Starting this Saturday at 7 p.m., the City of Toronto will come alive as Nuit Blanche fills Toronto streets with more than 80 contemporary art projects created by nearly 250 artists. The free all-night celebration of contemporary art will feature in neighbourhoods across the city with exhibitions in Etobicoke, downtown and Scarborough.
Navigating the art by neighbourhood
Art projects are clustered in easy-to-navigate Nuit Neighbourhoods, making exploring the event more convenient for audiences. Neighbourhoods include Don Mills, East Danforth, Bloor-Yorkville, North York, Sterling Road, Fort York, Weston, West Queen West and the downtown waterfront. Full exhibition areas can be found in Etobicoke, downtown and Scarborough.
Etobicoke
Shoaling, the Etobicoke exhibition, is curated by Lillian O’Brien Davis. Audiences are invited to enter a multivocal exhibition focusing on connections between land and water that link threads of memory, climate, race and labour through performance, video, sculpture and technologies. Etobicoke will also showcase a large variety of independent projects presented by Exhibition Sponsor Humber College and the local arts community that the public can experience.
Etobicoke sites include Assembly Hall, Humber College’s Lakeshore Campus and Colonel Samuel Smith Park. Featured projects include a 150-foot-long light installation, a land-based installation along a beach and two newly commissioned film works.
Downtown
The Disturbed Landscape exhibition, curated by Kari Cwynar, will occupy Toronto’s downtown core with creative reversals and disruptions to our built environment. Unearth centuries of development in the City’s financial centre as commissioned artists highlight the ever-present relationship between land, economy and power in urban environments. The downtown neighbourhood will also feature various independent projects and installations delivered in partnership with leading cultural institutions.
Scarborough
Explore ideas of togetherness, friendship and collectivity pointing to Scarborough’s unique urban topography and discover public spaces transformed through shared experiences. Eight commissioned projects comprise the In the Aggregate exhibition, curated by Noa Bronstein. Visit Scarborough Town Centre to experience a descending fleet of space vessels made of bamboo and discarded plastics, a 40-foot video installation on queer dance and resistance practices and hand-embroidered letters stitched onto silk saris bringing with them feelings of nostalgia, loss and a desire for connection. Scarborough Town Centre is the proud sponsor of this exhibition.
Nuit Blanche Toronto is the city’s annual all-night celebration of contemporary art, produced by the City of Toronto in collaboration with Toronto’s arts community. Since 2006, this award-winning event has featured more than 1600 art installations by approximately 5,800 artists and has generated over $489 million in economic impact for Toronto. Information and updates are available on the Nuit Blanche website on Facebook , Twitter  and Instagram . This year’s event hashtag is #NBTO23.