Bookstore
Public Art in/as Temporary Acts
A conversation with curator Kari Cwynar
21 November 2026
4:00pm
Documentation of Temporary Acts: Public Art in Toronto’s Don River Valley, 2025. Photography: Tess Davey. Images courtesy of Art Metropole and Kari Cwynar.
Please join us for a conversation with independent curator Kari Cwynar for a conversation reflecting on her curatorial practice, which centres methodologies for temporary, site-responsive projects in public spaces and experiments with archival and performance-based projects outside of traditional institutional structures and timelines. This curatorial conversation also celebrates the recent release of a new anthology documenting Evergreen’s public art program in the Don River Valley—urban ravine lands located on the traditional territories of the Wendat, Haudenosaunee, and Anishnaabeg confederacies. Cwynar, who was the inaugural curator of the program from 2015-2021 and editor of the new publication, will introduce the book as a case study of artistic inquiry into site and as research-in-progress towards methodologies for public art as living, responsive and relational acts.
Co-published by Art Metropole and Evergreen and edited by Kari Cwynar, Temporary Acts: Public Art in Toronto’s Don River Valley documents the non-profit Evergreen’s public art program in Toronto’s Lower Don River Valley from 2017 through 2024. Twenty-five art and research projects commissioned and presented by Evergreen are reproduced alongside new essays, interviews, roundtable discussions, and process images. Together the publication coheres current discussions on temporary, sustainable, collaborative and site-responsive public art, and explores the role of artists in deepening our engagement with complex landscapes like the Don River. Featured artists include Maria Hassabi, Will Kwan, Nadia Belerique, Maria Thereza Alves, Rita Letendre, Tannis Nielsen, Logan MacDonald, Joar Nango and Ken Are Bongo, Sandra Brewster, Sarah Davidson, and Ogimaa Mikana, among many others. With essays by David Garneau, Charlene K. Lau, Alexis Nanibush-Pamajewong, Aylan Couchie, Jacqueline L. Scott and Chris Mendoza. Roundtable and interview participants include Candice Hopkins, Dylan Robinson, Bonnie Devine, Wanda Nanibush, Susan Blight, Tannis Nielsen, Ryan Rice and more.
Participant Bios
Kari Cwynar (She/Her)is an independent curator and editor based in Montreal. Recently held positions include Lecturer in Curatorial Studies at the University of Toronto, Curator for Nuit Blanche Toronto 2023, Curator of Evergreen’s public art program in Toronto’s Don Valley (2015-2021) and Editor/Editorial Director of C Magazine (2016-2019). Since 2014, Cwynar has been co-director of Kunstverein Toronto, an itinerant curatorial and publishing platform and sister institution to the Kunstvereins in Amsterdam, Milan and Aughrim. Cwynar participated in the 2012-2013 de Appel Curatorial Programme in Amsterdam and has held curatorial research positions at the National Gallery of Canada, the Banff Centre for the Arts and the Art Gallery of Ontario. She is currently completing a PhD in Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies at Queen’s University.