(p)Art Toronto

I have a complicated relationship with Art Toronto.

On one hand, it’s fun and glamorous. The opening night preview is a glitzy parade of paintings, prosecco, and posturing. On the other, it’s an ostentatious show of wealth and a reminder that the ‘art world,’ as it currently exists, really isn’t what we need right now.

When I think back to my first Art Toronto, I cringe remembering how much money it cost just to be able to work there. I pulled up in a car I couldn’t afford to repair for opening night having spent over half my rent on an outfit, hair, and makeup. Inside, it was electric: white walls and midcentury chrome and black leather furniture, futuristic works of LED lighting design. There was a buzz in the air, beautiful art, performances. It was a treat for the senses.

I was interning at the time, unpaid of course, and burning with that millennial eagerness to prove myself. Despite not receiving a commission, I hustled hard that night, selling, smiling, and surviving on adrenaline. Midway through the evening, I sold a painting by a now-celebrity artist for tens of thousands of dollars. I adored it; it was erotic, luminous, alive. I was excited to talk to the buyer about its technique and emotional pull.

The buyer, a man in a blue velvet tuxedo jacket and Ferragamo shoes, interrupted me,

“I don’t really care, to be honest. We’re told it’s a good investment. And it should suit the power room at the cottage.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so I bit my tongue.

That moment has stayed with me for years. I’ve told it to a decade’s worth of students, because it perfectly encapsulates what’s wrong with the art world, where culture becomes reduced to a line item on a spreadsheet, scooped up as an asset by people who may never even look at it again.

And it’s telling, isn’t it, that Art Toronto isn’t just sponsored by a bank, but a bank with thousands of artworks in its massive corporate collection. The circle is complete: wealth makes art, buys art, validates art, and locks the rest of us out.

Can we really call it Art Toronto when so few people can access it?

While they ‘graciously’ offer a $20 ticket for just the final hour on Sunday, this is really just a symbolic nod to inclusion. What that really translates to is paying $20 an hour to browse a store that you can’t afford to shop at. Opening night tickets are over $400, and the cheapest full adult admission is $60 per day. That is double the cost of a visit to the Art Gallery of Ontario and triple the average hourly wage in the city.

Artists in Toronto are even more priced out. You can’t show at Art Toronto without gallery representation. Galleries themselves need tens of thousands of dollars just to secure a booth. The lowest priced booth at Art Toronto costs over $12,000. The highest is $66,000. Meanwhile, the average annual salary in this city hovers around $60,000. Doesn’t that feel . . . profoundly out of touch?

Sometimes I wonder if I’m just being salty. There are, of course, wonderful parts of Art Toronto. This year, I loved seeing Roda Medhat’s neon LED sculptures inspired by Kurdish textiles and Pixel Heller’s powerful photographs exploring the resilience and evolution of Black culture and Afro-Caribbean identity (shown above; both represented by The New Other). But then I remember that feeling in my throat as I tried to sell art in an environment that didn’t care about art. I think about these interesting, thought-provoking works of art sitting behind a banker’s desk.

That’s why I started Verità Fine Art, and why I placed that important $500 price cap on our works.

To do otherwise felt like repeating, in the Canadian art market, the same class, race, and gender exclusions that have shaped art history long before the salons of the 18th century. The only difference is that Toronto’s elite art collector class often lacks the interest in art history (or culture more broadly) compared with those of Paris, London, or New York. Our city has sold its soul—and along with it, the culture and entertainment sectors—to a handful of corporations who can afford to pay. In doing so, we’ve let a small group of primarily white finance bros with pretty questionable taste set the cultural agenda and the price tags. We see it reflected in the art shown, too: an increased emphasis on the flashy, shallow, kitsch, Instagrammable.

Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu argued that when cultural capital is concentrated like this—in the hands of an elite and wealthy few—it denies everyone else the chance to develop their own sense of art, culture, and aesthetic. Verità is my answer to that.

Verità is not curated by an algorithm or an investment banker’s portfolio, but by something more personal. Our collection is filled with artworks that we believe will bring joy to the right owner, that will spark curiosity and speak to one’s personal taste. The question isn’t “how much will this go up in value?” but “what image to I want to greet me every day?”

That, to me, is the real art world worth belonging to.

—Lesley