The fourth Toronto Biennial launches with an ambitious North‑American scope, turning the continent’s waterways into a living gallery. Curated by Allison Glenn, the show is titled Things Fall Apart and explores how climate change, food insecurity and the rupture of access to healthy sustenance intersect along the historic Great Loop.

Glenn’s program places gardens and farms at the heart of the exhibition. Artists are planting seeds, harvesting vegetables, and recording the seasons in locations as diverse as the Erie Canal in upstate New York, a community garden in Detroit, a market garden on Martinique, and a school‑run plot in St. Louis. Projects like the floating barge garden by Mary Mattingly and the seed‑notebook collaboration between Jean‑Marc Bullet and Céline Semaan turn agriculture into a participatory artwork that travels the 9,700‑kilometre water route.

Institutionally, the biennial has moved into the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, using its two galleries as the primary venues while still drawing on the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Royal Ontario Museum and Mercer Union for satellite programming. The lack of a permanent home is presented as a strength, allowing the event to adapt and to respond to the financial realities of a post‑pandemic art scene.

A third of the 34 participating artists are Canadian, and for the first time the roster includes prominent Indigenous voices such as Kent Monkman, Bonnie Devine and Rebecca Belmore. Their presence underscores the biennial’s original ambition to showcase Canadian talent on a global stage while inviting international dialogue.

Beyond the gardens, the exhibition features paintings by Cameron Harvey that reference fire‑resistant chaparral, linking the theme of ecological resilience to recent wildfires in California. Together, the works weave a narrative of shared waterways, cross‑border histories and the urgent need for collaborative solutions to climate disruption.

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