We are quite impressed with the thoughtful and edgy programming at this year’s Rendezvous With Madness Festival, and we love that Workman Arts expanded the festival’s offerings to include a larger visual arts component, as well as a variety of performances ranging from an immersive dinner party experience to riveting stage productions.

Bursting Bubbles: Creating Context for Evolving Solitudes is a powerful group show that will be on display at Toronto Media Arts Centre (32 Lisgar Street), and it will, without a doubt, stir up conversations about how we navigate the world. The art exhibited by seven well-respected local artists will explore the theme of personal space—how the spaces (or “bubbles”) we create can act as coping mechanisms, strategies for survival, or protective places for healing—while examining the potential dangers of the bubbles created by stereotyping and how they can lead to isolation. 

Hanan Hazime

“We all make bubbles…illusive membranes to harbour our solitary, thoughts, fears, memories, beliefs, insights and perceptions of ourselves and our reality. Insulating and flexible as they may seem, bubbles are feeble strongholds against piercing moments of epiphany,” says Claudette Abrams, Manager of Visual Arts at Workman Arts. “Variably, through states of introspection, irony or innovation, participating artists explore the nature of evolving solitudes, pushing comfort zones, bursting bubbles and processing the impacts.” Very cool.

From Kat Singer’s “Routes of Chaos,” where they explore neurodiversity, illness and dis/ability, queer identities, and healing from trauma through a series of crochet fibre sculptures, to Stephanie Avery’s mixed media works that examine critiques consumer culture, the works on display at Bursting Bubbles will surely provoke the mind to wander in new directions. Other participating artists, whose work we can’t wait to check out, include Janieta Eyre, Hanan Hazime, Laura Kikauka, Wendy Lu and Wendy Whaley. Daring and dynamic, each artist has something unique to express in the context of mental health, seeking answers or connections through various mediums. 

We will definitely be attending the opening reception for Bursting Bubbles on October 11 (7:00-9:00 p.m.). If you can’t make it that night, the show will run for the duration of Rendezvous With Madness Festival (until October 21).