Torontonians filled the streets on Oct. 4, scattered across the city for Toronto’s 2025 Nuit Blanche all-night contemporary art festival, exploring the different multicultural exhibits and performances.
From the Danforth to North York, to Humber Polytechnic’s Lakeshore campus, Trinity Bellwoods Park and many other locales, this year's Nuit Blanche featured more than 85 art installations across Toronto.
Starting at 7 p.m. Saturday and wrapping up at 7 a.m. early Sunday morning, blessed with a warmer-than-usual autumn night, art lovers ventured through the city to witness Nuit Blanche's theme of Translating the City.
Inspired by the multilingual nature of Toronto, whose residents collectively speak more than 200 languages, Nuit Blanche seeks to conjoin people in a time of cultural ambiguity.
Finding themselves at Nuit Blanche for the first time, invited by their friend who's a Humber Polytechnic student, Phoenix Burns walked the exhibits at Humber Polytechnic's Lakeshore campus until 2 a.m..
Burns found the exhibits at the Lakeshore campus to be robust and filled with different depictions of life at home and how each culture has its own definition of home.
“I really enjoyed that because it showed multiple cultures of different home lives. And what it means to be home, and I really liked that,” they said.
Burns said the importance and benefits of having a plethora of different multicultural exhibits extend the bracket of people who feel recognized and important.
“I think it's really important because a lot of people don't have recognition or validation in their lives, so it's important to see stuff that represents them that they can relate to, even if it's just like a small piece of artwork with a photograph,” they said.
While the importance of showing diversity through others' art and background held the spotlight as the focal point, one fellowship aimed to explore how individual homes contribute to the fabric of a community.
The Domus Nexus, composed by six Humber Polytechnic Lakeshore students, created an interactive and immersive installation that delved into the intimate relationship between private space and community.
Kelsey Wolff, Fabiana Camba, Maya Harry, Ravi Kant Ponnada, Yash Rana, Maryam Taghizadeh, Ashley Aalto and Casey Norris came together to invite attendees through a cultural and personal lens to reconsider the meaning of home as both a shared cultural symbol and a deeply personal space.
“All of us have different cultural markers that show us that we are home. However, we have more similarities than we have differences,” said Wolff, who is a part of the Visual and Digital Art Program at Humber.
“We built a concept of home where we all have our cultural markers, but we kind of achieved the human universal of what is home,” she said.
Wolff discussed how they divided up people's lives into three separate categories of daily life activities, and where we might find ourselves, or notice atmospheres that are being shifted out.
“The first space, which is where you live, there's also the second space, which is where you work. And there's the third space where you hang out with your friends. Third spaces are disappearing,” she said. “We're often finding that third spaces are showing up in the digital world. That's why we have this digital representation of home.”
A part of the Nexus fellowship, Camba, who is in the same Visual and Digital Arts program, wanted to draw inspiration for her contribution to the exhibit, and show that home is where one can express and be authentically oneself.
“We agree that home is where you feel safe to be who you are. You can have your secrets there, you are supported, you are loved,” Camba said. “And no matter where you're going, you can create your home. We have this agreement that home is where you are with people that you love, and you feel loved.”
Immersed in connecting people through multicultural performances, the Tessera Collective, comprised of nine Humber students, took the stage once more to perform their 16-week interdisciplinary fellowship, following their debut at the Aga Khan Museum on Sept. 14, drawing in a large crowd to display their ensemble one last time.
Kai Gaboury played tenor saxophone, Laura Rovetti provided vocals and acoustic guitar, Domonique Wade added vocals and keys, Ben Culver and Theo Dykstra handled drums, percussion, and vocals, and Serena Mancuso played bass and sang. Owen Bulger played electric guitar and synthesizer. Rahul Raheja and Kien Mac made both documentaries.
The performance is an initiative that advances emerging artists' professional experiences while also promoting an intercultural understanding of Muslim heritage in music and film.
Domonique Wade, who is a part of the Bachelor’s of Music program specializing in vocal at Humber’s Lakeshore campus, collaborated with the fellows, created her own piece dissecting different cultures and their respective religions.
“Both my parents were super Christian when I was growing up, so there's always this fear when you're looking at other religions, because you're taught that they're not real, which is ridiculous,” Wade said. “So when I get the opportunity to look at different faiths, look at different cultures, it's always a really beautiful thing for me, because I really love seeing the way that they love whoever God may be to them.”
Wade said her time with the fellowship allowed people to open up in a way never felt before, and she hopes people feel that love from her performance.
“You don't get to feel that vulnerability in a lot of different spaces. So my song is an amalgamation of that love, essentially.”
Seeing as this was Burns' first Nuit Blanche, it reshaped their thinking on what art means and how it can be represented going forward.
“It just showed the reality of (how) it can be beautiful, it can be very happy," Burns said. "It doesn't have to be depressing all the time. and like, oh, I'm being discriminated against, there can be good things about being diverse.”
