The inaugural Toronto Biennial of Art in 2019, titled The Shoreline Dilemma, was the first edition of a two-part biennial that traced interconnected narratives around the city’s ever-changing shoreline. These connections sought to reveal strategies of resistance against industrial-colonial systems, uncover polyphonic histories sedimented around the shoreline, and open up relations between the human and more-than-human. To extend this artistic thinking and expand notions of relationality, in 2022, the second edition, titled What Water Knows, The Land Remembers, moves inland to follow tributaries and ravines, both above ground and hidden, that shape this place.

In relation to the two Biennial exhibitions, this publication Water, Kinship, Belief is a “third” site, a place where the continuities, resonances, and dissonances between Biennial editions are extended. Its pages become a means to bring together the artists, artworks, collaborators, and ideas that have together informed the exhibitions, irrespective of chronology, dispensing with categories, and part of a greater whole. Through its content and unique design, it is both a generative guide to the exhibitions and a Biennial site of its own, presenting new artistic relations that course through the book like tributaries.

Artists: AA Bronson, Abbas Akhavan, Abel Rodríguez, Adrian Blackwell, Adrian Stimson, Aki Onda, Althea Thauberger, Kite, Amy Malbeuf, Andrea Carlson, Ange Loft, Arin Rungjang, Augustas Serapinas, Aycoobo, Bárbara Wagner, Benjamin de Burca, Brian Jungen, Caecilia Tripp, Camille Turner, Caroline Monnet, Curtis Talwst Santiago, Dana Claxton, Dana Prieto, Denyse Thomasos, Eduardo Navarro, Elder Duke Redbird, Embassy of Imagination, PA System, Eric-Paul Riege, Fernando Palma Rodríguez, Ghazaleh Avarzamani, Hajra Waheed, Hera Büyüktaşcıyan, ᐃᓱᒪ / Isuma, Jae Jarrell, ᔭᓇ ᑭᒍᓯᐊ / Janet Kigusiuq, Jeffrey Gibson, ᔨᐊᓯ ᐅᓈᖅ / Jessie Oonark, Joar Nango, Judy Chicago, Jumana Manna, Kapwani Kiwanga, Laurent Grasso, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Lisa Reihana, Lisa Steele, Kim Tomczak, Lou Sheppard, Luis Jacob, Mata Aho Collective, Marguerite Humeau, Maria Thereza Alves, Moyra Davey, Nadia Belerique, ᓇᐸᓯ ᐳᑐᒍᖅ / Napachie Pootoogook, Naufus Ramirez-Figueroa, New Mineral Collective, New Red Order, Nick Sikkuark, Paul Pfeiffer, Qavavau Manumie, Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, Hesam Rahmanian, ReMatriate Collective, Shezad Dawood, Susan Schuppli, Syrus Marcus Ware, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Tsēmā Igharas, Erin Siddall, ᕕᐃᑎᕋᐊ ᒪᒍᓯᐊᓗ / Victoria Mamnguqsualuk, and Waqas Khan.

Contributions by Adrian Blackwell, Ange Loft, Camille Georgeson-Usher, Camille Turner, Candice Hopkins, Charles Stankievech, Chiedza Pasipanodya, Ilana Shamoon, Katie Lawson, Melony Ward, Patrizia Libralato, Sebastian De Line, Susannah Rosenstock, Tairone Bastien, and Yaniya Lee.

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Published for the exhibition Hunting & Collecting, Mu.ZEE, Ostend, Belgium, cur. Sammy Baloji, Philip Van den Bossche and Anouck Clissen (3 August 2014 – 21 September 2014).

Whatever can hunting wild animals in colonial Congo and the exploitation of Congolese mines in the present have in common with a collection of modern and contemporary art in a museum in the Belgian coastal city of Ostend? In 2014 Sammy Baloji initiated an ambitious research exhibition bringing together historical documents, pictures by Congolese photographer Chrispin Mvano, works of Belgian artists from the 19th and 20th century included in the collection , contributions by contemporary artists dealing with the exploitation of Congo and finally his own acrimonious collages. This book transforms the numerous layers of the exhibition into a experimental visual essay. The seemingly distant realities f art history and global economies appears as closely intermingled.

