Precarious Joys

Precarious Joys accompanies the 2024 edition of the Toronto Biennial of Art — a city-wide exhibition that this year focuses on artists’ responses to the impact of colonialism on everyday life. Featuring over 120 full-colour images of artwork — including works by Ahmed Umar, Charles Campbell, Dineo Seshee Bopape, Maria Hupfield, Sonia Boyce, Tessa Mars, and Winsom Winsom — as well as a series of conversations between artists, curators, activists, educators, and cultural organizers, Precarious Joys highlights the connections and common practices that appear across the art featured in the Biennial.

The works and conversations included in this celebration of the 2024 Toronto Biennial of Art address the wide-ranging effects of colonialism, tackling issues as diverse as environmental degradation, self-representation and belonging, queer futurity, and migrant diasporas. The result is a volume that emphasizes the importance of entering a collective dialogue at the intersection of art practices, social knowledge, and public action and serves as a meeting place of multiple vocabularies, geographies, and political communities.