{"id":2,"status":"published","sort":null,"user_created":"8bea077d-d2e1-4aa8-bc34-d86dcc62416c","date_created":"2026-04-02T15:44:05.000Z","user_updated":"8bea077d-d2e1-4aa8-bc34-d86dcc62416c","date_updated":"2026-04-02T16:14:57.000Z","headline":null,"slogan":null,"speed":null,"title":"2026 intro slides","slides":[{"hed":null,"dek":null,"layout":"image","link":null,"duration":2000,"group":null,"file":null,"image_desktop":{"id":"87219bb2-8f38-4ca2-bfca-2322dfea14de","storage":"s3","filename_disk":"87219bb2-8f38-4ca2-bfca-2322dfea14de.jpeg","filename_download":"2026_GoetheInstitut_LillyLulay_detail_Into The Instagram Galaxy,LL.jpeg","title":"2026 Goethe Institut Lilly Lulay Detail Into the Instagram Galaxy,ll","type":"image/jpeg","folder":"6c2f1825-d7b6-496a-b05a-c3661325bd36","uploaded_by":"c42eeaba-53e3-457f-a758-d0dfbfc2d32d","created_on":"2026-03-25T14:20:23.000Z","modified_by":"a1ba8ae3-68bf-4cf8-8d4e-f86f8e501a7d","modified_on":"2026-03-26T01:59:12.000Z","charset":null,"filesize":467097,"width":1800,"height":2400,"duration":null,"embed":null,"description":null,"location":null,"tags":null,"metadata":{},"focal_point_x":null,"focal_point_y":null,"tus_id":null,"tus_data":null,"import_id":null,"import_data":null,"caption":"Lilly Lulay, Into The Instagram Galaxy, 2026. Courtesy of the artist","transcript":null,"_artists":null,"uploaded_on":"2026-03-25T14:20:23.000Z","attached_to":null,"link":null,"ai":null,"registration_caption":{"title":null,"artist":null,"year":null},"_credit":null,"_year":null,"_title":null,"blurhash":null,"import_url":null,"events":[]},"image_mobile":null,"event":{"id":32234,"display_title":"Lilly Lulay
Soft Errors, Hard Truths","display_artist":"Lilly Lulay","display_address":null,"display_dates":"May 1–29","display_venue":"Goethe-Institut","display_artists":null,"display_title_raw":"Lilly Lulay - Soft Errors, Hard Truths","display_reception":null,"title_array":["Lilly Lulay","Soft Errors"," Hard Truths"],"status":"published","password":null,"year":["2026"],"program":["core"],"type":["exhibition"],"slug":"goethe-lilly-lulay-soft-errors-hard-truths","permalink":"/festival/2026/core/goethe-lilly-lulay-soft-errors-hard-truths","thumbnail":"87219bb2-8f38-4ca2-bfca-2322dfea14de","excerpt":null,"parent":null,"attachments":null,"title":"Soft Errors, Hard Truths","artist_in_title":true,"start_date":"2026-05-01","start_time":"00:00:00","end_date":"2026-05-29","end_time":"23:59:59","start":"2026-05-01T04:00:00","end":"2026-05-30T03:59:59","show_in_calendar":null,"child_sort":null,"alt_venue":null,"alt_artist":null,"content":"

Centered on the digital era, the photo-based works in German artist Lilly Lulay’s exhibition Soft Errors, Hard Truths reach beyond, into both the past and future, to highlight the broken (or pending) promises of the age of Tech. As connection is eroded in favour of fragmentation, disorientation, and distortion, Lulay’s work examines the influence of digital technologies on photography and invites viewers to question their own engagement with digital media.

Bodies in Digital Fog

Born in Frankfurt in 1985—the year the first email was sent between Germany and North America—Lilly Lulay belongs to the generation that consciously experienced the transition from the analog to the digital age. She remembers life before the Internet, printed city maps, and the feeling of being “off the grid” on holiday. Her first mobile phone came at age 14, her first smartphone at 31, and since then it has been her daily companion, alarm clock, office, camera, and storage space for endless personal data.

