Toronto Biennial of Art at the Aga Khan Museum

Header image credit:

Dawit L. Petros, Stratigraphic II, II (2026). Dye Transfer on Woven Light polyester, 67 x 56 inches. Courtesy of the Artist and Bradley Ertaskiran.

The Aga Khan Museum is proud to partner with the Toronto Biennial of Art 2026, one of Canada’s leading contemporary art events, transforming the city into a vibrant landscape of artistic discovery, dialogue, and imagination from September 26 to December 20, 2026.

This year’s exhibiting artist is Dawit L. Petros, with the installation Emergent Formations, 2026.

Emergent Formations will consider the lasting implications of an 1884 British Empire military mission which set in motion an extraordinary collision of worlds. As documented in participant’s accounts, the expedition included British, Irish, Scottish, Indian, Egyptian, and Sudanese workers, as well as 379 voyageurs from across Canada. Among the 379 Canadian boatmen recruited for this military rescue mission in Khartoum, Sudan, were more than 100 Métis, Mohawk, and Haudenosaunee men — skilled navigators whose river mastery had already been called upon during the Red River Expedition of 1870 in newly formed Manitoba. These were people whose homelands had been profoundly disrupted by colonial forces, now hauling wooden whaling boats against the Nile’s fierce currents, wading through rapids, and undertaking grueling portages across the Nile River delta.