staying on the west side, look for Leeroy's installation, Balete Bulate Bituka (as seen in this video). It's still up at Fort York, and if you make the trip down there, check out the rest of the Bentway's programming. (It's one of the major institutions participating in Nuit Blanche.)
Moving Backwards by Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz
This video work by Berlin-based artists Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz appeared at the 2019 Venice Biennale. That's when Noa first saw it, and she's been thinking about it ever since. "Not everyone gets to go to the Venice Biennale, so I'm really excited to share it," she said. For Nuit Blanche, the piece will be screened outside in Albert Campbell Square.
As for what you'll see on screen, the video takes inspiration from postmodern dance, queer underground culture and even guerrilla soldiers. But in essence, it captures performers "moving backwards" in all sorts of ways. "[The artists] are interested in this feeling of being pushed backwards by recent reactionary backlash movements," Noa said.
Find Face by Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader
Another video work, Find Face, will be projected on the exterior of the Scarborough Civic Centre, illuminating the building all night. Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader are ASL speakers whose work often explores deaf culture in the art world and beyond. "It's often very funny and a bit tongue-in-cheek," Noa said. And that applies to this piece too. "With this work, they're really thinking about the grammar of ASL, which is very physical, and how the technology of the face filter disrupts that kind of physicality."
Etobicoke!
Way out west in Etobicoke, Lillian O'Brien Davis has curated an introspective Nuit Blanche zone (Shoaling). Lillian envisioned the exhibition as a sort of "art trail" inspired by the rapidly changing city — a path that will lead visitors south to Lake Ontario.
Golden Snail Opera: The More-than-Human Performance of Friendly Farming on Taiwan's Lanyang Plain by Yen-Ling Tsai, Isabelle Carbonell, Joelle Chevrier and Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing
According to Lillian, few projects in the Etobicoke exhibition are as ambitious as this one: the Canadian premiere of Golden Snail Opera, a piece that's appeared all over the world (most recently at the Helsinki Biennial), but has never been staged like this. For Nuit Blanche, it'll be an all-night production on the Humber College Australian Football Field, and involve a 60-minute film (played on loop) and a cast of live performers who will take their places every two hours between 8 p.m. and 2 a.m.
The piece, which Lillian described as a take on a traditional Taiwanese opera (o-pei-la), is a sort of historical re-enactment. Once upon a time (in the late '70s), Taiwanese farmers imported snails from Argentina, hoping to farm escargot. The foreign snails soon thrived — a little too well — becoming an invasive species. And the whole saga is told through the perspective of farmers, snails and other creatures with a stake in the proceedings.
It's Real, I Watched It Happen by Isabel Okoro
Commissioned for Nuit Blanche, the project centres on a film the Nigerian artist shot throughout Toronto. According to Lillian, the piece is all about memory — "how memories are created and how it shapes us." And during Nuit Blanche, visitors of the project will have the chance to shape the piece itself. Look for structures or "portals" that will be stationed near the pedestrian bridge at Colonel Samuel Smith Park. Inside, you'll find prompts from the artist, questions such as "What do you think of when you hear the word home?" Responses will be added to the film as it plays all night on loop. Said Lillian: "It's like we're all making the film together."
Allgrowrhythms by Soft Turns (Sarah Jane Gorlitz and Wojciech Olejnik)
From Colonel Samuel Smith Park, head straight for the water. With the help of neighbourhood schoolkids, artist duo Soft Turns designed a series of unusual shapes — forms they've turned into flat sculptures, which will appear all over the shoreline. "The project is sort of taking as its inspiration the experience of walking along a beach, and the kind of shift in intentionality and consciousness that happens," said Lillian.
Nuit Blanche Toronto. Saturday, Sept. 23 from 7 p.m. to 7 p.m. www.toronto.ca/nuitblanche
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