The wall of Canada Post’s South-Central processing plant on Eastern Avenue will serve as a giant projection screen for the nights of Nov. 18 through to Nov. 21 as part of BigArtTO’s The Essentials art series.
A three-part series, The Essentials is being presented by The Bentway and The Waterfront BIA. It is part of the City of Toronto’s Big ArtTO initiative which encourages residents to go outside, explore their neighbourhoods and enjoy art while observing safe COVID-19 protocols.
The week’s projection is the final one in the series. Earlier events took place at the Donald B. Summerville Pool in the Beach and at the Canada Malting silos at the foot of Bathurst Street last week.
Being screened tonight through Saturday will be artist Wendy Truong’s work is titled Interchanges. The projection runs about seven minutes on a continuous loop and will be shown between 6 to 9 p.m. each night. The Canada Post plant is located at 969 Eastern Ave.
A Toronto artist, Truong works with drawing and animation to explore ideas of identity, feminism, and fantasy and finding its connections and transgressions in the natural world. She has exhibited across Canada, the U.S. and Europe, and is the recipient of visual arts grants from the Toronto Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council, Canada Arts Council for the Arts, and is a 2017 recipient of the Chalmers Arts Fellowship.
Truong has been the artist in residence of the Brucebo Scholarship in Sweden, and at the Doris McCarthy Artist in residence at Fool’s Paradise in Scarborough.
She said Interchanges is inspired by the postal system, so the choice of showing it on the wall of the Canada Post plant on Eastern Avenue was the perfect location.
“Taking inspiration from mail distribution systems, this animation reveals the paralleled complexity in seed dispersion among local urban flora,” said Truong in her Artist’s Statement on Interchanges.
“For me this touches on two essential connections I’ve had during the pandemic: sending real tangible mail to friends and family as a way of keeping tactile connection, and seeking meditative respite among the nature of local parks like Corktown Common and the Toronto Islands. Visiting these parks I’ve observed the complex systems of seed pollination and distribution that are taking place at a micro and macro level all around us: dandelion spores catching the wind, bees transferring pollen or birds scavenging seeds. This animation will focus in on this process, following several seeds and pollinators as they move around the frame and interact with each other in a surreal, natural environment. The film will function as a moment to meditate on this unimaginably complex system that we often take for granted. By making a connection between seed and mail distribution this work reveals how these overlooked systems are essential to meaningful connections to nature and each other.”
The theme for The Essentials series is examining what is “essential now, reaffirming priorities and commitments for a post-COVID Toronto” through art projections on the walls of large buildings in and around the city’s waterfront.
For more information, please visit https://www.thebentway.ca/event/the-essentials-winnie-truong-2/
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