The Street Summit
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On May 27th & 28th, 2022, The Bentway’s season kicked-off with The Street Summit, a two-day event hosted at The Bentway’s Strachan Gate that challenged traditional understandings of city streets and asked how we can create a more inclusive, equitable, and joyful public realm.
Moko Jumbie Street Furniture
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The Moko Jumbie theatre and seating designs, designed for the Mas Camp, are inspired by the mathematical shape vesica piscis otherwise known as mandorla (pointed oval), which consists of two intersecting congruent circles.
Moko Jumbie Parade
Join Michael Lee Poy, the Moko Jumbie Mas Camp artists, camp participants, and their families for a jubilant community Carnival parade centering balance, regalia, joy, and emancipation – traveling along the sidewalk around Canoe Landing Park.
Moko Jumbie Shibori & Direct Dyeing Workshop
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Want to learn how to transform fabric with the art of Shibori dyeing or direct dyeing?
Moko Jumbie Mas Camp
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Since its earliest known historical appearance in 1791 in St. Vincent, the masquerade (mas) character known as Moko Jumbie has enchanted and frightened people throughout the Caribbean and its diasporas. With a mesmerising spectacle of balance and regalia, the guardian spirit both protects and participates in the Carnival street festivities. As a protector, Moko Jumbie is a reminder that playing mas is rooted in resistance to colonial oppression and Euro-centric religiosity. As a participant, Moko Jumbie is an expression and celebration of emancipation and freedom.
Future Perfect: New By-laws for Civic Spaces
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Future Perfect: New Bylaws for Civic Spaces is a hopeful, positive act of re-configuration. By-laws that regulate behaviours in civic spaces – in this case, Toronto’s Streets and Sidewalks Municipal Code – are cut up word-by-word and meticulously rearranged into a new set of rules for a transitioning world.
a wandering
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A multi-sited audio-visual walking tour is now on exhibition under the Gardiner Expressway.
Weweni Bizindan (Listen Carefully)
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There is a tendency for the noun-dominant English language to perpetuate a view of the street as static, cold, necessary. Most objects in the English-speaking world are effectively dead. Certainly, that can be said of a highway. And, yet, for Anishinaabemowin – a verb-based language that ascribes spirit to rocks and trees among many other animate things – we might consider the built environment to be a relative.
Bodies in Urban Spaces
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Arriving in Toronto for the first time after being performed in more than a hundred cities worldwide, Bodies in Urban Spaces is a moving trail choreographed for a group of local dancers.
PARADE
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Part of the delight of being on the street is not knowing what you’ll encounter next…
Public Pier
Fridays: 6pm–11pm, Saturdays: 1pm–11pm. September 18 & 19, September 25 & 26, and October 2 & 3.
A collaboration between The Bentway, Harbourfront Centre, OCAD University, and the Waterfront BIA, Public Pier is a collaborative public realm pilot that transforms Marina Quay West into a welcoming waterfront hub for arts and culture, gathering, and public life.
Will Kwan
Summer 2020
Will Kwan is a Hong Kong-born, Toronto-based artist and educator. In 2018, he completed a half-kilometre long public mural along Toronto’s lower Don River valley for Evergreen’s public art program.
Nicole Taylor
Summer 2020
Nicole “Nico” Taylor is the Executive Director of Governance & Communications for the BSAM Canada Institute. Nicole is a writer, scholar, dancer, cosplayer and activist who uses feminism and critical race theory to dissect social constructions surrounding race and representation, especially as they pertain to how we make sense of the images that surround us.
Peter Morin
Summer 2020
Peter Morin is a grandson of Tahltan Nation ancestor artists. Throughout his artistic practice, Morin investigates the impact zones that occur when Indigenous practices collide with Western-settler colonialism.
Anahita Dehbonehie
Summer 2020
Anahita Dehbonehie is an Iranian performance designer, creator and installation artist. Currently based in Toronto, her practice is founded on the principle that truths are communicated most powerfully through evocative sensory experiences. She is drawn specifically to work that questions form and content while creating space for contemporary conversation. The evolving relationship between participant, creator and the exchange of ideas is what draws her to the art of live performance.
Malcolm-Emilio
Summer 2020
For the past 10 years Malcolm-Emilio has consistently created work that inspires new perspectives on how to communicate and navigate in diverse cultural landscapes.
Hiba Abdallah
Summer 2020
Deeply rooted in a socially engaged ethos, Hiba Abdallah’s work examines and responds to issues directly experienced in diverse communities. Her practice aims to re-imagine the cities and places that we encounter by using locality, civic narratives and political structures as tools for fostering collective agency. She has created work across media – from public interventions to community projects, gallery exhibitions, civic think-tanks, and publications.
Bruce Horak
Summer 2020
Canadian artist Bruce Horak lost 90% of his eyesight to cancer as a baby and identifies as Legally Blind. His work seeks to explore the unique way he sees the world, experimenting in visual art, performance, storytelling, and music/sound design. He delights in shifting perspectives and inspiring others to do the same.
Ness Lee
Summer 2020
Ness Lee draws upon history and personal narratives to create tender and surreal illustrations, paintings, sculptures and installations. Exploring states of mind during intimate stages of vulnerability, Lee’s work takes form as an effort in seeking comfort, forgiveness and desire for an end of a self-perpetuated state. Based in Toronto, their work has been featured at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Agnes Etherington, The Art Gallery of Hamilton, Art Toronto, as well as galleries in Boston, Los Angeles, New York, Montreal and Toronto. They are currently represented by Patel Gallery.
Sean Martindale
Summer 2020
Sean Martindale is an internationally recognized and award-winning interdisciplinary artist and designer based in Toronto, Canada. His interventions activate public spaces to encourage engagement and often focus on ecological and social issues. His playful works suggest alternate possibilities for existing spaces, infrastructures and materials found in urban environments. Frequently, Martindale uses salvaged goods and live plants in unexpected ways that prompt conversation.
Max Dean & Andrew Savery-Whiteway
Summer 2020
Max Dean is working and staying at home where he continues to ponder how to make and exhibit his large scale sculptural installations and photographs. Andrew Savery-Whiteway was born and raised in Trenton, ON. After extensively studying Jazz performance through his adolescence, Andrew enrolled in the Ryerson School of Image Arts and pursued a photography degree.
Levyi-Alexander Love
Summer 2020
Levyi-Alexander Love is an Artist born in Toronto, Ontario. He is passionate about forwarding those of African descent in the Queer and Trans community by creating spaces for folx to be free. As a man of trans experience, he holds to the strength of those in the Black and Queer community who have paved the way for him to continue to advocate in the loud and bold ways he does. His art has touched many lives and continues to do so until this day. Currently, he runs an open mic called UnObscured which is dedicated to the BIPOC Queer and Trans community. Levyi is a firm believer in love and how everyone should be able to live freely and speak their truths.
La-Vane Kelly
Summer 2020
Hazel Meyer is an artist who works with installation, performance, and text to investigate the relationships between sexuality, feminism, and material culture. Her work aims to recover the queer aesthetics, politics, and bodies often effaced within histories of infrastructure, athletics and illness.
Hazel Meyer
Summer 2020
Hazel Meyer is an artist who works with installation, performance, and text to investigate the relationships between sexuality, feminism, and material culture. Her work aims to recover the queer aesthetics, politics, and bodies often effaced within histories of infrastructure, athletics and illness.