culture

Toronto Biennial opens with a choir sounding sirens from Lake Ontario

Brendan Fernandes' shipboard performance launches an exhibition built around rupture and renewal.

The Canadian

Culture

September 23, 2026

5 min read

A theatrical performance under saturated stage light

The fourth Toronto Biennial of Art opens with The Calls, a performance by artist Brendan Fernandes staged aboard the tall ship Kajama on Lake Ontario. An 18-person choir will imitate police sirens as the vessel moves through Toronto's waterfront.

Fernandes was born in Nairobi, raised in the Greater Toronto Area, and is now an associate professor at Northwestern University. His practice combines dance, ballet, sculpture, and questions about power and public space.

This edition of the biennial is titled Things Fall Apart and includes work by 34 artists, among them Kent Monkman and Dawoud Bey. Curator Allison Glenn developed the exhibition after travelling across Canada to meet artists and communities.

The program runs across Toronto through December 20. Its opening work turns a familiar urban warning sound into a collective human performance, asking audiences to reconsider who produces public signals and how bodies respond to them.

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