Some exhibitions ask us to look harder at the artwork. Dawoud Bey’s Material Histories, Living Landscapes challenges us, as viewers, to look harder at the land itself.

At first glance, Bey’s photographs depict quiet landscapes—forests, oceans, and abandoned houses. They appear still and nondescript. However, the longer you look at them, the more both the landscapes and your understanding of them begin to shift. They are no longer empty spaces. They become witnesses to histories that have long been overlooked or forgotten, serving as living archives of cultural memory.

Presented at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) as part of the 2026 Toronto Biennial of Art, Material Histories, Living Landscapes explores the relationship between North American landscapes and Black diasporic history. Through photography, video, and selected African sculptures from the AGO’s collection, Bey reveals how physical places can carry memory long after the people who lived, suffered, resisted, or died there have disappeared from view.

The Weight of Remembrance: 350,000

At the heart of the exhibition is 350,000, a black-and-white, two-channel video installation that reimagines the journey of the approximately 350,000 enslaved African peoples forced along Virginia’s Richmond Slave Trail between 1830 and 1860. Rather than presenting history through archival documents or narration, Bey allows the landscape itself to bear the weight of remembrance and tell the stories it holds. The layered sounds of plodding footsteps, wails, and the clanging of chains echo through the darkened exhibition space, creating an ominous atmosphere that feels almost haunting. It is impossible not to feel a sense of dread as the camera moves through the dark forest, confronting viewers with the brutal reality of the forced migration and human trafficking of enslaved African peoples to North America. The result is both immersive and contemplative, inviting us to slow down and consider what the land has witnessed.

Bridging Continents: Dialogue Between Departure and Arrival

The exhibition‘s inclusion of African sculptures and figurines further deepens this conversation. Selected from the AGO‘s collection, works from present-day Nigeria, Mali, Gabon, and the Congo create a visual call-and-response between the continents of Africa and North America. These sculptures are far more than beautiful works of art; they carry deep cultural, spiritual, and historical significance. They represent societies with sophisticated systems of governance, artistic traditions, belief systems, and cultural identities that flourished long before the Transatlantic Slave Trade violently ruptured their way of life. Their presence reminds viewers that the story of the Black diaspora did not begin with enslavement; it began with vibrant civilizations, rich knowledge systems, and diverse cultural traditions rooted across the African continent.

Displayed alongside Bey’s photographs, the sculptures establish a powerful dialogue between departure and arrival, loss and continuity. They serve as tangible reminders of what was carried across the Atlantic despite unimaginable violence—not only people, but also memory, resilience, creativity, spirituality, and culture. Together, the photographs and sculptures reveal the enduring connections between Africa and the Black diaspora in North America, while inviting visitors to reflect on both the immense rupture caused by the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the cultural continuities that have endured across generations.

Landscapes as Active Participants in History

Bey‘s photographs and video installation suggest that landscapes are not passive backdrops to history but active participants in it. They hold stories that are often invisible to those who have never been taught to look for them.

That idea feels especially relevant in Canada, where conversations about Truth and Reconciliation have encouraged many people to reconsider the histories implanted in the places they call home. Across North America, landscapes bear the marks of slavery, settler colonialism, colonial violence, the displacement and dispossession of Indigenous Peoples, and acts of resistance. Nevertheless, many of these histories remain absent from public memory, having been overlooked, sanitized, or whitewashed in ways that mask the more painful and uncomfortable chapters of North America‘s past. Bey does not attempt to reconstruct every story. Instead, he creates space for reflection, asking what it means to stand in a place where history unfolded, even when there is no monument or plaque to mark what happened there.

Power in Restraint

What makes Material Histories, Living Landscapes so compelling is its restraint. Bey does not rely on graphic imagery or spectacle to communicate the continent’s history of violence. Instead, he trusts viewers to sit with silence, absence, and ambiguity. His work asks us to imagine the lives that once moved through these landscapes and to acknowledge how easily those histories can disappear when we choose not to see them.

In an age when so much of our attention is fixed on the immediate, Material Histories, Living Landscapes encourages a slower, more intentional way of viewing landscapes as living archives of memory. His work reminds us that history is not confined to museums or textbooks. It exists beneath our feet, shaping the places we inhabit and the stories we inherit.

Material Histories, Living Landscapes ultimately leaves viewers with a quiet but powerful question: If the land remembers, are we willing to remember with it?