TORONTO.- Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival today announced highlights of 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.

The 2024 Core Exhibitions and Public Art Installations present lens-based and mixed-media 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.

Preview of selected 2024 CONTACT Festival projects

Alanna Fields
Billboards at King St W & Strachan Ave
May 1 – 31
Curated by Luther Konadu

U.S. artist Alanna Fields salvages photographic traces of Black queer life from the 1990s and earlier, focused on the mundane moments that usually fall into the margins of sensationalistic mainstream narratives of queer life. Fields’ upcoming project will expand her practice of scouring archives and embellishing found photographs, drawing upon images from the 1960s and ’70s. Examining the notion of “staining,” with its multifaceted implications to the history of photography, Fields extends the concept to the framing of worldviews through the application of layered colour, complicating and impeding a “straight” reading of the images and of history. Presented by CONTACT. Supported by PATTISON Outdoor Advertising.

Kiri Dalena | Erased Slogans & Birds of Prey
Billboards at Lansdowne Ave & Dundas St W/College St
May 1 – 31
Curated by Su-Ying Lee

Filipina artist Kiri Dalena will present images from two projects on billboards. In Erased Slogans (2008–ongoing), the artist intervenes into photos made under the Ferdinand Marcos regime's declaration of martial law (1972), when newspapers were shut down and protest actions declared illegal; Dalena’s digital erasure of the pictured protest signs alludes to the silencing of dissenting voices. In Birds of Prey (2020–22), Dalena further scrutinizes photographic violence and the production of race as tools of the colonial project, reflecting on the twenty-year period of Filipino resistance under competing Spanish and American colonial claims (1898–1947), when the U.S. government made thousands of ethnographic images of Filipinos. Presented by CONTACT. Supported by PATTISON Outdoor Advertising.

Nuits Balnéaires | United in Bassam
BAND Gallery @ 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.

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Julianna A.S., Delali Cofie, Kourtney Jackson | Shedding Heaviness
Gallery 44: 401 Richmond St W, #120 + Studio 1616: 1616 Dupont St
March 28 – June 1
Curated by Aaron Jones & Timothy Yanick Hunter

Shedding Heaviness is an allusive observation on the passage of life, spirituality, the body, and our inner self. Through their distinct and divergent approaches to photography, sound, and installation, Julianna A.S., Delali Cofie and Kourtney Jackson experiment in describing these etheric, intangible states. The three artists prompt us to consider the in-between and the outer self while also reflecting, embracing, and exploring the unknowable. Presented by 1616G44 in partnership with CONTACT.

Jane Jin Kaisen | Burial of This Order
Gallery TPW, 170 St. Helens Ave
May 2 – June 22
Curated by Noa Bronstein

Burial of This Order operates at the intersections of funerary ritual, political protest, and carnivalesque performance. This exhibition centers on Kaisen’s titular video installation, in which we are invited to follow a procession of social actors who have gathered to ceremoniously bury a world order built upon hierarchy and division. The video builds towards a moment of revolutionary fervor when the procession—moving through an abandoned resort on the South Korean island of Jeju—refuses to complete the burial and instead overthrows and dismantles the scaffolding of the prevailing order so that other realities can be imagined into being. Presented by Gallery TPW in partnership with the Danish Arts Foundation, and CONTACT.

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.

Felicia Byron | Harvest – Blue Prints and Magnitudes
Tangled Art + Disability (vitrines), 401 Richmond St W
S-124
May 1 – July 19

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.

Umber Majeed
Trinity Square Video, 401 Richmond St W, Ste 121
April 19 – June 1
Curated by Karina Iskandarsjah

This exhibition focuses on Umber Majeed's ongoing research project Long Live Trans-Pakistan, a multimedia, world-building experiment and investigation that exposes the corrupt, absurd, and violent actions of a Pakistani housing development company "Bahria Town." Presented by Trinity Square Video in partnership with CONTACT.