Toronto Art Fair 2026
The Guild is pleased to participate in Art Toronto for the second year in a row. Come visit us at Booth P5 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre from October 29 to November 1, 2026. We’ll be showcasing a selection of works on the theme of survival by artists Ruth Cuthand, Martine Bertrand, Andreas Krätschmer, Bettina Matzkuhn, Amanda Roy, and the Blackned family artisans from Waskaganish, Quebec.
Surviving
How do we survive ecological, political and personal crises?
What does nature teach us about survival and resilience?
In these troubled times, many artists are exploring how our bodies, minds, and nature itself manage to survive in the face of illness, devastation, and various forms of violence.
Art allows us to name and expose trauma and to denounce its causes. It allows us to see beauty through the wounds that transform us. It helps us imagine strategies for survival and to nurture hope and strength for better times.
Some of the proposed artworks reflect on traumas, others on how art can heal and how nature can guide us through resilience and survival.
Ruth Cuthand creates beaded images of pathogenic bacteria and viruses brought by Europeans, which have historically affected Indigenous communities. Amanda Roy, by revisiting Edward Sheriff Curtis historical portraits, demonstrates the resilience of Indigenous people despite these colonial violences. Bettina Matzkuhn creates intricately embroidered life jackets to prompt reflection on the essential needs that must be preserved during migrations caused by climate change, thereby illustrating the need to care for nature to ensure our own survival Andreas Krätschmer turns to the fragility, the strength and the resilience of the forests and of the material wood itself to teach us about our own human psyche. Martine Bertrand imagines aerial views of cities reconstructed with found objects, using upcycled textiles, showing that even when everything vanishes, human creativity finds ways to rebuild both physical and imaginary worlds atop the ruins of what once was. Finally, Gordon, Leonard and Roderick Blackened turn decades of crafting tamarack decoys into a means of cultural survival and awareness.
