Toronto Landscape Observatory
Principal Investigator: Jane Wolff
West Toronto Railpath
Toronto Biennial of Art, 2022
In continued partnership with Susan Schwartzenberg, this five-week installation and programs series was conceived as a landscape laboratory to share and develop knowledge about the social, cultural, and ecological issues facing Toronto right now. In this interactive exhibition, Indigenous and settler knowledge keepers, artists, scholars, and designers created instruments for observing the environment and led walks and conversations that framed and supported the observation of and dialogue about the changing landscape. All of these projects and programs explored and considered the changing face of Toronto’s historic industrial landscapes. The Observatory was a space for participant engagement, and its content continually changed as visitors contribute their own notes, drawings, and observations to an open vocabulary for environmental advocacy.
Photo credits: Amir Gavriely, 2022. Toronto Policy Atlas by Aaron Hernandez.
Photo credits: Amir Gavriely, 2022. Writer Lorraine Johnson offered guidance to help people make immediate, emotional connections to the flora of the West Toronto Railpath—and to see themselves as part of the natural world.
Photo credits: Amir Gavriely, 2022. The Mobile Observatory cart.
Photo credits: Amir Gavriely, 2022. Musicology and sound studies scholars Sherry Lee and Emily MacCallum led a walk that asked participants to listen to the landscape.
Curators: Jane Wolff and Susan Schwartzenberg
Contributors: James Bird, Luke Garwood, Aaron Hernandez, Lorraine Johnson, Grandmother Jacque Lavallée, Sherry Lee, Emily MacCallum, Alexander Moyle, Joel Robson, Jennifer Wemigwans and Jane Wolff.
Research Assistants: Rebecca Arshawsky, Kiran Khurana, Karolina Lefebvre, Jessica Palmer and Emiley Switzer-Martell, with technical assistance from Amelia Hartin.
Photographer: Amir Gavriely.
Sponsors: This project was made possible by funding from SSHRC and the University of Toronto’s Office of the Vice-president, International.