2023 Nuit Blanche Toronto

For one sleepless night, the familiar will be discarded and Toronto will transform into an artistic playground, offering a series of exhilarating contemporary art experiences in unexpected public spaces.

Nuit Blanche Toronto is the city’s annual all-night celebration of contemporary art, produced by the City of Toronto in collaboration with Toronto’s arts community. Since 2006, this award-winning event has featured nearly 1,300 art installations by approximately 4,600 artists and has generated over $268 million in economic impact for Toronto. Nuit Blanche Toronto is a 10-day program which includes the Nuit Talks series and Extended Projects.

2023

Nuit Blanche Toronto returns September 23 showcasing ‘ground-breaking’ art

The all-night celebration of contemporary art will feature exhibitions in Etobicoke, downtown Toronto and Scarborough, with more than 80 art projects from close to 250 artists from a variety of disciplines. Entry will be free for the public to engage with the art projects.

Theme and exhibition areas
This year’s Nuit Blanche theme, Breaking Ground, encouraged exploration within the arts community to focus on issues related to nature and pioneering change. Specifically, Breaking Ground invites artists to explore themes of climate change, the impact of urban development on communities and collective responsibilities around land and stewardship.

Three Toronto-based curators will present unique exhibition areas with their distinct perspectives:
• Shoaling, curated by Lillian O’Brien Davis: The Etobicoke exhibition (sponsored by Humber College) is a multivocal exhibition focusing on connections between land and water that link threads of memory, climate, race and labour through performance, video, sculpture and technologies.
• Disturbed Landscapes, curated by Kari Cwynar: The downtown exhibition unearths centuries of development within Toronto’s financial district, as artists enact a series of creative reversals and disruptions to our built environments.
• In the Aggregate, curated by Noa Bronstein: The Scarborough exhibition (sponsored by Scarborough Town Centre) explores ideas of togetherness, friendship and collectivity that point to Toronto’s unique urban topography and public spaces transformed through the assembly of shared experiences.

Artists
Nuit Blanche aims to uncover and highlight artists who challenge the status quo through media, form or content, to transform public spaces and inspire audiences to experience Toronto in new and meaningful ways, featuring works from award-winning artists, Divya Mehra, Bonnie Devine and Alvin Luong, along with emerging talent including Joy, Par Nair and Tristan Sauer.

Notable artworks
• Leeroy New’s Balangay Starfleet reimagines ancient Philippine boats into futuristic bamboo and plastic vessels suspended mid-aerial encounter.
• Caementarium, a multimedia installation by Dana Prieto and Reza Nik, engages with the former site of the Mimico Asylum, now Humber College’s Lakeshore Campus.
• Wellspring, by Jenine Marsh, upends Nathan Phillips Square, revealing the forgotten space beneath. (Funded by the Government of Ontario).
• Your Wish is Your Command, by Divya Mehra, pokes at colonial underpinnings in the Financial District with a magic lamp.
• Suzanne Morrissette’s light and screen installation to notice urges visitors to pause and observe the shapes of leaves and movement of trees as they trace the movement of wind.
• Lifelines showcases work by the Black Arts Fellowship’s inaugural cohort at the Wildseed Centre for Art & Activism.

Who is it for?

All ages

Date & Time:

Saturday, September 23 | 7:00 PM – Sunday, September 24, 2023 | 07:00 AM

Venue & Address :

Various Venues Toronto – Event Map