The Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto (MOCA) has announced the curatorial team for the second edition of their triennial exhibition, Greater Toronto Art (GTA). The 2024 iteration of the project will be led by MOCA Curator Kate Wong and two invited guest curators, Ebony L. Haynes and Toleen Touq.
Following on from the inaugural exhibition—which featured newly commissioned work by 21 artists and collectives including among others Ghazaleh Avarzamani, Julia Dault, Azza El Siddique, Aaron Jones, Pamila Matharu, Native Art Department International (Maria Hupfield and Jason Luyan) and Jagdeep Raina—the 2024 edition of the project will continue to probe the connection between place and artistic practice, and will include for the first time a series of newly commissioned live performances.
GTA is a recurring exhibition featuring the work of artists and art collectives with a connection to the Greater Toronto Area. The 2024 edition will run from March until July 2024 across all three floors of the museum.
GTA24 curatorial team:
Kate Wong moved from London, UK in October 2022 to take up the role of Curator at MOCA Toronto. During her ten years in London, Wong worked at Serpentine Galleries where she co-curated ambitious projects by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Roscoe Mitchell, Linton Kwesi Johnson and Josiane M.H. Pozi. She was the Programme Curator at V.O Curations, where she developed an experimental programme of artists residencies, exhibitions, public programming and curated exhibitions such as Assholes by Motoko Ishibashi, Nonbody Nonthing No Thing by Rhea Dillon and Homeplace, a group show featuring work by Patty Chang, Larry Achiampong and others.
Wong is the founder of low theory, and a contributing writer for frieze and AnOther Mag. Her writing has appeared in publications including Yishu Journal, TANK Magazine, Heichi Magazine, Oscar Yi Hou (James Fuentes Press, 2022) and Clay Pop (Rizzoli, 2023). Wong has taught as part of the Sandberg Instituut and University of the Underground’s New Politics and Afrofuturism Master’s programme and has been an invited speaker at Tate Modern and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Ebony L. Haynes is a writer and curator from Toronto, Canada. She is presently based in New York where she is Senior Director at David Zwirner and leads the gallery’s 52 Walker space in Tribeca. Haynes is responsible for many critically acclaimed exhibitions such as Kandis Williams: A Line, epigenetic, Tiona Nekkia McClodden: MASK / CONCEAL / CARRY, Invisible Man, EBSPLOITATION and The Worst Witch.
Haynes was the 2022 curator for the inaugural Fine Arts MFA exhibition for first-year students at The Rhode Island School of Design, Providence. She has previously held positions as visiting curator and critic at the Yale School of Art in the Painting and Printmaking programme, as well as director at Martos Gallery, New York, and Shoot The Lobster, New York and Los Angeles. Haynes sits on the boards of Artists Space, New York, the New Art Dealers Alliance and Cassandra Press. She also runs Black Art Sessions, an online “school” that offers free professional practice classes to Black students worldwide.
Toleen Touq is a curator, cultural producer and facilitator working between Toronto, Canada and Amman, Jordan. In Amman, she is a co-founding director of Spring Sessions (2014-ongoing), a yearly residency programme that brings together artists, researchers and cultural practitioners in a collaborative and experiential learning environment that is fueled by responsiveness to place and deep curiosity. She co-initiated and co-curated The River Has Two Banks (2012-2017), a multi-disciplinary artistic platform that addressed the historical, political and spatial relations between Jordan and Palestine.
In Toronto, she was artistic director (2018-2022) of SAVAC, a nomadic artist-run center dedicated to presenting and developing the work of marginalized and racialized artists. She initiated Ways of Attuning (2021-2023) with Liz Ikiriko to study intimate and expansive curatorial practice with a group of participants across Turtle Island. Recent exhibitions she has curated include Another World That Sounds Like You (Gallery TPW, Toronto, 2023), Nour Bishouty: Nothing is lost nothing at all except what is not had (Gallery 44, Toronto, 2022) and Erdem Taşdelen: A Minaret for the General’s Wife (Mercer Union, Toronto, 2020).
About MOCA Toronto
The Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto (MOCA) presents rotating exhibitions that prioritize twenty-first-century artistic production, primarily through commissioning of new work. Artists, partnerships, experimentation, and reciprocal initiatives are at the centre of MOCA’s mission as a locally rooted and internationally connected organization. Focused on core values promoting equity, inclusion, access, courage, and responsibility, MOCA fosters active participation and engagement to serve as a welcoming cultural hub in the hyper-diverse city of Toronto.
