TORONTO.- What Water Knows, The Land Remembers, the second edition of the Toronto Biennial of Art, opened on Saturday, March 26, 2022. The Biennial’s free Exhibitions and Programs, presented across several sites throughout the 72-day event, remain on view through June 5, 2022. What Water Knows, The Land Remembers draws from polyphonic histories sedimented in and around Toronto, revealing entangled narratives and ecologies across time and space. This second edition of a two-part biennial extends and deepens concepts of relationality, envisioning an expansive form of kinship—between curators, with artists and collaborators, and with the human and more-than-human. Exhibition and programming sites for the 2022 Biennial move inland from the shoreline of Lake Ontario, following the tributaries, above ground and hidden, which shape this place.

More than 70 Canadian and international participants are being featured responding to and expanding on resonant ideas through artworks and programming. Ghazaleh Avarzamani, Nadia Belerique, Judy Chicago, Jeffrey Gibson, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Marguerite Humeau, Jatiwangi art Factory (JaF), Brian Jungen, Jumana Manna, Eduardo Navarro, Paul Pfeiffer, Eric-Paul Riege, and Buhlebezwe Siwani are among the participating artists.

Biennial participants are from over 18 places of origin including Argentina, Canada, England, France, Germany, Indonesia, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Lebanon, Lithuania, Norway, Pakistan, South Africa, Trinidad and Tobago, United States, and Zimbabwe, as well as Indigenous communities in Canada, Colombia, Aotearoa | New Zealand, Norway, and the United States.

The Biennial’s Exhibitions and Programs are collaboratively developed by Exhibitions Curators Tairone Bastien, Candice Hopkins, Katie Lawson, the Programs team comprising Roxanne Fernandes, Mary Kim, Kesang Nanglu, Emily Schimp, and Ilana Shamoon, as well as former Programs Curators Clare Butcher and Myung-Sun Kim. The inaugural TD Curatorial Fellows, Sebastian De Line and Chiedza Pasipanodya, present their projects as a part of the Biennial. Whether in-person, outdoors, or online, Biennial Exhibitions and Programs create opportunities for learning and active engagement across the city with established art institutions, artist-run centres, arts organizations, community organizations, and educational institutions to engage a wide audience.

Most Exhibitions and Programs will be held at the Biennial’s two main Exhibition venues—72 Perth Avenue in the Junction neighborhood and the Small Arms Inspection Building in nearby Mississauga—and will also occur at site-specific locations throughout the city. Other programming sites include 5 Lower Jarvis Street; Arsenal Contemporary Art; Colborne Lodge; Fort York National Historic Site, Toronto History Museums; High Park; Mercer Union, a centre for contemporary art; Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto (MOCA); and Textile Museum of Canada.