CAFKA has made the difficult decision to postpone the biennial to June 2021. We have been monitoring the rapidly changing situation relating to COVID-19 and have been following directives from local governments and public health authorities. The Region of Waterloo has cancelled all public events through to the end of June. With the uncertainty of how long travel restrictions will be in place for and how long we will be required to practice physical distancing, the CAFKA board of directors has decided to treat 2020 as an “off-biennial year,” and to tentatively reschedule the biennial for June of 2021. That means that, except in the event that physical distancing continues to be enforced through the spring of 2021, it is our intention to present all of the artists’ projects selected by the Program Committee in June 2021.
The “off-biennial year” is simply the year between biennials. It has been CAFKA’s policy to schedule ancillary and project-based programs during the off-biennial year as a way to continue the conversation with our audience around the issues of contemporary art in the public space.
For this extraordinary 2020 off-biennial year CAFKA is exploring the programming of “socially distanced” ancillary events and artist projects. The CAFKA Program Committee will be meeting in the coming weeks to bring focus to these program ideas.