About this Event
Artist and Educator Maryam Hafizirad invites Deaf, hard-of-hearing, and hearing visitors to engage with the artworks through visual storytelling, ASL, gesture, body language, memory, and shared discussion. Each session will include a short introduction to De’VIA (Deaf View/Image Art), followed by guided storytelling and discussion.
The sessions will be built around water as a central metaphor for Deaf life, drawing on ideas of flow, depth, current, and resilience to explore Deaf identity, memory, and lived experience. This metaphor offers a visual and embodied throughline that connects to the biennial theme Things Fall Apart, and to guided storytelling prompts around access, identity, rupture, language, resistance, visibility, and community.
Inquiries at [email protected].
De’VIA Storytelling with Maryam Hafizirad is made possible in partnership with the Art Museum at the University of Toronto and OCAD University.
Who Should Attend:
We invite Deaf, hard-of-hearing, and hearing visitors to join these sessions. Participants can be any age.
About TBA 2026:
The Toronto Biennial of Art’s mission is to make contemporary art accessible to everyone. A twelve-week event every two years, the Biennial commissions artists to create new works for a city-wide exhibition in dialogue with Toronto’s diverse local contexts. The 2026 Biennial, titled Things Fall Apart, is shaped by Curator Allison Glenn’s research-driven and site-responsive approach. The fourth edition will centre on artists whose practices engage rupture as a generative force, reconsidering histories, geographies, and systems that shape contemporary life while proposing new ways of understanding the present. The upcoming edition of the Biennial will open on September 26, 2026 - December 20, 2026.
Learn more about TBA on our website.
Event venue & nearby stays
Art Museum at the University of Toronto - University of Toronto Art Centre, 15 King's College Circle, Toronto, Canada
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