Can a photograph be a monument? Let's reimagine Toronto's public art – ThePeterboroughExaminer.com

There is a thing that happens sometimes, when you have spent years planning a project, and by the time you are ready to launch, the world has changed in such a way that you land hip deep in a relevant conflagration.

This is where the City of Toronto finds itself with last month’s call for applications for ArtworxTO: Toronto’s Year of Public Art 2021. A city-wide year of public art programming, ArtworxTO will kick-off the city’s new Public Art Strategy (2020-2030), at a time when cities everywhere are grappling with how we build and experience public space together.

Timing is everything, as the kids say, and the horrific timing of 2020 these past six months has seen the intertwined crises of the pandemic and the protests force us to confront inequities of all kinds, including those present in public space.

Amidst the private mourning, turmoil and devastation, both public space and public art are currently being radically questioned, disputed and transformed, as we confront the threat of COVID-19 transmission, as well as the long-standing systems of racism and colonialism in this country.

Lack of access, private appropriation and worrisome crowding are all pertinent safety issues. But while public spaces have only just become hazardous to some, Amy Cooper and police forces everywhere have simultaneously underscored how some of us are used to feeling safe in, and entitled to, public space, and many of us aren’t.

That safety and entitlement is constructed in a myriad of ways, and public art has been too often complicit in contributing to the upholding of certain values and ideas and people at the very real expense of others.

This summer, folks across the world have had enough of the commemoration and valorization of oppressive ideologies; they have responded by creating public art through murals, street painting, music, and dancing in the streets, and by redecorating or taking down public monuments.

Meanwhile, here in Toronto, a petition to rename Dundas St. launched by Toronto-based artist Andrew Lochhead has spurred a review led by city manager Chris Murray, which “might ultimately touch all named City streets, parks and facilities, public monuments, and civic awards and honours, potentially leading to a variety of actions (e.g., renaming streets, removing monuments, revoking awards, or reinterpreting any of these).”

As Murray wryly concludes, the city is at a “particularly turbulent moment in its history,” but as we contend with that turbulence, it offers us opportunities to right some wrongs as we address the challenges we’re facing.

After years of criticism of the city’s public art policies, ArtworxTO is attempting to do just that, with its strategy framework stating a commitment to advancing reconciliation in Toronto through Indigenous place-making, and laying out 21 specific actions endorsed by Toronto City Council.

This is a call both to our artists and the work that they plan to make, and to us as audiences and the work that we are willing to support. The strategy’s success relies on us all.

And, full disclosure, as part of my Photo Laureate duties, I’m delighted to serve on the Mayor’s External Advisory Committee for ArtworxTO, because I’m keen to help ensure that success — I want these new public art opportunities to support a diversity of artists and act as a catalyst for meaningful civic engagement for as many Torontonians as possible.

Given that our new public art strategy also embraces the temporary and art-that-is-not-just-large-sculptures, I’m also focused on encouraging our photographers to participate, even if they’ve never made public art before.

There are currently only a handful of photography projects in the city’s collection of nearly 400 works of public art, and photographic art has long had to compete with advertising, editorial and commercial images in public space.

Together with technological limitations on durability, perhaps this is why there are so few permanent photography works in the city. But in this moment of reconfiguring our approach, the timely question is begged: Could a photograph be a monument?

Astutely, I have answered this question in advance for you by sharing the image above, documenting an unforgettable 2017 project by Cree/Saulteaux/Métis artist, Lori Blondeau.

Installed for the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival at Ryerson University, Asiniy Iskwew celebrates and gives homage to Plains Indigenous rock formations, significant ancient sites created for sacred and rite-of-passage ceremonies and for recording battles and histories.

The photographs were seamlessly adhered to the site’s two-billion-year-old boulders, inscribing a narrative of Indigenous resilience into the landscape. They stayed up for just under four months, and I visited as often as I could, to sit in reverence and to marvel.

The word “monument” finds its origins in the Latin verb monere, to remind, to advise, to warn, and I wish Asiniy Iskwew was still up to do all three.

Consider this my own call then, Toronto photographers. Permanent or not, let Blondeau’s work inspire how you tackle Toronto’s Year of Public Art 2021. Let us remind of neglected histories, advise of current injustices and warn of future troubles.

I can’t wait to see what you do.

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