Andrés Ramírez Gaviria
2026 Toronto Biennial of Art, Canada
26 September – 20 December 2026
Founded in 2019, the Toronto Biennial of Art (TBA) is Canada’s leading international visual arts event, attracting more than 1.3 million visitors across its first three editions. Held over 12 weeks, TBA presents new artworks across the city and beyond, making contemporary art free and accessible to all. Toronto’s status as one of the most diverse cities in the world, combined with its location on the Great Lakes – home to 20% of the world’s freshwater – will shape the 2026 biennial, according to its curator, Allison Glenn.
Andrés Ramírez Gaviria’s Sources (Toronto), 2026, is a site-specific light installation that transforms astronomical radio signals—some originating within our galaxy and others emitted by pulsars and quasars billions of years ago in the distant universe—into a dynamic sequence of light. These patterns are based on data gathered by radio telescopes through a collaboration with Zsolt Paragi, senior scientist at the Joint Institute for VLBI (JIVE), and Raffaella Morganti, senior astronomer at the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON). The slow, rhythmic, pulsing lights represent the movement of celestial objects across the sky, introducing a different temporality, one of deep time. For Andrés, the disruption exists in what is lost or omitted in the translation of this information from radio waves to light. Because the radio signals travel across vast distances and timescales, they offer a tangible link to phenomena unfolding across cosmic history.
Additional work by Andrés Ramírez Gaviria will be shown at the Toronto Biennial’s main exhibition site at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto.
Andrés Ramírez Gaviria (born 1975 in Bogotá, Colombia) lives and works in Vienna. His artistic practice uses video, light and installation. Drawing from the realms of art history, science and technology, he examines how systems of knowledge shape our perception of time and reality. His works translate complex information into visual and sensory experience, revealing the connections between order, chaos and human interpretation.
This is his second collaboration with Phileas, following his participation at Bienal Photoimagen, Dominican Republic in 2022.
This project was aided by a research trip to Vienna by the curator Allison Glenn, organised by Phileas in July 2025.
