Images: 1. Angela Ferreira, 2. Denise Ferreira da Silva, 3. Rita Fabiana

PLATFORM is Art Toronto’s comprehensive lineup of talks and panel discussions where listeners will hear from influential art world figures on important and trending topics. Included within PLATFORM are POWER TALKS, a series of lectures organized in partnership with the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery.

These complimentary talks are held on the Art Toronto stage and last approximately one hour.

To view videos of talks from Art Toronto 2018 and previous years, click here.

See the 2019 schedule of talks below:

1:00PM | Archives of Futurities
Presented by Presenting Sponsor, RBC

Moderator: Emelie Chhangur, Interim Director/Curator of the Art Gallery of York University (AGYU)

Panelists: Artists Pamila Matharu and Rajni Perera 

A conversation on the concept of “Future Real Conditional,” which Black photography scholar Tina M. Campt describes as a future that hasn’t yet happened, but must.  The conversation explores the interstitial spaces artists seek to carve for the future; the importance of creating places of inclusion, both socially and aesthetically; and how artists influence futures they seek to inhabit—for themselves and other generations—by effecting change today.

2:30PM | Artist Talk: Carlos Bunga
Presented by MOCA Toronto, Supported by Partners in Art

Carlos Bunga uses mass-produced materials such as cardboard, adhesive tape and household paint to produce site-specific, process-focused installations. Emerging from a dialogue with an existing architectural space, these ephemeral structures remind us of life-size architectural models as well as temporary street shelters. Through his work, Bunga not only encourages viewers to rethink their experience of space and architecture, but also evokes the transient and fragile nature of urban structures.  This talk in anticipation of Bunga’s upcoming exhibition at MOCA Toronto in February of 2020.

4:00PM  | POWER TALKS - Rita Fabiana: Performing the Institution(al) Today?
Presented by The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery

In 2012, the Museum of Modern Art held a symposium titled “How Are We Performing Today?”  Focused on performance within the museum, speakers grappled with the subject of a “migration from the margin to the center of contemporary art [and museum] discourse.” Rita Fabiana looks back to look forward, considering recent years and the future of the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, as a Portuguese and European institution. How has the museum been responding to questions of gender, migration, and colonialism through collection acquisitions, exhibitions, display policies and public engagement.

6:00PM | Spirit of Place: Manitoba
Presented by the McMichael Canadian Art Collection

Moderator: Sarah Milroy, Chief Curator, McMichael Canadian Art Collection
Panelists: Artist Robert Houle, and curator, artist, author, and professor of Indigenous Visual Culture and Critical Curatorial Studies at OCAD University, Gerald McMaster. 

This panel will consider what it means to make art in Manitoba from the point of view of artists and writers working there today. A strong spirit of place is embodied in the name Manitoba, which is derived from the Ojibway term for the Great Spirit and which was given to the sound of the waves in the Lake Manitoba Narrows. The panelists will reflect on their relationship to the land and its spirit.

1:00PM | Caring for your Collection: What you always wanted to know but were too afraid to ask!
Presented by Show Sponsor, AXA

Moderator: Rick Hiebert, accredited member of the International Society of Appraisers
Panelists: Iris Handke, Managing Director of AXA Insurance Company, Fine Art Conservator Laszlo Cser of Restorart, and Gordon Butler, Project Manager at PacArt, Fine Art & Exhibition Transportation.

With the increasing values coming out at auction, the art market is showing no signs of slowing down. It is therefore, more important than ever, that your prized possessions are maintained through proper care and maintenance. Whether you are a seasoned collector, or starting your collection, there are many things to take into consideration, and it can be a daunting task. A Q&A will follow the panel discussion. 

2:30PM | Notes on Collecting and Curating: A Conversation Between Luiza Teixeira de Freitas and Rui Mateus Amaral
Co-Presented by Art Toronto and Partners In Art

A conversation exploring the possibilities and complexities of being an Independent Curator amidst the rapidly changing conditions of our time. By highlighting key projects and collections guided by Teixeira de Freitas, this dialogue will address new currents in exhibition-making, collection building and art fair experiences.

