Winter Stations 2026 announces five winning entries in advance of art installations being displayed on Woodbine Beach
By JESSICA SHACKLETON
Winter Stations has announced the five winning entries whose designs will be displayed on Woodbine Beach in the 12th year of the outdoor art installation.
Winter Stations will open on Family Day weekend, with the official launch on Monday, Feb. 16, and continue until the end of March.
The winners of this year’s competition are Embrace (Canada); Crest (University of Waterloo); Specularia (United States); CHIMERA (Germany/Ukraine); and Glaciate (Toronto Metropolitan University).
“This year’s theme, Mirage, invited artists and designers from around the world to submit proposals for installations that play with the boundary of what is seen and what is real in the age of AI, and explore public art as infrastructure that gathers people in shared reality,” said a Jan. 27 news release from Winter Stations announcing the winners.
Winter Stations has been displaying outdoor art installations on Woodbine Beach since 2015, and has become a launching pad for new ideas in public art. Winners receive full materials, fabrication labour, and a $2,000 honorarium to support what is often designers’ first public art installation.
Every year, the hundreds of submissions are reviewed by a jury. This year’s jury was made up of Jason Thorne, Katriina Campitelli, Alana Mercury, Luisa Ji, and Janna Hiemstra.
Winter Stations are made possible by RAW Design, kg&a, Northcrest Developments, City of Toronto, Mechanical Contractors Association of Ontario, Ontario Association of Architects, MicroPro Sienna, Feeley Group, Sali Tabacchi Brand & Design, and Meevo Digital.
Here are the installations that will be on display along Woodbine Beach starting next month:
Embrace – (Will Cuthbert; Canada)
“Embrace is an invitation to behold and to be held. Change your point of view. Gain a new perspective. A prismatic reflection of the warmth and light of the day,” said the news release.
Cuthbert, who grew up in the Beach, is now based in Saskatoon and previously was part of Winter Stations in 2022 for The Hive installation, designed with Beacher Kathleen Dogantzis. Both Cuthbert and Dogantzis attended Malvern Collegiate Institute.
Crest – (Clay te Bokkel, Isabella Ieraci, Matthew Lam, Sasha Rao, Simon Huang, Oskar Peng, and David Shen; University of Waterloo)
“Crest emerges from the sand and snow as a sweeping wave positioned moments before breaking. It envelops and invites visitors to gather, to pause and share a fleeting moment of reality like a wave crashing into the shore,” said the release.
The University of Waterloo is often represented during Winter Stations, and this year’s installation was designed to resemble, from afar, a pile of driftwood that reveals itself as a wave as people approach it.
Specularia – (TORNADO SOUP: Andrew Clark; United States)
“Specularia houses five framed openings facing the lake, each revealing a blend of deception and reality. One of the openings depicts the truth, while the others show pieces of the surroundings, stripped of context, confusing distance and direction,” said the news release.
Clark is based in Portland, Maine, and creates designs under the name TORNADO SOUP. His piece is designed with MicroPro Sienna-treated lumber.
CHIMERA – (Denys Horodnyak; Ukraine, and Enzo Zak Luz; Germany)
“CHIMERA is a reflection of the fragmentation of physical and digital realities. The viewer encounters a shifting constellation of selves, where the delicate imbalance between control and security becomes apparent,” said the Winter Stations news release.
Horodnyak and Lux share an emerging creative practice in Berlin.
Glaciate – (Finn Ferrall, Nicholas Kisil, Marko Sikic, and faculty supervisor Vincent Hui; Toronto Metropolitan University, Department of Architectural Science, in collaboration with Ming Chan University; Taiwan)
“As the lake water freezes and thaws, the panels cycle through phases of transparency, translucency, and full opacity. From outside, a red lifeguard stand is never wholly visible or wholly concealed. It appears through fragments, outlines, and momentary flashes of red. From within, the surrounding beach appears a mirage,” said the news release.
Ferrall, Kisil, Sikic, and Hui from TMU were all part of last year’s Winter Stations with their winter design, Solair.
To learn more about this year’s Winter Stations at Woodbine Beach, please visit https://winterstations.com/
