Don’t Look Back
Curated by David Liss
TOAF’s signature 65th Birthday off-site group exhibition at Koffler Arts
June 25 – July 19, 2026
180 Shaw St, Toronto, ON
Participating Artists
Stephanie Avery, Melcolm Beaulieu, Ross Bonfanti, Philip Cote, Neltje Green, Jenn Goodwin and Sarah Doucet, Jessica Thalmann, Svava Thordis Juliusson, Kaeja d’Dance, Anu Kalra, Joel Lukombo, Heidi Strauss, Yaw Tony, V Vallières, Matthew Walton & Jes Young.
David Liss on Don’t Look Back
Don’t Look Back is a special off-site group exhibition celebrating the 65th anniversary of the Toronto Outdoor Art Fair, the long-running open-access hub for art, culture, commerce, and social interaction held in the city’s most prominent public square.
The exhibition title is borrowed from the 1967 documentary film on Bob Dylan of the same title, and reflects the belief that while the past shapes who we are, it is our actions in the present that define who we become. At the time, the notoriously contrarian artist avoided revisiting his past as he was in the midst of a pivotal creative transition toward a more expansive sound—one that mirrored both a shifting cultural landscape and his evolving artistic vision.
Avoiding retrospection may seem irreverent in the context of a milestone anniversary, yet the exhibition’s title and concept arise from the challenge of meaningfully representing 65 years of the Fair within the scope of a single presentation. Rather than indulge in nostalgia or attempt to condense such a dynamic history into a definitive narrative, Don’t Look Back celebrates the Fair in its present moment while acknowledging the continuum between its rich past and a future full of possibility.
The exhibition brings together artists from the GTA and beyond, who have participated in the Fair in recent years. The selection is, of course, subjective and represents only a snapshot of artists at various stages of practice, and working across a diverse range of media. As a whole, the exhibition reflects the vibrancy and spirit of one of Toronto’s most significant and exciting cultural events.
Don’t Look Back is both a tribute to the Fair’s recent growth and evolution under the guidance of anahita azrahimi, Executive & Creative Director since 2016, and an acknowledgment of past directors, and the many staff, and volunteers whose contributions have shaped the organization over the decades. The exhibition also honours Murray and Marvelle Koffler, who founded the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition 65 years ago.
It is especially fitting that the exhibition takes place at Koffler Arts, in recognition of the legacy of Murray and Marvelle Koffler, who founded The Koffler Centre for the Arts in 1977. To celebrate the present is to honour the past while looking toward the future.
Meet the Artists
Stephanie Avery
Stephanie Avery is a Toronto-based multidisciplinary artist whose work blends humour, nostalgia, and critique to explore themes of value, community, and transformation. Working across murals, installations, and public interventions, she engages with shared environments to reflect on and celebrate our collective relationship to place. Her practice brings a sense of joy and curiosity, inviting communities to connect with and reimagine the spaces around them while creating accessible, meaningful experiences in the public realm.
Melcolm Beaulieu
Melcolm Beaulieu (they/them), a Two-Spirit member of Metepenagiag Mi’kmaq Nation, is a Fredericton-based artist deeply embedded in the Indigenous art community. They merge traditional beadwork with virtual reality to explore gender identity, cultural resilience, and the convergence of innovation and tradition.
Read more about Melcolm Beaulieu
Ross Bonfanti
Ross Bonfanti (b. 1969, Toronto, Canada) is a graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design and a multidisciplinary artist known for his sculptural work in concrete. His practice transforms discarded stuffed toys and thrifted objects into striking, materially complex forms that challenge assumptions of comfort, nostalgia, and value.
Philip Cote
Philip Cote, Noodjmowin, Misko-gayaashk. Indigenous Artist, Activist, Traditional Wisdom Keeper & Historian. His First Nations affiliations are Shawnee, Lakota, Potawatomi, Ojibway, Algonquin and Mohawk.
Neltje Green
Neltje is a Montreal-based painter whose practice explores the relationship between memory, space, and human presence. Working from photographs and sketches of personally encountered environments, she creates paintings that function as emotional impressions rather than exact representations. Her work explores how traces of daily life, such as a light left on, a doorway ajar, or a blurred reflection, can transform spaces into forms of portraiture.
Jenn Goodwin
Jenn Goodwin is a Tkaronto/Toronto based dance artist, curator and programmer. Her work and collaborations often explore the play, power, and politics of the body in motion, the feminization of public space, women’s presence, absence, and resilience, and the choreographic of the everyday.
Sarah Doucet
Sarah Doucet is a versatile artist with a career spanning contemporary dance, choreography, rehearsal direction, styling, costume and jewelry design. Sarah has collaborated with artists including Christopher House, Amanda Acorn, Propeller Dance(Ottawa), Animals of Distinction(MTL), Decidedly Jazz, Toronto Dance Theatre and Jenn Goodwin, to name a few, bringing a thoughtful and creative approach to each project. With over 30 years of experience in the arts, she continues to explore new ways to merge design and performance in her work.
