Since Toronto’s mayor last opened the city’s proclaimed Year of Public Art, the public sphere has largely been off-limits, a mix of COVID-19 precautions and icy weather reducing communal contact.

But with the lifting of provincial limitations on the size of gatherings and the need to prove vaccination status, Mayor John Tory was ready to try again.

Those who have been cultivating that creative output are ready for that, with “expanded visions and partnerships” coming for the community arts collective SKETCH’s four Making with Place projects.

“Our commitment is to keep animating, amplifying and archiving creative histories and voices on people and places on the margins, particularly in justice-seeking placemaking,” said Phyllis Novak, the founder of SKETCH, which taps the creativity of the city’s homeless, marginalized youth.

photo by Jahmal Nugent
Reconstructions of Home. Photo by Jahmal Nugent

Tory had launched ArtworxTO in September at a hub designed to be “led by the next generation of curators, collectives and artists,” but its programs and various others the city planned were forced to close when public health restrictions were reimposed to deal with the Omicron wave this winter.

The return will include a seven-site augmented and virtual reality installation of Reconstructions of Home, created to celebrate the lives of the housing insecure at a site of their displacement, at and in conjunction with The Bentway opening in April, Novak said.

It also means the return of another redesigned telephone booth — the Lokey Care Booth – to a parkette on Eglinton West early in April and the migration of Queering Place’s medicines by two-spirit artists to “partners in the four directions of the medicine wheel” in May, they said.

My Public Living Room. Photo by Jahmal Nugent

Tory returned on Tuesday to Cloverdale Mall, a shopping complex nestled against Highway 427 in Etobicoke, to reopen the city’s broader arts celebration at one of the hubs designed to uplift marginalized voices.

The return will include a seven-site augmented and virtual reality installation of Reconstructions of Home. #ArtworxTO

For the next three months, the west hub of ArtworxTO will feature HOME(LAND), a series of three multimedia exhibitions looking at how land connects to identity, belonging and ideas of home, the city said in a statement.

Paulina O'Kieffe-Anthony, a co-curator of work shown in the eastern hub and executive director at SKETCH, said the group appreciates the city’s support of the projects.

“This is especially important at a time when despite artists being one of the hardest-hit groups throughout the pandemic, the arts continued to play an integral part in reducing isolation [and] uplifting and connecting community,” O'Kieffe-Anthony said.

Morgan Sharp / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada’s National Observer

Keep reading