Photography is the emotional glue that binds us to our smartphones. Through messaging apps and social networks, we exchange images while delivering invaluable data to tech giants. They mine information about our locations, preferences, human contacts, political views. Historically, there has never been an institution with as much knowledge about us as today's tech corporations. During Lulay's art studies in the early 2000s, digital cameras conquered the market. In photography classes, discussions about the truthfulness of digital images were central, tinged by a skepticism reminiscent of today's debates about AI-generated images and deepfakes. Yet this question has accompanied the medium since its inception. In the 19th century, photographs, though monochrome, were considered radically realistic. Then and always, however, they represent only a fragment of the space-time continuum. Photographs conceal as much as they reveal.

Algorithmic Aesthetics

The photo-based app Instagram embodies this contradiction, having developed into one of the world's largest social networks. But is it actually the images, or rather the algorithms, that captivate us? A sophisticated measurement and evaluation system determines what is shown to each individual user. Reward systems of “hearts” and growing numbers of followers create addiction and revenue models. Lulay’s series Into the Instagram Galaxy (2026) explores the app’s “discovery” page—that algorithmic control center that supplies users with supposedly suitable content, tailored to their interests. Lulay prints out and paints over screenshots with black acrylic paint until only fragments remain visible. Between these information islands, quotes from neuro-marketing tutorials appear, examples of the alluring barrage of \"feel-good experiences.”

As writer/scholar/activist Shoshana Zuboff describes, we live in the age of “surveillance capitalism.” Everything we do online—searching, sharing, archiving, commenting—is recorded, analyzed, converted into profit. We become walking databases while simultaneously working for free for platforms that profit from our attention and creativity. Lulay’s Liquid Portrait – fbarchive19012016 (2016) addresses Instagram's big older sister, Facebook. Consisting of video and sculpture, this body of work uses every image from one person’s profile (a friend of Lulay’s), but reveals only central elements and outlines of people. Between selfies, travel shots, and cultural references a portrait emerges—a portrait less of the individual user than of the aesthetics and entangled logic of the platform itself.

Photography as Mirror and Storage

In the series Time Travelers (2011–ongoing), people from the “analogue age,” captured in black-and-white vernacular snapshots, meet the pixelated structure of the present. Their once-clear gaze into the camera is transformed and obscured by abstract colour fields. These works ask: How will our images and stories live on? In a future where private photographs are no longer stored in physical albums but on servers, how will people—or machines—view, analyze, and evaluate visual messages? In Ghosts@Work / Text as Key (2023), the “whole” body appears fragmented again. Only the gestures of manual labour of the people originally photographed remain visible. Green squares mark the spots that an AI recognized as “relevant” during the process of content recognition. The human as we know it disappears, leaving behind algorithmic outlines. What is made visible or invisible in the age of AI? To what extent do machine visions already influence our understanding of reality and of ourselves?

Lulay’s Soft Errors, Hard Truths is an exhibition of works made in the past decade but which look well beyond, into both past and future. They confront us with an ever-growing paradox: The supposedly seamless digital networks that promise connection also deliver division, misinformation, and outright lies—and this transformation now often happens faster than we can learn to see anew. Soft errors in our daily interactions reveal hard truths about our algorithmic present.

Public Art Projects

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Hassan Hajjaj’s photographic series La Salle de Gym des Femmes Arabes (The Arab Women’s Gym), shot over approximately a decade and a half, accomplishes what the artist does best—makes the viewer do a double take, look deeper. Women in niqabs take centre stage against the backdrop of the gym—a space that, especially in the Arab world, has largely been male-dominated. Hajjaj’s images deftly undermine stereotypes and subvert Western views, featuring strong, empowered women unapologetically claiming space in a masculine world, and having fun doing it.

