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The Year of Public Art

An abstract image with pink, ochre, and green.

The Year of Public Art

ArtworxTO: Toronto's Year of Public Art 2021-2022 has launched across the city. Free to the public, ArtworxTO is a year-long celebration of Toronto’s tremendous public art collection complimented by a range of major public art projects and commissions spearheaded by City Hall.  

OCAD U students, recent graduates and faculty have contributed artworks, leadership and curatorial vision to ArtworxTO, which was announced as part of the Year of Public Art by Mayor Tory in 2019 at the University's RBC Centre for Emerging Artists & Designers (CEAD).  

Dr. Sara Diamond, President Emerita of OCAD University co-chairs the Mayor’s External Advisory Committee for the Year of Public Art along with Gary Crawford, Councillor, Ward 20 Scarborough Southwest. Artist, curator and founding Chair of the Indigenous Visual Cultural Program at OCAD U, Bonnie Devine, also sits on the initiative’s Advisory Committee.  

Exhibitions, artworks and pop-ups will appear throughout the city between now and fall 2022, bringing art into the lives of Torontonians, everyday. 

Check out I am land, a three-part exhibition at ArtworxTO Hub SOUTH (Union Station). The first instalment, I am land that feels opens on October 27, 2021 and runs until February 20, 2022 and shows how artists document loss. The exhibition functions as a place for public mourning, where death is tied to systemic violence and issues of injustice. Photography, sculpture and installation will be on view.

A black and white photo if a Black woman stands in front a grid of documents posted on a wall.
The series is curated by 2018 Visual and Critical Studies graduate Maya Wilson-Sanchez, who is now a lecturer in OCAD U’s Faculty of Art.  

Take Space for Self Care in Urban Centres features works by two exceptionally talented OCAD U community members, Susan Blight and Laura Grier. The exhibition will be on view at the Collision Gallery Pop-up Hub at 18 Wellington St. W., now until December 31, 2021. Curated by Emma Steen, who completed an MA in Contemporary Art, Design and New Media Art Histories in 2020 at OCAD U, the show foregrounds Black and Indigenous perspectives on care as methods of resistance and sovereignty. 

A plant on a pedestal in a pink light.
A Battlefield Medicinal Herb Living Green Under the Snow
 (2021) by Delaney Chair of Indigenous Visual Culture and Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences and School of Interdisciplinary Studies at OCAD U, Susan Blight examines care and kindness in the context of violence against Indigenous women. Blight’s installation features the yarrow plant, a traditional herb that has been used to relieve pain for millennia. An extremely powerful plant that grows abundantly in the Northern Hemisphere, Rocky Mountain First Nations mashed yarrow roots to use as a local anesthetic and treat headaches, stings, cuts, burns and nosebleeds. 

An abstract black and white image with pink text overlaid on it.
Laura Grier, who graduated from OCAD U’s Interdisciplinary Art, Media and Design Graduate program in 2020, presents Kǝdǝdzǝ́hehtsį (2021), an installation where they reflect on the word care and the colonial trauma that left them without the ability to speak their ancestors’ Dene language. Here Grier creates a word for care themselves. As they explain in their artist statement, “I chose Tse [wood] as the vessel, and Mokulito as the process, to express (and show Tse) these elemental feelings of care.” 

In addition to these projects, OCAD U students will have a continuous presence on the ArtworxTO blog, which will include their dispatches and reflections throughout the year.  

Jordan Bennett stands in front of a wall with a colourful, geometric mural on it.In June 2022, Mi’kmaq artist, Jordan Bennett will create a mural at Butterfield Park, also as part of ArtworxTO. Bennett’s colourful and geometric murals are inspired by traditional Mi’kmaq porcupine quillwork, an art practice that involves intricately adorning clothing, jewelry, furniture and objects with porcupine quills. Curated by Lisa Deanne Smith, Curator of Onsite Gallery, The Jordan Bennett Mural Project will kick-off a series of Indigenous public art activities at OCAD University.  The mural will be presented in conjunction with the  solo exhibition Souvenir at Onsite Gallery with works by Jordan Bennett, curated by Ryan Rice.


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Image credits
1. The Collapsing of a Model (2019) by Carolina Caycedo. 
2. Malvern (2019) by Anique Jordan from the series Ban' yuh belly.
3. A Battlefield Medicinal Herb Living Green Under the Snow (2021) by Susan Blight. 
4. Kǝdǝdzǝ́hehtsį (2021) by Laura Grier. 
5. Jordan Bennett shows new mural to media during launch, Ktaqmkuk- Msit No'kmaq, 2018, Mural for the City of St.Johns, Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland) in collaboration with Eastern Edge Art Gallery for the Identify Festival of Indigenous Arts & Culture. Photo by: Eastern Edge Gallery