4:00PM | POWER TALKS -  Angela Ferreira: Pan African Unity Mural
Presented by The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery

The artist will focus on projects concerned with developing metaphoric and political statements from critical investigations into the relationship between buildings, films, music and the ongoing impact of colonialism, post-colonialism and neocolonialism on contemporary society. Ferreira’s work will serve as starting points for a discussion and reflection on the unexpected history of personalities that have served as role models for a constructive representation of Africa.

6:00PM | Undoing Painting
Presented by Lead Partner, Canadian Art

Inspired by the theme of Canadian Art’s Fall 2019 issue, this panel explores the various ways histories and hierarchies can be reshaped through contemporary ideas of painting as a flexible, undefined medium. Toronto artist Ghazaleh Avarzamani’s interdisciplinary practice considers a range of spaces, structures and devices for interactivity, self-development and play. Toronto artist Amanda Boulos creates new narratives out of stories and symbols drawn from her family’s experiences of the 1948 war in Palestine and ensuing Lebanese Civil War, and Vancouver artist Lyse Lemieux explores the spaces between abstraction and representation, while maintaining an interest in the materiality of the human figure.

1:00PM | Crystal Migwans: Care, Containment, and the Possibility of Life in Collections of Contemporary Indigenous art
Presented by C Magazine

The repatriation movement gave us a way to approach care of historical Indigenous material. Grave goods, sacred objects, ancestor-beings—these designations trigger certain protocols designed to protect vulnerable communities, and even reconstitute some of what colonial theft stole away. But what about care of contemporary Indigenous collections? This kind of art, by some bureaucratic math, has been assigned to a secular realm with little room for things like collective ownership, potential animacy, or kinship with objects and places. This division of historical and contemporary is, at its core, part of a system that treats such Indigenous entanglements as liabilities, and works to limit them. As Indigenous artists and art professionals make inroads into institutions that had once excluded them, and Indigenous art flows into collections, we encounter new (and old) problems in how to care for our relations.

2:30PM / POWER TALKS - Denise Ferreira de Silva: Through the Question(ing) of Justice
Presented by The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery

This presentation contemplates the question of what happens to the thesis of the (im)possibility of justice when considered through artistic practice, in particular when taking into account the limit(action)s of representation, and the urgency and duty to attend to how colonial and racial violence continue to rule in the global present. This exploration consists primarily in a reflection organized by the interrogations, questions and propositions introduced in collaborative works by Ferreira da Silva—as well as insights occasioned by the works of contemporary artists such as Otobong Nkanga, Carlos Motta, and Paulo Nazareth.

4:00PM | The Cape Dorset Effect: West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative and Sixty Years of Inuit Art
Presented by the West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative

Welcome and Opening Remarks: Pauloosie Kowmageak, West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative President, Moderator: Oo Aqpik, well known for her roles in Inuit language programs in television, radio and documentaries, and as a consultant on Inuit and Arctic-themed television and film productions.

Panelists: Senator Patricia Bovey, Independent Manitoba Senator; Catherine Bradley, Partners in Art; Natalie MacNamara, NAMARA Principal and Creative Director; Saimaivu Akesuk, Kinnagait Studios Artist (via CISCO System); Claire Foussard, Ki Smith Gallery Manager. This discussion will examine the rise of artistic practice in Cape Dorset, Nunavut by profiling the history of West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative. A community-owned and Inuit-lead organization, the cooperative’s Kinngait Studios program is internationally renowned for the production of prints, drawings and sculptures by its Inuit artist members. Through diverse perspectives, this conversation will explore Inuit art from Cape Dorset as a quintessentially Canadian form of expression and delve into the factors that have contributed to its international acclaim. This initiative is an important component of the West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative year-long program celebrating its 60th anniversary. Throughout 2019, events are scheduled to take place in Cape Dorset, across Canada and internationally.