Hajjaj is an artist who does not neatly fit into any conventional boxes. Growing up in Morocco and London, he has, from an early age, been shaped by spaces and places that on the surface seem to have little in common. Moving to London at the age of 13, Hajjaj made the city his own by creating opportunities that reflected his needs, first as an “underground” club and special event promoter, and later designing accessible streetwear inspired by luxury fashion houses, under his clothing brand “RAP” (Real Artistic People). His creative spirit and artistic eye soon found expression in photography, which melded all of his interests—fashion and design, high art and street culture, rap and hip-hop, London and Marrakesh—onto the printed page. He collaborates across disciplines with artists, designers, and photographers, and through his work celebrates a boundary-lessness and creativity that comes from embracing the richness of living between cultures.

Dressed in colourful, sports-inspired outfits with generous lashings of luxury-brand designer logos and patterns, in La Salle de Gym des Femmes Arabes (2006–ongoing) Hajjaj’s models are photographed either in a Moroccan courtyard or posed in front of his trademark plastic mat (or Hssira in Darija, Moroccan dialect) as a backdrop. His visual language is riotous and hybrid, the posed and carefully constructed studio setups a nod to iconic African studio photographers Samuel Fosso, Seidou Keïta, and Malick Sidibé. Hajjaj’s use of luxury-brand logos contributes to a rap-star sensibility, and his layered, street-inspired compositions and poses merge the backstreets with high art. His elaborate, colourful frames are inspired by their historical counterparts in Western museums, where frames were custom-designed to be unique, artistic contributions to paintings. In Hajjaj’s approach, the frames echo Islamic designs through their patterned visual repetition, though here, everyday consumer goods such as canned foods and Lego blocks are used to create this effect. This is a nod to the artist’s love for bold graphics and bustling markets, but is also reminiscent of mid-twentieth century Pop Art’s elevation of the ordinary, and its playful celebration of consumerism and mass media. Styles, colours, cultures and disciplines merge in each artwork.

Through his layered visual language, Hajjaj challenges cultural clichés, elevating the everyday and the overlooked. Viewers are confronted by the hybrid, globally integrated world which we all inhabit, and the lived reality of cultural blending—and, critically, the rich fusion that emerges from it—is made visible and offered as a cause for celebration.

Presented by the Aga Khan Museum

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Ghostwriter","display_artist":"Sheida Soleimani","display_address":null,"display_dates":"May 1–24","display_venue":"Dundas and Rusholme Billboards","display_artists":null,"display_title_raw":"Sheida Soleimani - Ghostwriter","display_reception":null,"title_array":["Sheida Soleimani","Ghostwriter"],"status":"published","password":null,"year":["2026"],"program":["core","public-art"],"type":["public-art","exhibition"],"slug":"sheida-soleimani-ghostwriter","permalink":"/festival/2026/core/sheida-soleimani-ghostwriter","thumbnail":"f6a73657-a985-4963-b15b-299f7a5ad4f7","excerpt":null,"parent":null,"attachments":null,"title":"Ghostwriter","artist_in_title":true,"start_date":"2026-05-01","start_time":"00:00:00","end_date":"2026-05-24","end_time":"23:59:59","start":"2026-05-01T04:00:00","end":"2026-05-25T03:59:59","show_in_calendar":false,"child_sort":null,"alt_venue":null,"alt_artist":null,"content":"

Iranian-American artist, educator, and activist Sheida Soleimani’s work is presented in a two-part exhibition as part of Capture Photography Festival, Vancouver (April 2026) and CONTACT Photography Festival, Toronto (May 2026). Soleimani constructs detailed compositions that marry photographs, props, found objects, live animals, and people to create magical, dream-like montages. Deliberately combining her familial history with the political, Soleimani’s practice considers her cultural inheritance, the environment, and migration, all through evocative, visually sumptuous pictures.

The daughter of political refugees who escaped Iran in the early 1980s, Soleimani often creates work that includes her parents as subjects. Her works for Capture include Deliverance (2024), an image which pays homage to her father’s two-week long trek on horseback to Turkey, traversing the Zagros Mountains. In this work, her father sits on horseback, a pose historically reserved in paintings for men in positions of power. He is depicted, however, without shoes, as a reference to the moment when his guide urged him to run in the snow to help regain sensation in his frostbitten toes. Safar similarly references her parents’ migration from Iran. The image features pomegranates, fruits her mom planted from seeds she brought from her garden at home to propagate in her newly adopted country. The red suitcase in the image is the one her father used as he escaped over the mountains; the tag is from JFK airport, where he eventually landed.

