North American and international artists will present a diversity of lens-based projects in museums, galleries, and public spaces across Toronto

TORONTO, April 11, 2019 /CNW/ - Today, the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival announced the full program for the 23^rd edition of the city-wide event spanning the month of May, including its Core Programming of 23 Primary Exhibitions and 15 Public Installations. Influential American artist Carrie Mae Weems will headline this year's Festival with an exhibition in five parts sited at distinct locations across the city, representing her first solo exhibition in Canada. In addition to Weems, a selection of outstanding North American and international lens-based artists will present an array of projects in museums, galleries, and public spaces across Toronto.

Full details are now available on the CONTACT website. The Festival is free and open to the public, with some exceptions at major museums.

Artists featured in the Primary Exhibitions include: Arnait Video Collective, Deanna Bowen, Taysir Batniji, Moyra Davey, Erika DeFreitas, Dornith Doherty, Beatrice Gibson, T.M. Glass, Mike Hoolboom and Jorge Lozano, Ayana V. Jackson, Geoffrey James, Morris Lum, Annette Mangaard, Meryl McMaster, Manar Moursi, Nadia Myre, Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn, PA System, Louie Palu, Krista Belle Stewart, Alien Agencies Collective, Michael Tsegaye, Hajra Waheed, Elaine Whittaker, Nevet Yitzhak, and Jude Abu Zaineh. Click here for further information on these artists' exhibitions.

Artists featured in Public Installations include Nadia Belerique, Susan Dobson, Peter Funch, Esther Hovers, Sanaz Mazinani, Zinnia Naqvi, Mario Pfeifer, Bianca Salvo, Sputnik Photos, Nadine Stijns, Carmen Winant, and Elizabeth Zvonar. Click here for further information on these artists' installations.

"The range of artists that we have gathered for this year's edition of CONTACT truly span the globe and bring insights and observations on so many different cultural, political, and environmental issues. The entire CONTACT team is honoured to have such a diversity of talent on view in Toronto this May, and we thank our many partners and supporters for making all of this possible," said CONTACT Executive Director Darcy Killeen.

Beyond its Core Exhibitions, CONTACT includes Featured and Open Call Exhibitions that present a range of works by artists at leading galleries and alternative spaces across the city.

CONTACT also organizes and co-presents a wide range of Programs including a book fair, book dummy reviews, lectures, panels and workshops appealing to a wide audience.
Click through for further information on Featured and Open Call Exhibitions, and on Public Programs.

Some highlights of the 2019 Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival:

Carrie Mae Weems
Weems' work will be presented in two gallery exhibitions and three major public art installations in downtown Toronto:

Blending the Blues – CONTACT Gallery, 80 Spadina Ave., #205. May 1 – July 27
Opening: Friday, May 3, 6 – 9 p.m.

The CONTACT Gallery will display an array of Weems' pivotal early and recent photographic works, including the series All the Boys (2016), which responds to the recent spate of killings of young African American men.

Heave – Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, Art Museum at the University of Toronto, 7 Hart House Circle. May 4 – July 27
Artist Talk: Saturday, May 4, 4 – 5 p.m., Daniels Building, 1 Spadina Cr., Purchase tickets here.
Opening: Saturday, May 4, 6 – 8 p.m.
Heave (2018) combines photography, video, news media samplings, and ephemera to probe the devastating effects of violence in our life and times.  

Slow Fade to Black – Metro Hall, King St. W at John St. May 1 – June 4
In a selection of images from her series Slow Fade to Black (2010), Weems reclaims images of historically significant black women singers of the last century whose legacies appear to fade as time elapses.

Scenes & Take – TIFF Bell Lightbox, corner of Widmer and King St., May 1 – 31
Two works from Weems' 2016 series Scenes & Take underscore the emergence of a shift in the cultural landscape where her "muse" character inhabits the sets of contemporary television shows featuring black female leads and black writers and producers. 

Anointed – 460 King St. W. April 24 – September 6
Anointed (2017) features an image of Mary J. Blige, who Weems photographed for W's Art Issue shortly after the Grammy award-winning singer's breakout performance in the film Mudbound.

Scotiabank Photography Award: Moyra Davey
Ryerson Image Centre, 33 Gould Street. May 1 – August 4
Artist Talk: Ryerson University School of Image Arts, 122 Bond St., rm. IMA-307 (3^rd fl.), Wednesday, May 8, 7 p.m.

