 Hi, art lovers! | | |  | (Erica Young) | | | I have seen the future, and it is … dumbphones? Medieval serfdom? Bog life? The 2025 CBC Arts Trend Forecast is here and it collects predictions from influential Canadians who don’t just obsess over art and culture — they make it too!
In the fall, 35 creatives from around the country answered the same questionnaire. It’s a group that includes award-winning filmmakers, visual artists, designers, curators, creative directors and a disproportionate number of FKA Twigs stans, and I asked them to share their vision for 2025. Which colours and artistic mediums will we suddenly see everywhere? Who will inspire us? What will have a comeback? Basically, what are we all going to be seeing — and talking about — in 2025? (And if you have an answer of your own you’d like to share, you know how to reach me!)
One of the best things about working on a project like this is seeing how much fun the respondents have with the questions. (Shout out to director Matthew Rankin, who predicts Napoleon hats will rule the runway.) But the insights we received were just as often profound, and if there’s a theme that unites everyone’s feelings on the year ahead, omigosh, do people ever want to smash their smartphones and abolish the algorithm. There’s a strong desire out there to unplug and prioritize human (IRL) relationships and handmade things.
Those ideas bubble up in the five major trends highlighted in the piece — topics we unpack in essays and long-read features. I’ll highlight a few of those articles below, but this story by Naomi Skwarna is one of my favourites: an essay on the colour of the year, a living (and dying) green.
| | | | | Because we promised you eye candy ... | | | | |  | LF Documentation/Rachel Crummey | | I’m letting the proverbial bog win, so for this week’s eye candy, let’s sink into some year-of-the-swamp vibes. This 2023 piece (Janina) by Toronto artist Rachel Crummey was made with oil pastel … and mycelium! Also, this line from her Instagram bio really feels like something that could’ve been in the ‘25 Trend Forecast: “In the compost heap of the present, we transform into our future selves.” | | | | |  | Erin Skiffington | | Dew by Erin Skiffington. (Erin has a show at Afternoon Projects in Vancouver to Dec. 30.) | | | | |  | Mew/Deepikah RB | | Deepikah RB is part of a group show (Anxious yet Familiar World) at Toronto’s Ignite Gallery through Jan. 21, and this is a detail of the piece she’s showing there — Gaia: Nature Not Mother. As Deepikah writes, it’s an installation that presents nature “as an autobalancing, autocorrecting collection of processes that work intuitively and keep the unstoppable cycle of growth, decay, death and rebirth running.” | | | | |  | Monte Clark/Emily Hermant | | You’re looking at Talk Through Me by Emily Hermant, and if you can’t get to Monte Clark in Vancouver to see it for yourself, you’ll want to explore Emily’s Instagram for pictures that’ll let you zoom in closer. The piece is made of materials like ethernet cable jackets, and this description from the gallery website really struck me: “The sculptures evoke the disintegration of digital images into tactile works, and transformation of conductive materials into visual forms of communication.” | | | | |  | Jean-Sébastien Veilleux/ENE | | | | | Dumbphone sales are already on the rise, and artists see a future where more people choose a simpler relationship with technology. | | | | |  | Noam Galai/Getty Images for MTV | | | | | The nostalgia cycle rarely rewinds this far, but some things are just timeless, like maximalist detail, slow craftsmanship and weird little guys. | | | | |  | Toronto Tamagotchi Club | | | | | | | One of the strongest themes to emerge from the ‘25 Trend Forecast is the importance of connecting with other people. These Canadians have fought the loneliness epidemic by starting their own social scenes, and they have tips for how you can do the same. | | |  | Laura Venditti | | If you make it all the way through this feature on how medieval style is infiltrating art, fashion and pop culture, you will be rewarded with a video by Laura … which stars some truly weird and wonderful little guys. The film took months to make, and she documented the process on Instagram. | | | | | Share this newsletter | | or subscribe if this was
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I’m Leah Collins, senior writer at CBC Arts. Until next time! | | | | | |
