When it comes to a feast of images, in terms of variety and abundance, there is no better example than the annual festival in Toronto. The Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival brings together everything, really everything. The 27e edition, which opens on Friday, includes no fewer than 180 exhibits.
“Exhibitions are everywhere: in coffee shops, at police stations, anywhere, says, struggling to speak French, Darcy Killeen, the festival’s chief executive. CONTACT is based on democracy. We are for all the people and for all the artists. We take artists of international renown, like Wolfgang Tillmans, and first-year students. This is unique to CONTACT and always will be. »
Without a unifying theme but with the mission of “reinventing itself every year”, according to the person who hosted the pre-opening press conference on Wednesday, the event is divided into three parts. The 2023 Core Program features stops at ten museums, thirty major galleries and twenty artist centers. The always-awaited outdoor strand is punctuated with twenty-one locations across the city. As if that weren’t enough, so-called alternative galleries participate under the “Open Call Exhibitions” section — and there are 115 of them.
Through this seemingly meaningless menu, there is a desire to echo current social movements. At the Art Gallery of Ontario, in addition to the unmissable retrospective of the German Wolfgang Tillmans, Feels Like Home, by the Toronto agency Sunday School, we celebrate diversity by bringing together artists from Africa and the diaspora, against a backdrop of reflections on identity, culture and education. ” Home can be a place, something reassuring, a strength. said commissioner Emilie Croning to representatives of the press.
It is the idea of Canada that I question by placing Koreans in front of paintings by the Group of Seven. What do we understand about the representation of landscapes? The question is not simple.
A member of the Anishinaabe Nation of Ontario, Nadya Kwandibens spoke on the microphone of the need to forge links. “Photography allows us to live in the present moment and to share stories. We must be able to connect between each of us. The recipient of the Toronto Photography Prize, awarded for the third time in 2023, displays a portrait of three laughing women in a billboard. Laughter is a subversive “medicine” against the clichés of the “stoic Indian”.
A flat tints the 27e edition: the inaugural evening was canceled due to a labor dispute at Toronto Metropolitan University, home of The Image Centre, one of the presenters of the “Core” program. “It was a difficult decision that we made, concedes Darcy Killeen. The launch attracts 5,000 people. But there’s a strike and we’re not going to celebrate when people [en souffrent]. »
queen of the year
According to Darcy Killeen, it is the artist Jin-me Yoon who is penalized the most. She is the one exhibiting at the Image Centre. On the phone, the main interested party admits her pain, without more: the exhibition, which brings together an emblematic work not seen for 25 years and images taken after 2020, continues until August.
“I support the right to strike,” she said. It is a bargaining power that endures in our inequitable times. ” About A Group of Sixty-Seven (1996), a diptych with 134 images, Jin-me Yoon believes that she has not lost her point. “I was questioning the idea of Canada by placing Koreans in front of paintings by the Group of Seven. What do we understand about the representation of landscapes? The question is not simple”, recognizes the one who has never ceased to wonder about what defines a nation.
Born in Korea and based in Vancouver, Jin-me Yoon has been honored by several retrospectives, including one at the Musée d’art de Joliette in 2019. Her presence at CONTACT stems from the Scotiabank Photography Career Award she obtained in 2022 and which includes $50,000, a book from German publisher Steidl and an exhibition at the following year’s festival.
“I feel like the queen of the year,” she said. Also, the award recognizes that artists in Canada need money. Public support from arts councils is great, but the ecosystem lacks collectors and private funds. »
The 2023 Scotiabank Photography Prize will be awarded on May 4 to one of three finalists among Ken Lum, Chris Curreri and Sandra Brewster.
Our collaborator was the guest of Destination Ontario.