Soleimani learned bird rehabilitation from her mother, and The Blind Owl (2023) features a bird, one of thousands that have come into the artist’s care over the past five years. It arrived blind and unwell and eventually was euthanized by the artist and her mother. The image includes sour oranges suspended around the owl that were also grown from seeds brought by the artist’s mother from her garden when she escaped Iran. The work is symbolic of the owl’s burial in the family garden, which is no longer accessible to the artist and her parents. Each image demonstrates the deeply metaphoric nature of Soleimani’s works, embedded with personal and cultural histories.

On view as part of CONTACT are Agitator and Dissident (both 2025), again centring the artist’s parents. For these works, Soleimani has constructed elaborate backdrops, which she photographed with her parents situated therein. Unlike standard portraits, the purpose of which is to capture likeness, both individuals face away from the camera, denying viewers access to their faces, creating both singular portraits and anonymous figures.

There is a long history of painted portraits featuring husbands and wives, often used to demonstrate wealth and social status. In these images, however, both her parents raise their fists, typically a gesture of solidarity, power, and resistance, often with a political movement. This gesture of defiance against authority, along with the titles of the works, serves to suggest her parents’ political beliefs, a critical part of the artist’s family narrative embedded in much of her work.

Billboards presented by CONTACT Photography Festival in partnership with Capture Festival; Supported by Pattison Outdoor Advertising.

Exhibitions

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The recipient of the sixth annual Prefix Prize is Québécois artist Yann Pocreau. Inspired to pursue the nature of light from a philosophical and an aesthetic perspective, Pocreau conceives of his work as a succession of images from which, in near-cinematic fashion, one may make a range of associations. For his prize exhibition, he presents an assemblage of new and recent works previously unexhibited in Toronto, including the world premiere of Les éclipses 1 (2026).

For the past twenty years, Pocreau has been developing an outstanding body of work grounded in light and its role in photographic image-making (and beyond), including prints, projections, sculpture, installation and public art projects. While colour and abstraction are often foregrounded, he also works with found photography, introducing historical portraits, snapshots and other representational elements into his work. These discarded source images are often damaged, deteriorated, mouldy, etc., and the artist treats such decay as a virtue. The overall effect of his work is one of a fleeting glimpse of humanity within the vast expanse of time and space.

In 2018, on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the founding of Québec’s Observatoire du Mont-Mégantic (OMM), he participated in a research-creation residency which was to have a profound effect on his artistic practice. Through his telescopic observation of the moon and the stars, he experienced an epiphany: “I became aware of my humanity, of the triviality of our star, of the billions of [planetary] systems around us, of that of the universe. And I was convinced that existentialism, [the philosophy which had guided much of my previous work], is, in fact, very close to the sciences of the heavens.” In recent years, his work has been driven by the notion of “cosmic vertigo”; that is, the incomprehensible scale of space from the outer universe to the center of the Earth. Created in dialogue with both science and existentialism, his work speaks to our perception of our environment at the micro and macro levels and the myriad ways in which we strive to understand our place in the universe.

At the heart of his prize exhibition is Les mailles élémentaires (2021), a photographic diptych produced at a monumental scale that appears to represent two quadrants of a lustrous sphere (and is, in fact, a cross-section of a geode). In juxtaposition with the other works in the exhibition, this diptych seemingly evokes the fundamental essence of a celestial body such as the Earth, with its solidity and liquidity, its cores, mantle and crust. M81, la nuit du 20 au 21 avril 1979 (2018) and related works are a series of digital prints with embossing and annotated drawings that depict the galaxies M81, M82, M13 and M94. The works were created from astronomical photographs on glass plates found in the archives of the OMM. And Les éclipses 1 (2026) is a metallic print based upon a found photographic portrait of a man, the image of which is barely discernible through years of decay. Effectively, this work offers a glimpse into the past seen through the mists of time, and a reflection upon the transient nature of human existence within the context of a vast and incomprehensible universe.