This first survey exhibition celebrates the work of Toronto-born artist Moyra Davey, winner of the 2018 Scotiabank Photography Award. Based in New York, she is recognized internationally for her photographs, videos, writings and artist books. The exhibition includes portraiture, still life and photographs of subway scenes, along with a suite of Davey's films which interweave subjective narratives with the texts and lives of her influences, such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Sigmund Freud, Jean Genet and Pierre Vallières.

Meryl McMaster, As Immense as the Sky
Ryerson Image Centre, University Gallery, 33 Gould St. May 1–August 4
Artist Talk: Wednesday, June 5, 7 p.m.

As Immense as the Sky is a photographic series of performative self-portraits set in specific landscapes across Canada where Ottawa-based artist Meryl McMaster examines the overlapping cultures and histories—public and private, familial and non-familial—of both her Indigenous and European ancestors.

Carmen Winant, XYZ-SOB-ABC
Billboards on Lansdowne Ave. at Dundas St. W. and College St. and across Canada May 1 – 31
Artist Talk: Ryerson University School of Image Arts, 122 Bond St., room IMA-307 (3^rd fl.). Friday, May 3, 5 p.m.
Performance and talk: Women and Photobooks Symposium, Art Gallery of Ontario, 317 Dundas Street W. Saturday, May 4, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Book Signing: CONTACT Photobook Fair, Stephen Bulger Gallery, 1356 Dundas St. W. Sunday, May 5, 1 p.m.  
Winant will sign copies of her critically acclaimed Carmen Winant: My Birth (2018).

American artist and writer Carmen Winant's work will be featured on four billboards in Toronto and 14 billboards across Canada. In a series titled XYZ-SOB-ABC (2019) Winant explores representations of women through collage, mixed media, and installation. Other Canadian billboard locations include: Calgary, Edmonton, Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa, Saskatoon, Vancouver, and Winnipeg.

Arnait Video Productions, Arnait Ikajurtigiit: Women Helping Each Other
Art Gallery of York University, 8 Accolade East Building, York University, 4700 Keele St. April 17 – June 23
Opening: Thursday, April 17, 6 – 9 p.m.
Artist Talk: The Commons, 401 Richmond St. W. Suite 440. Friday, April 18, 12 – 2 p.m.

Arnait Video Productions is a dynamic collective of women filmmakers from the Arctic whose films speak directly to the lives of its Inuit and non-Inuit members. Presenting work of Arnait over three decades, this exhibition offers a model for learning by doing. Including films, objects, and photos, it shows how Inuit life continues to change and adapt in reaction to Western influences from the exceptional perspective of women of Igloolik.

Ayana V. Jackson, Fissure
Campbell House Museum, 160 Queen St. W.  May 1 – June 2
Reception and Artist Talk: Friday, May 2, 6 – 8 p.m.

Employing her own body, Ayana V. Jackson deconstructs racial and gender stereotypes to create contemporary portraits laced with historical allusions. Deeply influenced by her own fluid identity and her transcontinental practice—working between New York, Paris, and Johannesburg— Jackson's images crystallize African and African-diasporic realities while challenging a fraught legacy of pictorial representation.

Taysir Batniji, Suspended Time
Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art, 401 Richmond St. W, #124. May 3 – June 22
Opening: Friday, May 3, 7 – 10 p.m.

Taysir Batniji, a Palestinian artist based in Paris, explores the social, cultural and political realities of Palestine, the challenges of migration, and the state of being "in between." The exhibition is a survey of his photographic work of nearly twenty years. 

Bianca Salvo, The Universe Makers
Osgoode subway station, Queen St W & University Ave. April 30 – June 3
Artist Talk: Saturday, May 25, 3 p.m., Scrap Metal Gallery, 11 Dublin St. E.

Bianca Salvo explores the roles that photography, technology, and science fiction have played in producing evidence. An Italian artist based in Milan and Bogotá, her public installation at Osgoode station, The Universe Makers (2016–18), addresses public beliefs and false perceptions of interstellar exploration some 50 years after the appearance on television of the first man on the moon in 1969.

CONTACT Public Installations Panel  
Jackman Hall, Art Gallery of Ontario, 317 Dundas St. W. Monday, May 6, 6:30 p.m.

