Contact Photography Festival 28th Edition Opens May 1

CONTACT Photography Festival has announced highlights of the full roster of participants in the 28th edition of its annual citywide event spanning the month of May 2024. Established and emerging artists will present lens-based works in exhibitions, public art installations, and commissioned projects at museums, galleries, and public spaces across Toronto.

Among the list of artists featured across the Core Program are Sara Angelucci, Nuits Balnéaires, Arielle Bobb-Willis, Felicia Byron, Holly Chang, June Clark, Frances Cordero de Bolaños, Julya Hajnoczky, Joyce Joumaa, Zun Lee, Ken Lum, John Macfie, Almagul Menlibayeva, Cristian Ordóñez, and L. M. Ramsey. The 2024 Core Exhibitions and Public Art Installations present works by artists and photographers exploring topics including anti-colonial practices, community-building, Afro-futurism, crip liberation, ceremony and revolution, and personal and collective memory, addressing violent gaps in historical archives. See highlighted exhibitions below.

Running Wednesday, May 1 - Friday, May 31, 2024. Some exhibitions begin before and/or extend beyond the month of May. Check the Festival calendar for more info.

HIGHLIGHTS OF 2024 CONTACT PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL

NUITS BALNÉAIRES

United in Bassam

BAND @ Meridian Arts Centre,

5040 Yonge St

April 25 - May 25

Curated by Mariah Coulibaly

In his 2021 series The Power of Alliances, Ivorian artist Nuits Balnéaires explored the symbols, roles, and relationships of the N'Zima Kotokô people's seven great families. Based in Grand-Bassam, Ivory Coast, the artist's multidisciplinary approach blends contemporary perspectives with traditional themes. In our post-pandemic era, as we reckon with how to navigate social and physical environments, his work offers vital teachings on living harmoniously, emphasizing respect and mutual appreciation. Through striking and vibrant visuals, Nuits Balnéaires aspires to "a deeper spiritual connection," weaving narratives that evoke community and a sense of belonging. Presented by Black Artists' Networks in Dialogue in partnership with TO Live and CONTACT.

Also see Nuits Balnéaires' related work in the installation Window into Bassam, presented on billboards at College Street and Delaware Avenue from April 25 through May 31. Presented by CONTACT in partnership with BAND. Supported by PATTISON Outdoor Advertising.

ARIELLE BOBB-WILLIS

Furiously Happy

Davisville Subway Station (platform)

Davisville Ave and Yonge St

May 1 - 31

Curated by Emmy Lee Wall

Photographer Arielle Bobb-Willis is known for her colourful, unconventional images that focus on the human figure presented in an atypical fashion. She states, "Within paintings, there's no end of things you can do with the body, and this has pushed me to see restrictions within reality differently." The photographs Bobb-Willis creates present unusual shapes and volumes and use colour to deconstruct the typical means by which an image is organized, such as a figure before a building or inserted in the landscape. Creating work for her own artistic practice, but also shooting editorially, she uses garments to manipulate visual boundaries and create volumetric shapes that occupy much of the picture plane, akin to the way a painter would create unfettered forms on a canvas. Presented by CONTACT in partnership with Capture Photography Festival, Vancouver. Supported by PATTISON Outdoor Advertising.

FELICIA BYRON

Harvest - Blue Prints and Magnitudes

Tangled Art + Disability (vitrines)

401 Richmond St W, S-124

May 1 - July 19

Curated by Jack Hawk

Drawing inspiration from Gwendolyn Brooks' 1983 poem "Paul Robeson," Felicia Byron's exhibition makes space for us to be "each other's harvest." As a visual storyteller and world builder, Byron weaves together community portraits with an Afro-futuristic vision of collective crip liberation. Reimagining comfort and safety through multitudes, she bridges the gap between a crip collective future and the resilience of community in the present. Using cyanotype-printed textiles and video elements, her immersive work enables transformative encounters with the vibrant landscapes of crip futures. Presented by Tangled Art + Disability in partnership with CONTACT.

HOLLY CHANG

How to Disappear When No One is Looking

Billboards at Dupont St & Emerson Ave and at College St & Lansdowne Ave

May 1-31

Curated by Heather Canlas Rigg

This series continues Holly Chang's investigation into her identity and family history. Here, the artist has engaged with her Chinese diaspora community to do a collective, close reading of found photographs from her late uncle's archive. Presented by CONTACT. Supported by PATTISON Outdoor Advertising.

FRANCES CORDERO DE BOLAÑOS

Coffee and Pine (Spirit of the Natural World)

John B. Aird Gallery

906 Queen St W, Suite B05

April 18 - June 7

Curated by Carla Garnet

Salvadoran Canadian artist Frances Cordero de Bolaños' exhibition Coffee and Pine (Spirit of the Natural World) showcases Central American and northern-hemisphere forests in technicolor, photo-based, still and moving-image landscapes. Her ecofeminist works capture the supernatural qualities of both the boreal and tropical rainforests and highlight the role forests play in natural water conservation. The multi-sensory exhibition invites visitors to engross themselves in a fully immersive environment, emphasizing the importance of preserving and protecting natural ecosystems. Presented by John B. Aird Gallery in partnership with CONTACT.