Jessica Thalmann
Jessica Thalmann is an artist, curator and educator currently based in Toronto and New York City. She received an MFA in Advanced Photographic Studies from ICP-Bard College and a BFA in Visual Arts from York University.
Svava Thordis Juliusson
Svava Thordis Juliusson is a visual artist born in Siglufjörður, Iceland in 1966, and is currently based in Haldimand County, Ontario. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts at NSCAD University in 1997. Juliusson completed her MFA in studio at York University in 2007.
Kaeja d’Dance
Karen Kaeja is a performer, choreographer, mentor, director, community builder, and project instigator whose work foregrounds relational, feminine perspectives. “The mastermind behind Porch View Dances” (Toronto Star), she creates innovative platforms that foster collaboration between dancers, everyday people, embodied experience and lived stories. Karen has created over 75 dance works through commissions and presentations globally. She has shaped projects that challenge conventions and reimagine contemporary dance through ongoing discovery and adaptation.
Anu Kalra
As an artist, I am deeply inspired by the rich history and tradition of Indian miniature painting. I strive to honor this art form while also exploring new ways to interpret its techniques and motifs. My work is characterized by intricate details, vibrant colors, and a focus on storytelling.
Joel Lukombo
Born in 1995 in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. From a young age, he was very determined, often getting carried away with drawing until late or until he had to rest or move on to other activities. Gradually, through his numerous exercises, he became noticeable in his residential Neighborhood for his copies of artworks and early attempts at caricatures.
Heidi Strauss
Heidi Strauss is a dance artist curious about human behavior. Her work responds to current social and environmental conditions to question the “realness” of where and who we are, and how the world – and circumstance – shape us. Through experimenting with how performance is seen and experienced, she looks to deepen connection with audiences while opening space for self-reflection. She creates post-immersive, installation, ambulatory, and site-sensitive works across theatre, non-theatre, and digital contexts.
Yaw Tony
Yaw Tony moves through the world as a witness to colour, not colour as decoration, but colour as a living, breathing archive of human experience. A Toronto-based multidisciplinary artist, curator, and researcher, Tony’s practice weaves together painting, textile, public installation, and design into a singular body of work that insists: to see truly is to remember, and to remember is to be free.
V Vallières
V Vallières is a Toronto-based multi-media artist working in ceramics and textiles. They hold a BFA from Concordia University and have attended multiple residencies across Canada. Their work has been funded through various grants, including the Ontario Arts Council, and has been acquired as a part of the permanent collection at Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). Themes in Vallières work include memory, reality, the subconscious, and the need for coping and defensive mechanisms. V is a ceramic technician at a night school and an active member of community ceramics studios. They identify as non-binary, queer and neurodivergent.
Matthew Walton
Matthew Walton (b.1996) is an emerging Toronto-based artist. He holds an Honours Bachelor of Applied Arts in Animation from Sheridan College (2020). In his work, Walton explores the quiet charm of everyday queerness, reimagining mundane moments through a vibrant technicolour lens. Walton’s vignettes invite viewers into intimate, relatable scenes that blur the line between public and private space, and it is within this liminal realm that his Cubist-coded figures live, uninhibited. Drawing from his background in animation, Walton utilizes body language as a narrative device, and by embracing tell-tale gestures and mannerisms once repressed, Walton’s work celebrates the beauty of authentic self-expression.
Jes Young
Jes is a non-binary educator and sculptor based in Toronto, Canada. In their practice they create installations of ceramic multiples that mimic trash, infestations and urban pests in porcelain, celebrating abandoned or “single use” subjects that make up the moments and landscapes in our everyday life. In 2024 Young founded Kitte Club, a ceramics studio in Toronto that promotes the growth of ceramic artists in their practices, providing accessible studio spaces, instruction, mentorships, technical help in building and firing and programming artist driven events and activities.
Meet the Curator
David Liss,
Independent Curator
David Liss is an independent curator, writer and artist living in Toronto, Canada. He was Director and Curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto (formerly MOCCA) from December 2000 through 2015, and Adjunct Curator and Advisor until 2020.
From 1995 to 2000 Liss was Director and Curator of the Gallery of the Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts in Montreal. During the early 1990s he contributed art and music reviews to the Montreal Gazette, Vice, Canadian Art, and other publications. David has a BFA from Concordia University in Montreal in painting, printmaking and art history.
Presented in partnership with Koffler Arts
Koffler Arts is a cultural platform that explores critical ideas and concerns of our time through a year-round program of exhibitions, publications, performances, literary events, digital initiatives and arts education programs. We examine complex issues through transformative art experiences that stimulate intercultural dialogue and promote social change.
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