This is Paradise:

Art and Artists in Toronto

The conference This is Paradise: Art and Artists in Toronto explored the relationship between the urban context and local artistic cultures in Canada’s largest city. Convening at the University of Toronto from May 28 to 31st, 2015, the conference included over 75 presenters, including artists, critics, curators and scholars from across a diversity of disciplines, and focused on the ecology and conditions of emergence of the visual arts in Toronto.

Presentations explored a range of themes: the “absence” of history, and the relationship between Toronto and other urban centres; the collective impulse in local artistic scenes, and the current pressures of “creative city” paradigms; case-studies of particular places and locales significant in the cultural ecology, as well as considerations of discourses including diaspora studies, urbanism, queer studies and feminism, and of the conditions of specific media such as DIY publishing, independent film and artists’ video. The conference culminated with roundtable conversations about the state of art institutions in Toronto – past, present and future.

This is Paradise: Art and Artists in Toronto was presented by the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery and the University of Toronto Art Centre.

Videography by Aliya Pabani and Onyeka Igwe.