CONTACT initiated its public art program in 2003 with a series of four public installations of images in spaces historically used for advertising. Since then CONTACT has produced over 150 unique projects in high-profile sites across Toronto and Canada. Canadian and international artists Nadia Belerique, Susan Dobson, Peter Funch, Esther Hovers, Sanaz Mazinani, and Sputnik Photos artist Michal Luczak will discuss their varied practices in relation to their 2019 site-specific projects. Moderated by Bonnie Rubenstein, Artistic Director of CONTACT.  

The 2nd annual CONTACT Photobook Fair    
Stephen Bulger Gallery, 1356 Dundas St. W. Sunday, May 5, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.

The second edition of the CONTACT Photobook Fair brings together over 20 independent publishers and leading contemporary photographers to present newly released publications. Publishers include Anchorless Press (Toronto); Aperture Books (New York); Archive of Modern Conflict (London and Toronto); Art Gallery of Ontario Publishing (Toronto); Bywater Bros. (Port Colborne, ON); Cristian Ordóñez (Toronto); Dashwood Books (New York); Dewi Lewis Publishing (Stockport, UK); Gnomic Books (New York); JMS Press (Toronto); Les Éditions du renard (Montreal); Light Work (Syracuse, NY); Meta/Books (Amsterdam); Prefix ICA(Toronto); Self Publish, Be Happy (London); Session Press (New York) and Sputnik Photos (Warsaw).

In conjunction with the Fair, CONTACT is organizing a dynamic series of public programs and initiatives on photobooks, including the exhibition The Photobook Lab, which includes the 2018 Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards Shortlist at Scrap Metal Gallery (May 4 – June 1), the Women and Photobooks Symposium (May 4) at the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Book Dummy Reviews (May 6) at Stephen Bulger Gallery.

About Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival
CONTACT fosters and celebrates a diversity of photo-based practices in its annual Festival in May and year-round programming in the CONTACT Gallery in Toronto. CONTACT presents lens-based works by acclaimed and emerging artists, documentary photographers and photojournalists from Canada and around the world. The core program of Primary Exhibitions (collaborations with major museums, galleries and artist-run centres), and Public Installations (site-specific public art projects), are the Festival's central focus. These are cultivated through partnerships, commissions, and new discoveries, framing the cultural, social, and political events of our times. The Featured and Open Call Exhibitions present a range of works by local and international artists at leading galleries and alternative spaces across the city. CONTACT also includes a wide range of programs including a book fair, lectures, talks, panels, workshops and symposia during the Festival.  The CONTACT Gallery hosts exhibitions and  related public programs throughout the year.

CONTACT, a not-for-profit organization founded in 1997, is generously supported by Scotiabank, Scotia Wealth Management, Nikon Canada, Pattison Outdoor Advertising, Toronto Image Works, Transcontinental PLM, 3M Canada, BIG Digital, Waddington's Auctioneers and Appraisers, Four By Eight Signs, Beyond Digital Imaging, Steam Whistle Brewing, Art Toronto, The Gladstone Hotel, The Globe and Mail, The Metropolitan Detroit, NOW Magazine, CBC Toronto and Canadian Art.

CONTACT gratefully acknowledges the support of Celebrate Ontario, Ontario Cultural Attractions Fund, Ontario Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport, Ontario Arts Council, The Government of Ontario, Partners in Art, Canada Council for the Arts, La Fondation Emmanuelle Gattuso, the Howard Webster Foundation, Hal Jackman Foundation, Mondrian Fund, Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Goethe-Institut, Tourism Toronto and all of their funders, donors, and programming partners. For more information, please visit scotiabankcontactphoto.com and follow us on Twitter @ContactPhoto.

About Scotiabank 
Scotiabank is Canada's international bank and a leading financial services provider in the Americas. We are dedicated to helping our more than 25 million customers become better off through a broad range of advice, products and services, including personal and commercial banking, wealth management and private banking, corporate and investment banking, and capital markets. With a team of more than 98,000 employees and assets of over $1 trillion (as at January 31, 2019), Scotiabank trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: BNS) and New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: BNS). For more information, please visit www.scotiabank.com and follow us on Twitter @ScotiabankViews.

SOURCE Scotiabank