Toronto Biennial tackles watery themes around the Great Loop

A rendering of Floating Pavilion by Mary Mattingly shows the garden on a barge in the Erie Canal that she is building for the Medina Triennial in New York State and the Toronto Biennial. Mary Mattingly/Supplied

When the fourth Toronto Biennial of Art launches next week, participants will be growing plants and harvesting vegetables along the Erie Canal in upstate New York, in the city of Detroit and on the Caribbean island of Martinique. The biennial aims for a North American reach this year, and the far-flung gardens and farms are the work of artists who are investigating the intersection of art and climate change.

“The projects are dealing with food insecurity, food sustainability, looking at the rupture of not having access to healthy food and proposing solutions,” said Allison Glenn, the American curator who picked Things Fall Apart as the title and theme for the 2026 exhibition.