Nuit Blanche Toronto 2023

The city turned into a fantastical art wonderland for an evening

Sep 26, 2023

I’m back from an unintentional Substack hiatus; all of the little things kept piling up and keeping me away from my blog, which I like more than most of the little things (except my cats, which are my favourite little things). Anyway, onward.

I’ve been consistently (and pleasantly) surprised by Toronto’s arts scene. In Vancouver, it seemed like the public art was high-concept, austere, and scattered; the commercial art is very commercial. Toronto puts more effort into events that support both artists and people that want to see art for free without walking into a small, quiet gallery where you will inevitably make awkward small talk with a salesperson who knows you’re not there to buy a painting worth $10,000.

Growing up in BC is one of the reasons why I had no idea that Nuit Blanche events existed until I went to Toronto’s Nuit Blanche on Saturday night. It was magical.

A square public fountain with the words TORONTO lit up in blue. — There was a huge crowd at Nathan Phillips Square, but the night made the crowd seem less dense in the dark.

I only went to the downtown exhibit called “Disturbed Landscape,” because I wasn’t sure about spending all night out on my own and I wasn’t sure what the event would be like. When I got off the bus, I realized it was way more popular than I thought it would be –people flooded the street, punctuated by the odd bewildered dog taking in the crowd from below.

The event signage describes the exhibit as “a series of reversals and disruptions in the built environment” that “reveals the conditions of the urban landscape, the entwinement of land, power and capitalist desire and the impacts of colonial regulations on Indigenous land.”

A sign that reads "Nuit Blanche Toronto" and another that reads "Disturbed Landscape: curated by Kari Cwynar. Twelve hours spent digging up the buried rivers of Toronto with a spoon - a small gesture to undo centuries of development. A massive void unearthed in front of City Hall, revealing the detritus of urban collectivity and protest. Birdsong heard throughout a Bay Street lobby, suggesting a past soundscape driven out by urban noise. A magic lamp that answers colonial yearning. In this exhibition, nine artists intervene in Toronto's financial district, enacing a series of reversals and disruptions in the built environment, uncovering the land beneath the corporate headquarters, bank plazas, governmental buildings and the overlooked parking lots of the city's commercial centre. In a part of the city where the land has been obscured and de-prioritized, this exhibition reveals the conditions of the urban landscape, the entwinement of land, power and capitalist desire and the impacts of colonial regulations on Indigenous land.

The first thing I encountered was not technically art, although whether or not a poutine truck fits into the “fine art” category depends on how crunchy their fries are. I didn’t try the poutine so I can’t be certain. It was tempting.

A food truck with a sign that says "Poutine & More" with red, wavy city buildings painted on a black van, and scattered crowds in front. — The double fry is what makes them crispy. The donuts were also tempting but Tiny Tom’s expression is vaguely unsettling.

There was a buzz in the air and a musician playing what sounded like a Guzheng somewhere in the near distance. My first stop was City Hall and Nathan Philips Square, since the map showed a bunch of installations clustered in that area. On the way, I passed by a giant inflatable bag (you can see it in the distance of the picture of the clock tower if you look closely) and a performance piece where a man stood by to crown visitors that stepped on stage with him.

A long street with a clock tower glowing in the background at the end, and a crowd walking in the street.

The first piece I really took a close look at was “She Work Hard For It” by Lido Pimienta, Maria Qamar (Hatecopy), and MissMe. What should seem like a disparate combination of textile and pop art was really well-matched in its exploration of two distinct feminisms, and the whole piece glowed with a kind of technicolor radiance. I wanted to go through it, but the lineup to explore the inside looked like it was about an hour long (the lineup isn’t in the picture).

A red, purple, beige and black pop art display of determined-looking women featuring the text "No Fear! Persevere!"

The second piece, on first glance, looked like a construction project. Artist Jenine Marsh dismantled some of the concrete pavers in Nathan Phillips Square to uncover the history buried in the detritus that half a century of visitors has left – kind of like a giant, public couch cushion that uncovers everyone’s loose change.

Exposed concrete pillars that usually support the loose concrete slabs of Nathan Phillips Square, with random garbage, coins and other detritus. — Apparently the concrete that covers the square is loose so that it can hypothetically be removed to make room for temporary structures, but that hasn’t happened.

