Nuit Blanche 2022: Your guide to what to see, do, experience at Toronto’s open air overnight arts festival

Whether you’re following virtual fish swimming through a skate park, belting out karaoke or hanging at a giant dinner party shimmering with colour, this year’s Nuit Blanche promises spectacle as art returns to the streets after three long years.

It’s hard to say how Torontonians will respond to the return of Nuit Blanche but in case you need some veteran advice: dress warm, wear decent shoes, fill your water bottle and make a plan that you’re willing to break. If you’re overwhelmed by the choices, here are some highlights to start your journey.

Skate with the fish

Nunatsiavut artist and sidewalk surfer Mark Igloliorte turns his passion for skateboarding into art with his installation “Saputiit — Fish Weir Skate Plaza.” For one night only, the Inuk artist will transform Yonge and Dundas Square into a working skate park, inspired by Indigenous culture and conceptually designed to mimic the stone arrangements Inuit use to mark locations of fish spawning in rivers. It isn’t just skateboarders who should be stoked: even if you can’t land an ollie, you can participate by conjuring virtual Arctic char on your mobile device.

Mend your socks

This year marks the first time that Etobicoke has been added to the official Nuit Blanche map. The projects all take place around the Humber College campus on Lake Shore Blvd. West, making it a walkable neighbourhood experience. There are several visual installations, and even a marathon weaving project, but I am intrigued by this combination of art and skill-sharing. Bring your torn jeans or ripped sweater to the “Mending Clinic” (walk-in or appointment) run by the Cloth Care Collective, and learn how to repair clothing at your own speed. Leave feeling empowered with a new skill to take home.

Dine with strangers

You might recognize Nike Onile as a regular on the daytime TV talk show “Cityline,” but Nuit Blanche is the holistic designer’s time to shine with colour. Onile’s design practice examines the intersections between intentionality, history and storytelling. For this night, she is turning her attention to the communal joy of “The Dinner Table,” an experience many of us missed during COVID-19 isolation. Onile will transform 100 Yonge Street into a street-long dinner party but instead of breaking bread, passersby are invited to sprinkle the beautifully set table with coloured (non-toxic, biodegradable) dust.

Get lost in the mall

Fans of 1980s horror movies know that strange things can happen in shopping malls after dark. Fear not, there are no zombies roaming around Scarborough Town Centre, but you may find yourself surrounded by thousands of shiny balloons and plastic bags.

Among the cluster of installations around the mall is Ludovic Boney’s “Why so many ties?” The Montreal-based artist of the Huron-Wendat Nation has planted 4,000 metal rods topped with recycled plastic bags. Visitors can walk (or temporarily disappear) between 100 rows, creating a dance-like movement as the environmental scourges wave and flutter across this manufactured farm.

Inuk artist Couzyn van Heuvelen’s “Avataq” are bobbing around the city this Nuit Blanche. Instead of attracting marine animals, van Heuvelen’s joyful screen-printed silver foil balloons — mimicking hunting tools made from inflated sealskins — can be found at several sites celebrating Inuit ingenuity. A small pod can be found at the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery’s fantastic new “Arctic/Amazon” exhibition, and another on 10 Bay Street, while a 30-foot single balloon will overlook Yonge and Dundas Square. In Scarborough, you’ll find the biggest spectacle of all: up to 2,000 avataq floating inside the mall.

Sing for your supper

One of my all-time favourite Nuit Blanche installations was from 2009 in which the formidable Winnipeg artist duo Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan turned Bay Street into an amusement park with midway rides staffed by recently downsized business workers. Flash forward 13 years later as we face yet another economic crisis and we have Australian artist Amrita Hepi investigating many of the same labour issues, this time through song. Hepi’s “An Occupation” involves a six-metre-wide inflatable sculpture while the public is invited to sing odes to labour and worker rights. Pour yourself a cup of ambition and courage to sing to the crowds.

Go back to the future

As we mourn what is lost through gentrification, artist and drone pilot Linda Zhang and Emmy-nominated documentary producer Maxim Gertler-Jaffe use storytelling to conjure future possibilities for cherished neighbourhoods with their installation “Reimagining Chinatown: Speculative Fictions from Toronto’s Chinatown(s) in 2050.” Adapting five pieces of speculative fiction written by young Asian-Canadians during a Myseum of Toronto workshop, this installation uses 3D digital collages, narration and music to build communities of the future.

Augment your experience

Nagam is bringing her passion and expertise with virtual technologies to Nuit Blanche in a formidable way. In 2020, she was responsible for the event’s first-ever online happening, creating a pathway between storytelling and digital experiences. One of the highlights this year are two projects she is also intimately involved in that screened at this year’s Venice Biennale.

“ARCTIC XR” and “ÁRRAN 360” use cutting-edge technologies to present intimate stories from six artists, including musician Tanya Tagaq and Sobey Art Award winner Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory.

Be sure your phone is charged for more than taking photos. Look for signage as more than 20 projects across the city will feature augmented-reality features. Yung Yemi’s property-surveillance signage in “those who watch over us” use bold graphic Afrofuturistic design and virtual elements in three different locations (North York, Etobicoke and 100 Queen W.) to draw attention to the prevailing surveillance of Black bodies and police presence in Black communities, while acknowledging the higher forces of ancestral protection.

It would be easy to be swept away in the lush colours and patterns in Chun Hua Catherine Dong’s photography (5120 Yonge), but the series is meant to hide what the Montreal artist refers to as Asian shame culture. Dong’s female portrait subjects are swathed in traditional silk fabrics, masking their true identities and ultimately their voices. I am intrigued by these photos but even more so how she will use AR to reveal more truths behind these striking images.

For more information go to www.toronto.ca/explore-enjoy/festivals-events/nuitblanche/

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