iArt Gallery of OntarioGrange Park
Dawoud Bey: Material Histories, Living Landscapes
Dawoud Bey's landscape photographs and the two-channel video 350,000 meditate on North American land and Black diasporic history, with works from the AGO's Frum Collection.
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The first thing you see is a lake. A wall-sized print of Lake Erie, shot from the Ohio shore looking north towards Canada, meets you at the entrance: no people, only water and sky. It belongs to Bey's series on the last stretch of the Underground Railroad.
Inside, 23 large black-and-white photographs of Louisiana plantations and Virginia's Richmond Slave Trail line the walls, hung tightly so the woods and fields feel hemmed in. Bey shot every one at eye level, he says, to suggest the view of the enslaved people who moved through them. In the middle, his two-channel film 350,000 walks a slowed-down Steadicam along the trail over layered footsteps, breathing and birdsong. Four African sculptures from the AGO's Frum Collection, chosen by Bey, are the first African objects he has put into one of his shows.
ArtAfrica called it "thoughtful, poetic, and politically urgent". It's one quiet room for slow looking and listening, on Level 2 (gallery 249), part of the 2026 Toronto Biennial, until 4 July 2027.
Look for
Untitled #25 (Lake Erie and Sky)
Look for it at the entrance as a large vinyl print: Lake Erie from Ohio, looking north to Canada, the shore freedom seekers were heading for, with nothing in it but water and sky.
350,000
Projected in the middle of the gallery, a black-and-white walk through dense foliage on the Richmond Slave Trail, slowed down, with the camera standing in for an enslaved person's eyes and a soundtrack of layered feet and breath.
The close-hung landscapes
Big black-and-white views of plantations and the slave trail, all taken at eye level and packed tightly around the walls so the trees seem to crowd in.
Good for
- Going Solo
- Out-Of-Town Guests
Skip if
You want people in your photographs: these are empty landscapes, with the people deliberately left unseen.
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Image credits
8
- Dawoud Bey: Material Histories, Living LandscapesCourtesy of Art Gallery of Ontario
- Always In FashionPhoto by Darren Rigo.
- Made By Many: 50 Years of the Textile Museum of CanadaPhoto by Darren Rigo
- Retracing Tatreez: Palestinian Thobes through the 20th CenturyCourtesy of Textile Museum of Canada
- Art Gallery of OntarioOwen Byrne / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
- Textile Museum of CanadaRaysonho @ Open Grid Scheduler / Grid Engine, via Wikimedia Commons, CC0
- Campbell House MuseumJK Liu / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary PhotographyEWilson (Volunteer), Wikimedia Commons, CC0