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Exhibition catalogue for the group exhibition “Ask Yo Mama” 2011 curated by Ina Wudtke at Kunstraum Niederösterreich Vienna. With texts by Ina Wudtke and Dieter Lesage, as well as an editorial by Christiane Krejs and 49 illustrations in 4-colour print. Available from Kunstraum Niederösterreich.

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Published in 2007 as a catalogue for the solo exhibition of the same name by Ina Wudtke at Studio Voltaire London, edited by Dieter Lesage. 4-colour print with 56 illustrations. Limited, signed editions available. Supported by the Berlin Senate Scholarship to London.

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Published as a catalogue for the exhibition “Das Neueste Weltgerichtstriptychon” curated by Dieter Lesage, xhibit AdbK Vienna, 2014 – edited by Ina Wudtke, Herman Asselberghs, Alice Creischer, Andreas Siekmann, Dieter Lesage and Maruša Sagadin. Numerous 4-colour illustrations.

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Marking the first UK commission by Brooklyn-based filmmakers Adam Khalil and Bayley Sweitzer in collaboration with Oba, Gasworks has published a 176-page book that explores the ever-expanding vampiric universe of Nosferasta.

Spanning 500 years of colonial destruction, human trafficking and blood sucking, Nosferasta is a Rastafarian vampire film that reimagines Oba’s origin story in the late 15th century, when he is seduced by the vampire Christopher Columbus, ensuring his undying allegiance to the colonial project. Combining film forms and jumping across multiple timelines, Nosferasta examines the guilt of being complicit in imperial conquest, while acknowledging the extreme difficulty of unlearning centuries of vampiric conditioning. Ultimately, the film tackles an uncomfortable question:

How can you decolonise yourself, if it’s in your blood?

Interspersed with excerpts from Oba’s literacy diaries, Nosferasta: The Book features critical essays, speculative fiction and visual contributions by Peggy Ahwesh, Lou Cornum, Alex Esco, Sabel Gavaldon, Adam Khalil, Mutabaruka, Oba, Austin Sley Julian, Bayley Sweitzer, and Laura Vallés. Designed by fag tips (aka Virgil b/g Taylor).

Nosferasta: The Book is published by Gasworks as part of the European Cooperation project 4Cs: From Conflict to Conviviality through Creativity and Culture, co-funded by Creative Europe and the Royal College of Art.

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Drawings by Claude Eigan
Texts by Clara Pacotte, Jackie Donie, Elodie Petit and Thomas Conchou

Published on the occasion of:
‘dandelion menace’
Claude Eigan
Curated by Thomas Conchou
At Artemis Fontana gallery, Paris.
June 05 — 26, 2021

dandelion menace is Claude Eigan’s first monographic exhibition in France. It unfolds around plant presences that form three families: fists bouquets, shields corollas, and wolf trap leaves, all linked to the central figure of taraxacum, which gives the exhibition its title. Commonly called pissenlit in French (piss in bed), in reference to its diuretic properties, this plant with depurative virtues is also called dent-de-lion for its sharp leaves and bushy yellow collar. The works presented at Artemis Fontana all trace, in their own way, the emotional coordinates of the artist. The fists of their friends and relatives make up the intertwined cornucopias in the series Soft and Stone and High, 2020, chimerical presences oscillating between the floral and the aquatic: somewhat plants, somewhat mermaids. The outlines of Berlin’s pavements inhabit the series under no kings, 2021, composed of wall pieces arranged in a defensive formation. Straps in the back allow them to be worn on the arm while brandishing white and purple fleur-de-lis, placed upside down in a cheeky misuse of royal and religious emblems. Finally, the coordinates of LGBTQIA+ places dear to the artist adorn the laughing jaws of the dandelion’s leaves in the series Pissed, 2021, alongside queer slogans and symbols.

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