Nuit Blanche 2015 marks the all-night art festival’s 10th year in Toronto.  Each year, curators bring together both Canadian and international artists to transform Toronto for one magical night.

This year there are more than 110 projects scattered throughout Toronto featuring large scale installations, interactive art, video and performances. It’ll be nearly impossible to see everything, even if you manage to stay out for the full nuit (7 p.m. to 7 a.m). With so much to choose from, we picked a few of the most promising installations to give you a start to your arts-filled journey around Toronto.

LIGHT CAVE
THE DRAKE 150

Lose yourself in FriendsWithYou’s giant Light Cave - a cathedral of the spirit. This interactive experience is manifested with the purpose of joining people together in a metaphysical sense, inclusive of all races and spiritual backgrounds. The piece utilizes color and light creating a sensory rich experience, directly affecting our immediate emotional state. You may remember Rainbow City - FriendsWithYou’s previous Toronto project for Luminato 2010.

KINO-BLENDER Vol. 1
TIFF LIGHTBOX

Perfect for a late night rest in the beautiful TIFF Lightbox at King & John. Colin Geddes & Mike Lane, the masterminds behind The Unauthorized Hagiography of Vincent Price (2014) and Cent une tueries de zombies (2012) return with an inverted, post-modern examination of cinema pop culture. An hour-long collage made up of images and situations sourced from forgotten cinema and television, this visual essay will morph from the funny to the bizarre, the surreal and the transcendental. Highly recommended :D

Humanitarian Aid for the First World
Queens Park

As a way to offer aid to “disaster capitalism” - a  true humanitarian crisis of the north, Colectivo Cambalache invites you to a night of humanitarian bartering. It’s easy and free to participate: bring a special object that is handmade or has spiritual value to you and exchange it for a handmade object rich in solidarity. Sounds good to us!

PARK HERE
Nathan Phillips Square

PARK HERE is a play on words project. The ubiquitous signs advertising ‘Park Here,’ in Toronto’s downtown core, could make one believe that there are many pockets of hidden public park spaces in the city, when the opposite is the reality. Katy Chey’s installation aims to transform what a parking lot could be, if it was indeed publicized as an urban green space – a Park. Here. A night time park underneath city hall? Yes!

SILENT KNIGHT
The Gardiner Museum

Sculpted with more than 50,000 LEGO® pieces, Silent Knight is visual artist Ekow Nimako’s monumental tribute to one of the most admired and extirpated animal species in Ontario: the barn owl.

The stark white, larger-than-life sculpture captures the beauty and stealth of this exquisite bird like it has never been seen before. Relying on the seemingly infinite variations of sloped and angled LEGO® pieces, Nimako masterfully animates the inanimate, breathing a unique quality of life into the popular plastic medium.

Click here for the full Nuit Blanche 2015 Events listings