The fundamental essence of photography, its historical and technological evolution, its material and immaterial manifestations—these are the core elements through which Yann Pocreau fulfills his artistic vision. In so doing, he offers nothing less than a metaphysical query into the nature of existence.

— Scott McLeod

__________

Launched in 2021, the Prefix Prize is awarded annually to photographic artists of any nationality. Designed to honour artists at any stage of their careers who have yet to receive the recognition they deserve, the prize recognizes one artist with an exhibition, a publication, a residency and a cash award of $5,000.00 and up to two artists with honourable mentions consisting of cash awards of $1,000.00 each. The candidates for the prize are nominated by ten photographic arts professionals, newly appointed each year, while the recipients of the prize are chosen by a jury consisting of representatives of Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art and its partners, along with national and international representatives.

For the Prefix Prize 6, the recipient of the principal award is Yann Pocreau (Montréal, QC), while Gabriela García-Luna (Saskatoon, SK) and Rula Halawani (Jerusalem) are the recipients of honourable mentions.

The Prefix Prize 6 was juried by Nathan Leung, designer, Underline Studio; Scott McLeod, director and curator, Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art; Gerald McMaster, independent curator and professor emeritus, OCAD University; Tara Smith, programs manager, CONTACT Photography Festival; Louise Wolthers, research manager and curator, Hasselblad Foundation; and Jennifer Young and Caroline Laxton, co-chairs, Project Development, Partners in Art.

The candidates for the Prefix Prize 6 were nominated by Katie Addleman, curator, Photography and New Media, Canadian Centre for Architecture; Amin Alsaden, independent curator; Aileen Burns and Johan Lundh, co-executive director and CEO, Remai Modern; David Diviney, chief curator, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia; Audrey Genois, director of curatorial affairs, Musée d’art contemporain de Montreal; Sophie Hackett, curator, Photography, Art Gallery of Ontario; Liz Ikiriko, curator, Gallery TPW; Bernard Lamarche, curator of contemporary art, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec; Monika Szewczyk, chief curator, the Polygon Gallery; and Tania Willard, director/curator, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia.

The Prefix Prize is presented by Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art in partnership with the CONTACT Photography Festival, Smokestack, Underline Studio and Urbanspace Gallery, and with the support of founding partner, Partners in Art.

Presented by Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art in partnership with Contact Photography Festival and Urbanspace Gallery, and with the support of founding partner, Partners in Art

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In this exhibition, Vancouver-based artist Ho Tam looks back at his childhood in Hong Kong through the lens of a re-visitation to his own elementary school, and the echoes his images generate through time.

In the following artist’s statement, Tam elaborates on the Lessons learned:

In 1998, I traveled back to Hong Kong to revisit my elementary school, La Salle Primary. Two decades had passed, yet there were the schoolboys in the same uniforms, moving through the same everyday routines. I was immediately transported to my own time as a student. Under British rule, we had enjoyed a relatively liberal education. Colonial Hong Kong was never perfect, but it was a vibrant metropolis on the rise—a place many in Mainland China looked toward with hope and aspiration.

Fast-forward to 2026: Hong Kong is now a “special administrative region” overseen by the Chinese Communist Party. While China’s economic power expands, Hong Kong has diminished into a police state. Since the government crackdowns of recent years, many families have chosen to leave and relocate, seeking shelter from the erasure of individual rights and freedom of speech. I worry about how the boys who remain will grow up in such an uncertain time.

Looking at the images in Lessons, I am again moved by the innocence and intimacy of the subjects. No matter how I, as an artist, try to frame and manipulate the context, the boys in these pictures retain an autonomy and a life of their own. While time has changed, for better or worse, everyone must find their own path, and there are still many lessons to be learned.

