Hello from DesignTO. We’re thrilled to share that the Festival returns January 23 – February 1, 2026. It’s ten days when Toronto becomes a hub of creativity, curiosity, and connection. While the Festival is still two months away, we’re sharing glimpses of the stellar programming to come, so you can mark your calendars and not miss a thing. The full, searchable schedule of programming is now live and can be found here.
DesignTO is a charitable arts and culture organization that believes design can help create a sustainable, just, and joyful world. As Canada’s largest annual design festival, DesignTO brings people together to design a better future – one grounded in innovation, community, and possibility. Every exhibition, talk, installation, and event is shaped by its purpose to advance the public’s knowledge and appreciation of design.
This week, we spotlight the Festival’s art and craft programming. Though design is often framed as problem-solving and innovation, art and craft play an equally vital role. Their ingenuity lies not only in the creation of beautiful or curious objects, but in the ways makers use materials to express ideas, emotions, and reflections on human life – often revealing how aesthetics shape the physical language of design.
Our art and craft programming offers a window into the zeitgeist – the spirit, attitudes, and cultural mood of our current moment. From ceramic storytelling to wild clay excavations, from digital craft explorations to textile sanctuaries, the nine highlighted projects below are just a sampler – there are countless exhibitions and experiences to discover across the city.
We can’t wait to share more. The future of design begins here. Let’s explore it together.
Nine Must-See Art + Craft Events and Exhibitions:
Jan 22 – Feb 6, 2026
Akasha Art Projects, 204D Carlton Street
Sève Favre’s drawings, interactive installations, and wallpaper designs reimagine invasive plants as seductive, shape-shifting beings. Stylized botanical forms divide, spread, and hybridize, evoking both historical luxury florals and speculative future ecologies. Her imagery heightens the allure that once led humans to import these species for beauty or utility, prompting reflection on shifting perceptions of desirability. Favre’s work envisions walls adorned with “super-alien” botanicals, questioning how we aestheticize and coexist with transformative plant life.
An Evening of Craft, Digitality, and Critical Reflection
Jan 29, 2026
Studio Theatre, Harbourfront Centre, 235 Queens Quay West
This panel examines how contemporary makers integrate digital tools into craft practice. Speakers highlight technology’s role in traditional community-based making, long-term experimentation with emergent digital processes, and projects linking creative production with waste-stream materials. Together, they reveal how digitality reshapes craft’s aesthetics and methods – enabling fluid reinterpretation, new material possibilities, and expanded forms of repair and reuse. The discussion foregrounds art’s evolving relationship to community, sustainability, and technologically driven transformation.
Jan 23, 2026
Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto (MOCA), 158 Sterling Road
Experience three floors of art at MOCA Toronto, anchored by Jeff Wall Photographs 1984–2023, a sweeping survey of light box transparencies and photographic works that reveal the depth and influence of Wall’s practice. With sound curated by local·global, the evening celebrates design’s creative impact through immersive visual and architectural encounters. A great opportunity to mix and mingle with local and international artists, artisans, designers, and architects while kicking off the 10-day Festival.
DesignTO Talks: Within the Weave
Feb 1, 2026
Collective Arts Toronto Taproom, 777 Dundas Street West, Lower Level, Toronto
This conversation gathers textile and craft artists who transform personal, environmental, and urban histories into material narratives. Through weaving, ceramics, and mixed-media fibre practices, the speakers reveal how repetition, irregularity, and everyday remnants become powerful storytelling devices. Their works translate landscapes, cultural rituals, and domestic traces into interconnected forms that honor place and memory. A great opportunity to explore the Trinity Bellwoods neighbourhood while engaging with thoughtful, materially driven art.
Jan 23 – Feb 1, 2026
The Drake Hotel, 1150 Queen Street West
Myles Burry and Kate Golding merge Newfoundland’s vernacular architecture and rugged landscape into a mirrored, wallpapered installation composed of 27 custom pieces. Floral patterns, traditional paint colours, and motifs from local buildings echo the decorative histories of Bonavista Bay, while the mirrors create shifting reflections that fuse place, memory, and craft. This immersive artwork celebrates regional aesthetics through thoughtful material detail – an ideal opportunity to explore the iconic hotel hosting the installation.
Kensington Unearthed and (Re)formed
Jan 25 – Feb 1, 2026
mi.sul, 390 Dupont Street, Unit 103
This exhibition presents ceramics made from wild clay unearthed during redevelopment in Kensington Market, transforming raw urban earth into vessels shaped by the neighbourhood’s layered histories. Each hand-formed piece reflects the area’s ongoing flux – migration, creativity, community, and change – capturing both the material pressures of the site and the continuity of collective memory. These works invite viewers to look beneath the surface, revealing the stories held in the soil and the artistry that reshapes it.
Jan 23 – Feb 28, 2026
Le Germain Hotel, 30 Mercer St
Shao-Chi Lin’s textile installation transforms observations of light, movement, and urban geometry into a woven rhythm that softens the lobby of Le Germain Hotel Toronto. Crafted with iterative patterns and subtle material shifts, Soft Grid bridges traditional weaving and contemporary technique to create a meditative pause within the city’s bustle. Its gentle structure invites viewers to slow down and attune to sensory detail – a great opportunity to explore the iconic hotel while experiencing Lin’s contemplative fibre art.
Jan 23 – Mar 29, 2026
Gallery 235, Harbourfront Centre, 235 Queens Quay West
This multidisciplinary exhibition brings together ten artists and collectives whose sculptures, installations, textiles, cyanotypes, maps, and designed objects trace the emotional and cultural impacts of migration. Through material narratives of memory, displacement, and resilience, the works reveal what is carried, surrendered, and reimagined when places are left and remade. Featuring Hangama Amiri, Sonny Assu, Meena Chowdhury, Nilojan Jegatheeswaran, Jenn Kitagawa, Dennis Lin, Rose Nordin, Anahita Norouzi, Waard Ward, and Abhishek Wagle.
Jan 14 – Feb 14, 2026
Urbanspace Gallery, 401 Richmond Street West
Safoura Zahedi’s photographic exhibition explores Islamic geometry across seventeen countries and forty cities, tracing patterns in architecture and handcrafts from the seventh to nineteenth centuries. Her work captures the evolving, adaptive nature of geometric forms, reimagining them for contemporary art and architecture. Through striking imagery, the exhibition reveals the beauty, rhythm, and symmetry of these patterns while inviting reflection on their cultural and spatial significance.
View the full Festival schedule and start planning your 10-days of DesignTO today!