JULYA HAJNOCZKY

The Prefix Prize

Urbanspace Gallery

401 Richmond St W, ground floor

May 3 - July 27

Curated by Scott McLeod and the Prefix Prize jury

The recipient of the fourth annual Prefix Prize is a native of Calgary, Alberta. Hajnoczky is a contemporary artist who privileges photography within a broader multidisciplinary practice. She has been inspired, in part, by the work of Anna Atkins, a British botanist, illustrator, and pioneering photographer renowned for having first recognized, in the mid-nineteenth century, the potential of photography as a tool for documenting botanical specimens. Nearly two hundred years later, Hajnoczky brings to the natural world the same inquisitive spirit, artistic sensibility, and inventive use of emergent technology producing digital photographs of heretofore unimaginable clarity, colour, and depth. Presented by Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art and Riverdale Hub in partnership with CONTACT.

JOYCE JOUMAA

Untitled

Yonge-Dundas Square

1 Dundas St E, Toronto

May 1 - 31

Curated By Heather Canlas Rigg

Joyce Joumaa's site-specific installation on five video screens at Toronto's Yonge-Dundas square probes multiple modes of Palestinian representation, transnational community building, and solidarity by bringing together Chile's football team, Club Palestino, with Mustafa Abu Ali's 1974 documentary film They Do Not Exist. Presented by CONTACT in partnership with Yonge-Dundas Square.

KEN LUM

Scotiabank Photography Award

The Image Centre

33 Gould St

May 3 - August 3

Curated by Gaëlle Morel

The exhibition, comprising seminal series along with new works, celebrates the career of Canadian artist Ken Lum. Winner of the 2023 Scotiabank Photography Award, Lum is internationally known for his conceptualist approach, particularly his various signature series of photographic portraits paired with concise, slogan-like texts. The artist's humoristic and impactful practice investigates the relationship between language and representation in the public space. By doing so, Lum critically challenges social hierarchies and dominant narratives related to identity, class, and gender, always at play in capitalistic and postcolonial societies. Organized by The Image Centre, presented by Scotiabank, in partnership with CONTACT.

JOHN MACFIE

People of the Watershed: Photographs by John Macfie

McMichael Canadian Art Collection

10365 Islington Ave, Kleinburg

May 11 - November 17

Curated by Paul Seesequasis

People of the Watershed: Photographs by John Macfie includes more than 100 photographs taken by John Macfie (1925-2018), a settler trapline manager who worked in Northern Ontario in the 1950s and 1960s. Macfie travelled with a camera, recording life in Anishinaabe, Cree, and Anisininew communities during a period of intense and rapid change. The people and places of Attawapiskat, Sandy Lake, Mattagami, and other communities across the Hudson's Bay watershed are revealed through his lens in ways that emphasize the warmth and continuity of community life. Curated by nîpisîhkopâwiyiniw (Willow Cree) curator, writer, journalist, cultural advocate, and commentator Paul Seesequasis, the exhibition centers the lives and resiliency of the Indigenous people represented, many of whom have been identified by Macfie and Seesequasis. Presented by the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in partnership with CONTACT.

ALMAGUL MENLIBAYEVA

My Silk Road to You & Nomadized Suprematism

Aga Khan Museum

77 Wynford Dr

May 1 - June 9

Curated by Dr. Sascha Priewe & Marianne Fenton

Almagul Menlibayeva is an award-winning Kazakh-German artist working in photography, multi-channel video, and mixed-media installations. Displayed within the Aga Khan Museum and outdoors in the Aga Khan Park, two series of the artist's photographs present a glimpse into the multilayered reality of post-Soviet Central Asia. Menlibayeva combines a documentary approach with staged interventions to highlight complex geopolitical realities alongside the enduring mythologies that shape contemporary Kazakhstan. In a bid to reimagine and reconstruct contemporary Kazakh identity, her works bridge the past and present, drawing on a "shared collective subconscious" and archaic atavism set against a background of Soviet remnants and historical Islamic architecture. Presented by the Aga Khan Museum in partnership with CONTACT.

CRISTIAN ORDÓÑEZ

Unfold

Billboards, King St W & Strachan Ave

May 1 - 31

Curated by Heather Canlas Rigg

Structured like a poem across three billboards, this photographic series by Cristian Ordóñez provides visual respite from its surroundings, and invites viewers to participate in a response through free association, with the images gradually revealing themselves. Presented by CONTACT. Supported by PATTISON Outdoor Advertising.

ABOUT THE FESTIVAL

CONTACT Photography Festival is a Toronto-based non-profit organization dedicated to exhibiting, analyzing, and celebrating lens-based media, rooted in an annual festival that takes place throughout the month of May and beyond.

The 2024 festival includes the Core Program, the Photobook Lab, and Open Call Exhibitions. The Core Program brings together exhibitions, public art installations, and public programs produced in partnership with museums, galleries, and artist-run-centres throughout the Greater Toronto Area. CONTACT'S Photobook Lab champions photobooks in a year-round reading room and bookstore at the CONTACT Gallery, and offers an array of public programs and workshops in conjunction with the festival. The community-generated Open Call Exhibitions feature independently organized presentations of lens-based work across the city. Visit the CONTACT website for more information on all programming.

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