Artists boycott Toronto photography festival amid Israeli weapons links
The Contact Photography Festival in Toronto, Canada, has become the latest in a series of artistic and cultural events around the world to be disrupted by the growing protest movement against Israel’s war on Palestine. The annual event, held throughout the month of May, was advertised as featuring over 250 artists, but that number is now in jeopardy.
Spearheaded by the respective protest groups No Arms in the Arts and Artists Against Artwashing, the festival is the latest in a series of cultural and artistic festivals to be targeted by boycotting due to their ties with Israel. The Toronto festival has been specifically targeted due to its sponsorship by Scotiabank, which has ties to the weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems, which is providing arms to Israel. The protest seems to mirror the recent boycott of The Great Escape music festival across the Atlantic.
Thus far, dozens of artists and exhibitors originally due to appear at Contact have pulled their support from the festival due to the involvement of Scotiabank. One such artist is Umber Majeed, whose exhibition Dil Dil Trans-Pakistan was originally due to appear at the festival. Explaining her decision to boycott Contact, Majeed said, “There’s a war happening and a genocide, and it’s real. I don’t want my work to be associated with that”, per The Art Newspaper.
Scotiabank have been sponsoring the Toronto festival for the past 15 years, making up the majority of Contact’s 28-year history. Reportedly, the bank contributes $500,000 CAD (just under £300,000) per year to the festival, though they have already announced that their sponsorship of Contact will end with the 2024 event.
Darcy Killeen, the festival’s chief executive, revealed that Scotiabank’s move away from funding the festival came as a result of “changing their priorities for what they would fund in 2024″, adding, “They said we had until 31 May 2024, and then that was it”.
It is unclear what the future of Contact Photography Festival will look like without the funding previously provided by Scotiabank. However, the bank’s pull of funding will at least mean that the artists exhibited within the festival will not have to take money from an organisation profiting off of war and conflict.
In addition to Contact Photography Festival, No Arms in the Arts are also calling for a boycott of both the Hot Docs film festival and Giller Prize literary award due to their ties to Scotiabank. The protest group organised a counter-festival to Hot Docs earlier this month, offering an alternative to the original festival without funding from Scotiabank or Elbit.
