Nicholas Metivier Gallery
Toronto, ON

Opening Reception: October 6, 5-7 PM

Nicholas Metivier Gallery is pleased to announce Africa, an exhibition of new photographs by Edward Burtynsky. The exhibition will open on October 6th and run until October 29th, with an opening day reception on Thursday, October 6th from 6-8 pm.

Between 2015 and 2020, Edward Burtynsky travelled to Africa to document the last continent on the precipice of massive geological transformation due to industrial expansion. With a focus on sub-Saharan Africa, he completed shoots in Kenya, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Ghana, Senegal, South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Madagascar and Tanzania. With Africa, Burtynsky expands on major themes from the arc of his career including extraction, agriculture and urbanization. Using fixed-wing aircrafts, helicopters and drones alongside new camera technologies, his most recent photographs reveal the design, structure and scale of the marks we inscribe on the surface of the earth like never before.

On the occasion of the openings of Edward Burtynsky’s new series African Studies at Nicholas Metivier Gallery (Oct. 6, Toronto), Flowers Gallery (Oct. 14, London), Weinstein Hammons Gallery (Oct. 28, Minneapolis) and additional shows coming in 2023, Burtynsky and his gallerists are committing 100% of the earnings from the first 39” x 52” print sold at each show — equalling CAD $100,000.00 — to LagosPhoto. The hope is that these funds will go towards the establishment of a new program within the Festival dedicated to emerging and mid-career African artists who are focussing their lens on subjects of globalism, and the environmental, cultural and social impacts of the climate crisis on the Global South.