Returning to What We Knew: Rupture and Nature’s Resilience
How do we navigate moments of profound rupture without losing connection to who we are? Ahead of the Toronto Biennial of Art, renowned curator Allison Glenn joins Deep to examine the concept of "rupture" across environmental, historical, and personal timelines. Drawing on the lived experiences of artists confronting wildfires and floods, they explore nature’s resilience as a mirror for our own capacity to endure. Together, they consider the arbitrary lines drawn on maps, the experience of disassociation, and the essential work of building trust to ensure art remains open, accessible, and grounded in community.
Allison shares the discipline of balancing decisive professional clarity with the trust required to let go of how things unfold. In confronting the cultural "need to be liked," she speaks on removing the ego so the ideas themselves can take centre stage. The conversation culminates in a core realisation: that we enter life already "knowing"—spending years conditioned into rigid patterns of thought, only to embark on the journey of unlearning to return to what was within us from the very beginning.
Allison Glenn is an internationally acclaimed curator and writer whose work investigates the intersections of history, art, and public space. Widely recognised for curating landmark exhibitions—including the historic 'Promise, Witness, Remembrance'—and serving as a curator for the Toronto Biennial of Art, she is celebrated for creating brave, community-centred platforms that challenge dominant institutional frameworks.
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