The Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto (MOCA) has shared details of its new season of programming on Shift Key, the Museum’s digital moving-image platform. Curated by Carly Whitefield, Assistant Curator, International Art at Tate Modern, What we carry forward touches upon specific questions and themes raised in the Museum’s inaugural triennial Greater Toronto Art 2021 (GTA21), and expands this dialogue with the participation of eight international artists.

What we carry forward takes inspiration from explorations of inheritance and the public realm elaborated across GTA21’s physical and digital spaces. Unfolding over the course of four months, the series pairs artists’ films, videos, and animations that together open up questions around remnants and legacies, ownership, and agency. Work by artists Allora & Calzadilla, Theo Eshetu, Mona Hatoum, Samson Kambalu, Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn, Aura Satz, Cauleen Smith, and Cecilia Vicuña will be featured.

On view on MOCA’s website November 1, 2021 through February 28, 2022, the programme begins with Samson Kambalu’s A Thousand Years (2013) and Dogs See Invisible Things (2016) and Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn’s The Boat People (2020), which take imaginative, cinematic approaches to engaging with traces of the past. Allora & Calzadilla’s Returning a Sound (2004) and Theo Eshetu’s The Return of the Axum Obelisk (2009) centre acts of reclamation and repatriation, while Mona Hatoum’s Roadworks (1985) and Aura Satz’s Preemptive Listening (Part 1: The Fork in the Road) (2018) insist on maintaining signs of public resistance and resilience. Cecilia Vicuña’s Paracas (1983) and Cauleen Smith’s Pilgrim (2017) close the programme by animating objects and sites with the creativity and generosity of spirit of those who shaped them.

Image: Tuan Andrew Nguyen – The Boat People, 2020 (still).