Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival
Jake Kimble, Grow Up #1, 2022. Courtesy of the artist
Written by Eloise King-Clements
The annual Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival, which took over Toronto’s billboards, subway platforms, graffitied walls, and gallery spaces, is slowly winding down after an exciting 27th year. Celebrating the photographic prowess of over 100 featured artists from The Six and beyond, this year's festivities focused on the environmental crisis, decolonial practices, returning to the land, and ecology. Fittingly, a myriad of the pieces were installed around the waterfront—a space that has come under surveillance as the city’s plans for development creates an uncertain future. With the last chance to see the work approaching, here are our highlights.
Jake Kimble, Grow Up #1, 2022, installation view, 460 King St W, Toronto, 2023.
Courtesy of the artist and CONTACT. Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid
On a somewhat battered brick building, a massive print of Grow Up #1 from Jake Kimble hangs against the backdrop of an empty parking lot. The banner is a photograph of Kimble as a child, wearing a cowboy hat and outfit, staring earnestly at the camera. Layered on top, in bubbly letters reminiscent of refrigerator magnets, it reads, “I was told peace was mine to keep.” The words—are they a statement or defense?—vacillates between meanings, and the amorphous nature is what Kimble seems to intend. Kimble, being a Chipewyan (Dëne Sųłıné) from Treaty 8 Territory in the Northwest Territories, thwarts the historical dichotomies of “cowboys and Indians” with this piece and simultaneously recalls a childhood where the onus of maturity and caregiving was placed on him. Concurrently, the photographic banner asks the city's passersby questions of peace and responsibility, and allows for self-reflection and meditation.
Sarah Palmer, I love Hawaii, Caribbean, 2018, from the series Wish You Were Here.
Courtesy of the artist. “The carbon footprint per person on a cruise ship is on average 3x more than on land.”
Sarah Palmer, Wish You Were Here, 2018, installation view, Donald D. Summerville Olympic Pools, south façade, Toronto, 2023.
Courtesy of the artist and CONTACT. Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid
The festival is ubiquitous throughout Toronto, giving artists the space usually occupied by advertising, and perhaps for that very reason, making it easy to miss. Sarah Palmer’s Wish You Were Here series, installed as larger-than-life prints on the Donald D. Summerville Olympic Pools, could be mistaken by a passerby, intent on an afternoon swim, for an unorthodox cruise advertisement. Distorted with double exposures and light leaks, the series depicts mostly white couples with terracotta skin from years in the sun, basking on verandas as they glide into, or through, retirement. The photographs feel uncannyand slightly discomposed, as Palmerdocuments “last chance” tourism amidst the climate crisis. With data showing that the carbonfootprint per person on a cruise increases to 3x what it would be on land, the series recalls a senseof apathy and excess from these vacationers, as they swim through coral reefs that are bleachedfrom carbon emissions. Palmer offersus a theoretical red pill, allowing us to see the reality anddetriment that vacation culture, with its piña coladas and freshly washed linens, often obscures.
Farah Al Qasimi, Night Swimming, 2023, installation view, Davisville Subway Station, Toronto.
Courtesy of the artist and Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival. Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid
North of Palmer’s photographs, the series Night Swimming (2023) by Farah Al Qasimi, a photographer working between New York and the United Arab Emirates, is installed in Toronto’s Davisville Subway Station. Instead of shaving advertisements or dating app graphics, Al Qasimi’s vibrant collage-like compositions charm commuters on their way to work. It was a welcome change. Al Qasimi knows no bounds, with images taken of storefronts, advertisements, floral displays, and street life; her work oscillates between bright, cloying compositions of patterns and cultural detritus that almost spills from the frame, and cinematic, clean photographs. Collages like Still Life with Sample Text and Piña Coladas (2021) or Joy (2021), examine her ancestry history and consumer culture, while photographs like Star Machine (2021), a vibrant shot of a blue-toned living room, with a small figure curled on the couch, lit by speckled LED “stars'', evokes a sense of disconnection and escape from natural world. Despite her amalgamation of processes and visual styles—in-studio, out-of-studio, collage, and photography—somehow there’s a cohesion as her work merges thematically into a discourse on consumerism, ancestry and alienation from nature.
Maggie Groat, twins, webs, ripples, shifts, sounds, 2022 (found paper).
Courtesy of the artist
Maggie Groat, DOUBLE PENDULUM, 2023, installation view, wheat-pasted images at Harbourfront Centre parking pavilion, Toronto.
Courtesy of the artist and Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival. Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid
Maggie Groat presented newly commissioned work across three locations: at CONTACT’s gallery space, on billboards across the city, and as an outdoor installation in the Harbourfront Center. As her work looks at sustainability, all her installations were sustainably made and reused after the show. Her waterfront installations serve as conceptual jumping-off points. twins, webs, ripples, shifts, sounds (2023) are three enlarged, wheat-pasted handmade collages, scanned and displayed on different walls on Toronto’s waterfront—where continued development has been underway for the past 15 years, and the city looks to take their place “as a top waterfront city.” The scan depicts nine butterfly-Esq shapes made from different patterns and clippings, which seem to be nods towards Edward Lorenz’s idea that a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can cause a tornado in Texas. Apropos of Lorenz’s ideas, and his pronouncement that long-term meteorology cannot be predicted, Groat’s work looks at our environmental crisis and the small patterns beneath complex systems. Similarly, her other works are large-scale examinations of the paradox of imperfect symmetries.
CONTACT’s Photography Festival wraps the city in the finest new work by established artists, like Wolfgang Tillmans, and emerging artists straight out of university. The festival brings the community together and invites personal and communal reflection. The other artists included in the core program are Joi T. Arcand, Hélène Amouzou, Wolfgang Tillmans, Nabil Azab, Genesis Báez, Ursula Biemann, Catherine Blackburn, Mary Bunch, Jawa El Khash, Lindsey French, Karina Griffith, Grace Grothaus, Maïmouna Guerresi, Aziz Hazara, Robert Kautuk, Seif Kousmate, Nadya Kwandibens, Long Time no See, Meryl McMaster, Suzanne Morrissette, Joel Ong, Abdi Osman, Sarah Palmer, Celeste Pedri-Spade, Racquel Rowe, Wayne Salmon, Serapis, Rasa Smite & Raitis Smits, Sunday School, Jane Tingley, Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning, and Jin-me Yoon. The festival ended on May 31, but many exhibitions and outdoor installations will remain through June and July.