She added sculptures of feet, and little flower garlands, suggesting a phantom traveller that made their way through once. Amid the coins, sim card, signs, rings, and other debris she found, she told CBC she hopes viewers will find a different Nathan Philips Square:

“I hope people who visit this project will see the space differently afterward. Although the pavers will be returned to their places — and [the square] will be returned to this flat, empty void — they'll still know what's underneath it. They'll know that it's like this sort of drain where all the residue of all the festivals ends up there — the Canada Days, the protests. It's like this drain in the bottom of the sink of the city.”

A water fixture and concrete pillars with metal sculptures of feet, and one flower garland. — Apparently the water fountain is a separate sculpture and not a pump for the main water fixture in the square – although it looks like it could be.

I walked around the square until I encountered a line that was just as long as the line for She Work Hard For It, but it led underground into the City Hall Loading Dock. Curious, I decided to wait.

I think for this one, the anticipation was key. I hadn’t looked into the event enough to know what I was in for, so all I could do was wait and watch people descend into a mysterious art unknown. Somehow that was the best part.

The exhibit was cool, but tough to capture because it was so jam packed with people milling about. It was a movie (Eclipse by Naomi Rincón Gallardo) and a related metal sculpture, that touched on vulnerability in the context of climate and cultural threats. Fortunately, someone else got some footage, but it doesn’t totally capture the second best part: because the movie was underground, the audio had the same intense, reverberating quality of voices in a cave.

The next one I saw was probably my favourite, but I’m not sure why. Maybe I just like art that’s atmospheric, that transports me to a different felt experience. “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” by Anupa Khemadasa was one of those pieces. It felt romantic, like the ideal place to be 17 years old again and confess your feelings to a high school crush.

A circular hedge with a ghostly sculpture of a boat in the middle, surrounded by blue lanterns.

I tried to capture it with video too:

But I couldn’t quite capture the way the blue light gave the space an extra-moonlit quality, or the way the combination of voices from the speakers somehow sounded like verbal ripples or waves. I guess you’ll just have to trust me – I stayed there for a bit to absorb it. The voices talked about global warming and the climate crisis, and something about the way they talked with and against each other foregrounded them as organic, like the water, and in direct conflict with the subject.

I was starting to get sleepy when I encountered “About Dreaming” by Jaume Plensa. It’s a permanent sculpture rather than part of Nuit Blanche, but the event made a lot more people stop and notice it; everyone was taking pictures of the art in the city they might otherwise walk past.

A sculpture of an elongated white head stretching up into the night sky. — So sleepy.

Although its artist statement said the sculpture is about contemplation and ideas, I thought there was an uncanny way that the warped perspective of the head evoked that liminal space between sleep and wakefulness where everything is a little askew.

“The ‘Living’ Room” by Hannah Busse was probably one of the most popular exhibits. Apparently the plants are all real, local plants that the artist cultivated over the summer and trained to grow over the furniture as a meditation on consumption and its relationship to nature.

A living room set up in the outdoors, with plants growing over the tables, sofa, and appliances that make up the scene.

One of the things that struck me about it was that I thought the plants were fake until I read the summary of the exhibit – maybe because they were so carefully trained over artificial items, and placing the living room outdoors makes it seem even more removed from the “natural” indoor setting of the artificial items, so my brain just made an inference about what was real and what was fake based on the context I had.

My final stop was Union Station, where Krista Belle Stewart’s “To Be One and Multiple at the Same Time” hung in giant photographic banners in Union Station, a reflection of her journey across the Atlantic on an ocean liner.

Large banners with blue-grey photos of water hanging down between the columns of Union Station in Toronto. The banners are backlit with blue light, and spell out the title of the artwork with one word on each banner.

Same artwork, taken from the opposite angle.

The epic size of it seemed appropriate given the subject matter, and taking photos alongside a giant crowd, looking up at the CN Tower, was the perfect way to end the night. If I could do it over again, I’d plan ahead a bit more and stay up to see the smaller exhibits, and check out the AGO – but I’ll have to do that next year.

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