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Dominique Fontaine and Miguel A. López as co-curators of Toronto Biennial of Art

Dominique Fontaine

The Biennial team is thrilled to announce the appointment of Dominique Fontaine and Miguel A. López as co-curators to guide TBA’s exhibition for the third edition of the city-wide art event taking place from September 21 – December 1, 2024.

TBA worked with a group of prominent art-world leaders – including TBA 2019 and 2022 Senior Curator and current Executive Director and Chief Curator of Forge Project Candice Hopkins – to develop a list of international and Canadian curators for consideration.

Dominique Fontaine is a cultural leader, curator, advisor, and strategist on innovation in arts and culture. As a connector, she brings together artists, curators, and the public to enable transformative actions for diversity, equity, and inclusion in contemporary art. Fontaine is a curator and Founding Director of aposteriori, a non-profit curatorial platform – researching, documenting, developing, producing, and facilitating innovation in diverse contemporary art practices.

Fontaine’s recent projects include Imaginaires souverainsLe présent, modes d’emploi, Maison de la culture Janine-Sutto, Montreal, QC; Foire en art actuel de Québec 2020Here We Are Here: Black Canadian Contemporary ArtDineo Seshee Bopape: and- in. the light of this._______, Fonderie Darling, Montreal QC; Repérages ou À la découverte de notre monde ou Sans titre, articule, Montreal, QC; Between the earth and the sky, the possibility of everything, Scotiabank Nuit Blanche 2014, Toronto, ON. Dominique is co-initiator of the Black Curators Forum; a member of AICA-Canada, the American Association of Museum Curators (AAMC), and the International Contemporary Art Curators Association (IKT); and is part of Intervals Collective. Fontaine was a laureate of Black History Month of the City of Montreal 2021.

“It’s a great honor to be invited to curate TBA 2024 with Miguel. I’m thrilled for this opportunity to cocreate an event that could resonate with complex issues of our time in relation to the changing realities of Toronto and the praxis of coexistence. I am looking forward to working with artists, who will bring new and fresh ways of thinking and seeing, and the communities as well as TBA’s partners throughout the 2 city. I am enthusiastic and passionate about the next edition of TBA.” – Dominique Fontaine

Miguel A. López is a writer and curator whose practice focuses on the role of art in politics and public life, collective work and collaborative dynamics, and queer and feminist rewritings of history. He worked as chief curator, and later co-director at TEOR/éTica, San José, Costa Rica, from 2015-2020. In 2019, he curated the retrospective exhibition Cecilia Vicuña: Seehearing the Enlightened Failure at the Witte de With (now Kunstinstituut Melly), Rotterdam. The exhibition traveled to Mexico City, Madrid, and Bogota.

Other recent curatorial projects include Sila Chanto & Belkis Ramírez: Aquí me quedo / Here I Stay en el ICA-VCU, Richmond, VA (2022), Hard To Swallow. Anti-Patriarchal Poetics and New Scene in the Nineties at ICPNA, Lima, Peru? (2021), and if I devoted my life to one of its feathers? at the Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2021), and 21 Bienal de Arte Contemporânea SESC_Videobrasil. Comunidades Imaginadas at SESC, São Paulo, Brazil (2019). He is the author of Ficciones disidentes en la tierra de la misoginia [Dissident Fictions in the Land of Misogyny] (2019), and co-editor of The Words of Others: León Ferrari and Rhetoric in Times of War (2017). He was a recipient of Independent Curator’s International’s 2016 Independent Vision Curatorial Award.

“I am beyond excited to work with the Toronto team and envision a meaningful 2024 Biennial for the artists, the art ecosystem, and especially for the city. I am looking forward to contributing to the local context and encouraging new collaborations with artists, activists, and cultural workers that are posing urgent questions about what forms art can take in the public sphere. I am devoted to bringing art that challenges, inspires, encourages, and connects us.” – Miguel A. López

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