This mural speaks to the current global climate crisis. I have utilized the human figure to disentangle the complex transformation of land and psyche. Moving from right to left, a gradient of greens and a skewed forest blend and morph into critical reds, showing a shift in environmental change from the past to the present. We find a figure on the right embodying the fertile hunting ground and meeting place of what Toronto once was. She pulls from this past, sending a message to an uncertain future. In the middle of the wall, the forest culminates into figures embodying biodiversity. Their movements gesture toward the last figure on the left, trapped in the reds and pinks of our modern, overheating world. How do we move forward as a species when our survival is at odds with our modes of production? How do we acknowledge and utilize our past and our present to find new visions of the future?
•
This mural is dedicated to all Indigenous cultures. I was struck by this concept in a forward by Alicia Elliot in – This Place: 150 years retold- ‘Indigenous writers have pointed out that, as Indigenous people, we all live in a post-apocalyptic world. The world as we knew it ended the moment colonialism started to creep across these lands.’ I was struck by the juxtaposition to the prevailing preoccupation – one that has also been central in my own work – with the apocalypse as yet to come.
