Koffler Arts

Arcade

An ongoing inquiry into the art and ideas of our time.
Published by Koffler Arts.

Recommended reads

When a Garden Leans into Complexity

As with the field of botany, the idea of the botanic garden in the West is deeply rooted in the history of European imperialism and extractivism. Led by London's iconic Kew, botanic gardens around the world are now attempting to untangle the legacies of empire.
by Patrick Pittman /

Til Freedom Do Us Part

When it comes to 20th century intellectual power-couples, no two represented more disparate ideas about marriage and freedom than the chain-smoking liberationists Sartre and de Beauvoir on the one hand, and the neoliberal economists Milton and Rose Friedman on the other.
by Linda Besner /
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Recent Posts

The Lonesome Burden of Being a Plant

The Lonesome Burden of Being a Plant

The question of whether plants could have consciousness has not been left quietly back in the ’70s, as Linda Besner discovers in Zoë Schlanger’s new book, The Light Eaters.
by Linda Besner /
Tearing Up the Script

Tearing Up the Script

As he approaches the first anniversary of his joining Koffler Arts as its new general director, Arcade spoke with Matthew Jocelyn about the tenuous position of Canadian arts organizations, and his vision for Koffler going forward.
by Arcade /
The Perfect World Does Not Decay

The Perfect World Does Not Decay

If she can’t keep her own plants alive, Tatum Dooley is at least going to figure out the artistic value of a fake one.
by Tatum Dooley /

A School of Their Own

Young Changemakers, a Toronto program supported by Koffler Arts, is helping students learn how to connect with and transform their environment.
by Arcade /

Paradise and Ragwort: on Olivia Laing’s The Garden Against Time

The chaos and order of the garden has been a running theme through much of Olivia Laing's work, and her particular way of looking at the world. No matter how Edenic a garden, the outside world is always creeping in.
by Patrick Pittman /

If Statues Must Fall, Taxonomy Must Also Fall

A conversation with Brazilian artist Giselle Beiguelman about her exhibition Botannica Tirannica—now showing at Koffler Arts—and understanding the colonial imagination.
by Chris Frey /
Arcade 09 — June 2024

Every Weed Is a Rebellious Being

Though the original names of many native plants in Canada were lost to colonialism, with the garden he has designed in dialogue with the exhibition Botannica Tirannica, Isaac Crosby aims to show the resilience of both Indigenous knowledge and the plants themselves.
by Arcade /
Arcade 08 — April 2024

Beyond the Landfill of Images

Experimental filmmaker Midi Onodera talks with Arcade about her early adoption and explorations of new technologies, how art making in Toronto has changed, and what the glut of media images might be doing to us.
by Tatum Dooley /
Arcade 07 — March 2024
Arcade 06 — February 2024

Good Things to Come

Sometimes, it's worth taking a moment to look forward, at all the good things in our future. A selection of picks for the art worth looking forward to in 2024.
by Arcade /
Arcade 05 — December 2023
Arcade 04 — November 2023

Filling in the Gaps of Family Memory

From his talk at the Koffler Gallery, visual artist Rafael Goldchain on his photographic series I Am My Family and how its approach to simulation as a means of commemoration represents a “double gesture towards the past”—an attempt to both recuperate and interrogate history.
by Rafael Goldchain /

An Inconvenient Place

Despite the deliberate erasures of Soviet historiography, the site of the massacres at Babyn Yar reveals a story spanning several eras of Ukrainian history—though mostly by examining how that story was allowed to be told.
by Anna Medvedovska /
Arcade 03 — October 2023
Arcade 02 — September 2023

The Naked Pool

At the intersection of the public and private, the clothed and unclothed, the swimming pool has long been a favoured motif among artists and writers. But as fall settles in, what about the months when it's closed? Who are the artists of the drained pool?
by Linda Besner /

Preserving the Past During Wartime

An interview with Oleksiy Makukhin, CEO of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center, on how Russia's invasion of Ukraine has disrupted the centre's activities and forced it to question its approach to memorialization.
by Chris Frey /
Arcade 01 — August 2023