—Ho Tam

Presented by Paul Petro Contemporary Art

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Club X2","type":"image/jpeg","folder":null,"uploaded_by":"c42eeaba-53e3-457f-a758-d0dfbfc2d32d","created_on":"2026-04-01T00:32:29.000Z","modified_by":null,"modified_on":"2026-04-01T00:32:30.000Z","charset":null,"filesize":752565,"width":2400,"height":1500,"duration":null,"embed":null,"description":null,"location":null,"tags":null,"metadata":{},"focal_point_x":null,"focal_point_y":null,"tus_id":null,"tus_data":null,"import_id":null,"import_data":null,"caption":null,"transcript":null,"_artists":null,"uploaded_on":"2026-04-01T00:32:30.000Z","attached_to":null,"link":null,"ai":null,"registration_caption":{"title":null,"artist":null,"year":null},"_credit":null,"_year":null,"_title":null,"blurhash":null,"import_url":null,"events":[]},"image_mobile":null,"event":{"id":32318,"display_title":"Photobook Lab Presents: Deadbeat Club","display_artist":"","display_address":null,"display_dates":"May 1, 2:30PM–4PM","display_venue":"Stephen Bulger 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Established in 2011 by Clint Woodside, Deadbeat Club is an award-winning independent publisher & coffee roaster located in Los Angeles, California. Rooted in contemporary photography, their ethos on small run, limited edition publications carries into our small batch single origin, signature blend and limited release coffees.

In advance of the 2026 CONTACT Photobook Fair, publisher and founder Clint Woodside will host a lively discussion with Maude Arseneault and Richard Renaldi about their publications with Deadbeat Club.

Maude Arsenault (b.1973, Quebec) is a multidisciplinary artist from Montreal whose practice explores the representation of female bodies and their spaces. Through photography, print, collage, sculpture, and installation, she creates works that open onto uncharted geographies of the body, imbued with reflections on women’s self-determination and emancipation. Her work has been presented in exhibitions and residencies across Canada, Europe, Latin America, Japan, and the United States. She is the author of two award-winning photobooks, Entangled (2020/2023) and Resurfacing (2023), both published by Deadbeat Club in Los Angeles. Winner of the prestigious Hariban Award in Japan in 2020, she was also shortlisted in 2024 for the Leica Oskar Barnack Award.

Richard Renaldi was born in Chicago in 1968. He received a BFA in photography from New York University in 1990. He is represented by Benrubi Gallery in New York and Robert Morat Galerie in Berlin. Six monographs of his work have been published, including Richard Renaldi: Figure and Ground (Aperture, 2006); Fall River Boys (Charles Lane Press, 2009); Touching Strangers (Aperture, 2014); Manhattan Sunday (Aperture, 2016); I Want Your Love (Super Labo, 2018); Billions Served (Deadbeat Club, 2025). He was the recipient of a 2015 fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Clint Woodside is a photographer born in Buffalo, NY. He has published over ten books including Let Me Die In My Footsteps (2013), Build Us A Path (2014) Undercover Cars (2016) and Vineland (2017). His work has been widely exhibited and published in the United States and overseas, including New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, Tokyo, Sweden, China, Seoul, and Australia. Woodside is also known for his extensive work as a curator and as creator of Deadbeat Club - a publisher and distributor of small books and publications with a diverse roster of photographers. He currently resides in Los Angeles, CA.

Talks,
Tours,
Workshops,
and more

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Join CONTACT staff and guest curators for a bike tour (weather permitting) of the public installations featuring work by Delali Cofie, Sin Wai Kin, Yann Pocreau, Sheida Soleimani, Bo Wang & Lu Pan, and others.

The tour starts at 650 Dupont Street (north side).

30th Edition
May 2026
Toronto

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Join the McMichael for a special afternoon celebrating the installation of a new work by Toronto-based artist Aaron Jones.

Drawing on found imagery, video, and lens-based media, Jones creates layered collages that construct characters and imagined spaces shaped by memory, identity, and lived experience. His practice reflects on the nuances of his upbringing and present-day life, using image-making as a means of reflection and finding peace.

Jones will be in conversation with McMichael curator John Geoghegan, sharing insight into his creative process, artistic influences, and the ideas informing this new commission.

Free with admission to the gallery.

2026 Core Curators

2026 Open Call Curators