2026 | THE WEDGE LECTURE
Featuring Tyler Mitchell and Liz Ikiriko

Across Black life, play has been a tool for testing freedom and expanding beyond what has been given. What becomes possible when play is understood as a way of rethinking the world around us?

Presented by Luminato Festival and Wedge Curatorial Projects, The Wedge Lecture brings together artists and thinkers whose work is shaping contemporary culture and critical discourse. In its third season, we welcome artist, photographer, and filmmaker Tyler Mitchell and artist-curator Liz Ikiriko to discuss visual culture and the transformative power of play. 

Mitchell’s work reimagines Black life through images of play, beauty, intimacy, and self-possession. Across photography, film, and installation, he draws on memory and history to create pictures that feel both rooted in the past and oriented toward possibility.

Based in Toronto, Liz Ikiriko‘s curatorial practice is intimate and relational, unveiling the beauty and resilience found in community. Ikiriko is the curator at Gallery TPW and was on the curatorial committee of the Bamako Encounters Photography Biennale (2022) and, has taught at Toronto Metropolitan University and Sheridan College.

Together, Mitchell and Ikiriko will engage in a wide-ranging conversation on the histories, strategies, and processes that inform their work through the lens of Play, Luminato Festival’s 2026 theme.

ABOUT the speakers

Tyler Mitchell (b. 1995, Atlanta, Georgia) is an artist, photographer, and filmmaker based in Brooklyn. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Film and Television from NYU Tisch School of the Arts in 2017. Michell’s work introduces new narratives about Black beauty and desire, embracing history while creating fictionalized moments for the imagined future. His images envision representations of Black life that emphasize play, empowerment, and self-determination.

Mitchell’s work is held in numerous private and public collections, including the Brooklyn Museum; Cleveland Museum of Art; Columbus Museum of Art at the Pizzuti; Detroit Institute of the Arts; Foam, Amsterdam; Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, New York; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC. He has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions around the world: The New Black Vanguard (Aperture Gallery, New York); I Can Make You Feel Good (Foam, Amsterdam and International Center of Photography, New York); Social Works II and Chrysalis (Gagosian, London); Ghost Images (Gagosian, New York); and Domestic Imaginaries (Museum of Art, Savannah College of Art and Design, Georgia). In 2024, Mitchell presented solo exhibitions at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta and the North Carolina Museum of Art, Winston-Salem. Wish This Was Real, Mitchell’s first exhibition in Germany, was presented at C/O Berlin in 2024 and traveled to four European institutions, with its final stop at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, in 2025-26. Mitchell’s photography has been published widely in magazines, including Aperture, Dazed, i-D, Interview, M Le Monde, Vanity Fair, American and British Vogue, W, WSJ, and Zeit Magazin. He has collaborated commercially with brands such as Gucci, Loewe, Ferragamo, Moncler, JW Anderson, and Marc Jacobs.

Liz Ikiriko is a Tkaronto/Toronto-based artist and curator whose practice is informed by her experiences as a mixed Nigerian Canadian, prairie-raised daughter and mother. Her work engages questions of power, systems of oppression, and the social conditions that shape how we see, relate, and belong. Grounded in lens-based practices, Ikiriko examines the histories and ongoing impacts of visual culture on individual and collective consciousness. Through research-driven and embodied approaches, she creates projects that foster presence, care, and connection within and alongside communities.

Ikiriko is the Curator and Head of Programming at Gallery TPW and co-founder, with Toleen Touq of wave~form~projects, a collective dedicated to intimate and relational curatorial practice. She has previously held curatorial roles at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto and the Art Gallery of York University, and served on the curatorial committee for the 13th Bamako Encounters African Biennial of Photography in Mali. Recent curatorial projects include Elemental Fire: Tim Whiten (Art Gallery of York University, 2023), ___a lineage of transgression___ featuring jamilah malika abu-bakare, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Shala Miller, Chiedza Pasipanodya and nourbeSe Philip (Gallery TPW, 2026), and public talks and events with artist Liz Johnson Artur and Contemporary And (C&). Her writing and contributions appear in publications such as As We Rise: Photography (and) Sounds from the Black Atlantic (Aperture, 2022), Capture Photography Festival, Public Journal, C Magazine, Blackflash, and M,I,C,E magazine.

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