In a disturbing year internationally, Canadian artists and art galleries seemed to rise above the fray with an engaging slate of programming that points to a dynamic post-pandemic recovery. Work by female artists and the importance of textiles as a medium were two recurring themes.
Best film: Floating Sea Palace by Lap-See Lam at the Power Plant, Toronto
The Swedish artist returns to the aquatic myths of her ancestral Hong Kong in this hallucinatory film shot in the ruins of a floating Chinese restaurant and evoking the quest for harbour and home. To March 2
Best book: Paul Kane’s Travels in Indigenous North America by Ian S. MacLaren
In his four-volume life’s work, scholar Ian S. MacLaren teases information from misinformation in the drawings, paintings and notebooks of Paul Kane, the 19th-century Canadian artist whose images of Indigenous people are rife with romanticism and error. McGill-Queen’s University Press
Best photography: People of the Watershed: Photographs by John Macfie at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg, Ont.
Students at Pelican Residential School, Sioux Lookout, in 1953.Supplied
John Macfie was a sympathetic government trap line manager and amateur colour photographer who recorded life in Anishinaabe, Cree and Anisininew communities in the Hudson Bay watershed in the 1950s and 1960s. Now at the West Parry Sound District Museum in Parry Sound, Ont., and touring Northern Ontario in 2025-26.
Best beadwork: Kapwani Kiwanga at the Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy, and Nico Williams at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
Kapwani Kiwanga covered the Canada Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in beaded curtains.Valentina Mori/Supplied
With work on two continents, there was stiff competition in the Canadian beadwork category this year. Kapwani Kiwanga’s Trinket covered the Canada Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in beaded curtains in a piece about European-African trade inspired by the Venetian bead industry. The focus turned to Canada’s role in Radical Stitch, a show of innovative beading by contemporary Indigenous artists at the National Gallery of Canada. Nico Williams, the Anishinaabe artist who went on to win the 2024 Sobey Award, stood out with his witty reproductions of an Amazon shopping bag and a J Cloth.
Best thesis: Woven Histories at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
‘White Felted Dress #3’ by Andrea Zittel, part of the Woven Histories travelling show.LACMA – The Los ANgeles County M/Supplied
The art world’s current infatuation with textiles often lacks context. In contrast Woven Histories, a convincing international show circulated by the National Gallery in Washington at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, places weaving, in particular, at the core of the modernist project beginning in 1960. To March 2
Best revelation: Making Her Mark at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
Marie Victoire Lemoine. Portrait of a Youth in an Embroidered Vest.Supplied
By busting open categories to include the decorative arts and amateur work, Making Her Mark at the Art Gallery of Ontario revealed the huge range of women’s creative activity from 1400 to 1800 – a period that began with the new convention of naming artists (mainly men) and ended as women finally got access to art schools.
Best off-site: Grand Hotel by Ydessa Hendeles at Spazio Berlendis in Venice, Italy
Ydessa Hendeles, Grand Hotel (detail), 2022.Supplied
Toronto dealer and collector turned curator, and now international artist, Ydessa Hendeles assembled a highly unusual reflection on migration and post-Holocaust trauma for a collateral event at the Venice Biennale. Grand Hotel was a collection of historic paintings and found objects, including Louis Vuitton suitcases and a Volkswagen Beetle, evoking the shtetl, the czars who ruled over it and the trappings of luxury travel.
Best institutional turnaround: Textile Museum of Canada, Toronto
Beyond the Vanishing Maya at the Textile Museum of Canada.DARREN RIGO/Textile Museum of Canada
The Textile Museum of Canada is now committed to working with communities represented in its collection. To launch this new approach, it invited Guatemalan curator Diego Ventura Puac-Coyoy to organize Beyond the Vanishing Maya. The show pairs his Mayan family’s painting collection of the past 40 years, showing original and varied approaches to local subjects, with the museum’s traditional textiles dating from the mid-20th century forward. To March 28.
Best international visitors: Cristina Flores Pescoran at the Toronto Biennial and Paolo Pivi at Contemporary Calgary in Calgary
Invited to the Toronto Biennial, Peruvian artist and cancer survivor Cristina Flores Pescoran displayed poignant images of fragility, both drawings of the female body and her crochet work that revives traditional knotting techniques and Indigenous cotton.
Meanwhile, at Calgary Contemporary, Italian-American artist Paola Pivi wowed locals with her first Canadian showing including her brightly coloured feathered polar bears, joyous creatures with darker implications about the climate and consumerism. Paola Pivi: Come Check It Out continues at Contemporary Calgary to March 2.
Best elders: Shelley Niro at the Art Gallery of Hamilton in Hamilton and June Clark at the Power Plant in Toronto
Shelley Niro, 500 Year Itch, 1992.Supplied
Sometimes recognition comes late in a career: 500 Year Itch, the Shelley Niro retrospective currently being toured across Canada by the Art Gallery of Hamilton, revealed how the bold and brassy Mohawk artist has set precedents for today’s flowering of Indigenous art. Meanwhile, June Clark’s haunting art about family, heritage and Black experience from the 1990s on got a well-considered second look at the Power Plant. Shelley Niro: 500 Year Itch is at the Vancouver Art Gallery to Feb. 17 and at Remai Modern in Saskatoon from April 4.
Biggest losses:
In any year, the highlights bring to mind large losses, too. This was the year St. Anne’s Anglican Church in Toronto burned down to a shell, destroying murals that were the only example of ecclesiastic art by members of the Group of Seven.
On the other hand, Morning Star, the magnificent painted dome at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, still stands, the legacy of Denesuline abstractionist Alex Janvier of Cold Lake First Nations in Alberta, who died in July at the age of 89.