Photo Essay: The meanings behind Canadian street art

What stories lie just behind the spray-painted brick or airbrushed stucco?

By: Olivia Wiens

Photos by: Haley Sengsavanh, Kinza Zafar, Olivia Wiens

While many people turn to galleries and museums to enjoy stunning art pieces, fantastic artwork can be found on many streets in Canada.

From small graffiti scratches in the back alleys of prairie towns to the towering murals overlooking the Toronto skyline, street art is a valuable part of Canadian culture. It reminds us that beauty and art can be created out of anything. And while the free viewing is a perk to public street art, it also showcases pieces of our history that might otherwise be forgotten. 

Let’s travel across Canada and see the street art each place has to offer.

“The Matriarch”, created by Skwxwú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation) artist Siobhan Joseph and her team, is located in Vancouver on the side of Slim’s BBQ. (Haley Sengsavanh/CanCulture)

“The Matriarch” was created for the Vancouver Mural Festival in 2019 and was inspired by artist Siobhan Joseph’s late mother, who was the matriarch of the family. Her mother is dressed in red to honour Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and is standing amid a lush natural landscape with the sea and mountains.

Displaying such a prominent issue on the side of a building creates an active reminder of the social injustice that Indigenous women face every day. It helps to form a deeper impact in the daily lives of those simply driving by the colourful mural.

Painted on the side of The Slice, a bar in Lethbridge, Alta., in 2007, this mural was created to help attract customers to the restaurant’s growing business. (Olivia Wiens/CanCulture)

Artists Ryan Smitham and Daniel Audet tag-teamed this mural to help broaden the live music scene in their small city. The woman depicted is Shaela Miller, a local singer who has played at The Slice many times since the painting was created. Street art like this mural helps depict pride and appreciation for locals who shape the city they are from.

Located on the side of the Ukrainian Co-op in Regina, Jez Brenwold’s aerosol piece is meant to symbolize Ukrainian culture within Saskatchewan. (Olivia Wiens/CanCulture)

Jez Brenwold’s floral work wraps around the entire building, but the bordered wheat field is the focal point of the piece and highlights the beauty of the Saskatchewan prairies. 

Street art like this allows the artist to share their pride and passion for their culture with an entire city. As this mural lines a main road in Regina, countless people driving by get to appreciate Ukrainian culture in their own province.

This airbrush mural, created by Troy Brooks and Christiano De Araujo in 2014, is a tribute to the queer bathhouse raids that occurred in Toronto in 1981. (Kinza Zafar/CanCulture)

“The Bathhouse Raids” was the largest of 11 murals created for the Church Street Mural Project, a project coordinated with WorldPride, which Toronto hosted in 2014.

The piece acts as a reminder of the struggles that queer people faced in the 1980s, as well as the struggles that they still face today. However, “The Bathhouse Raids” also symbolizes a significant turning point for Toronto’s 2SLGBTQIA+ community, as the raids that occurred in 1981 sparked many human rights and police brutality protests.

Elicser Elliott has been spreading his art in Toronto’s Queen West neighbourhood since the 1990s. This recent piece of soft figures and organic shapes is for those who construct warmth and connection within their communities. (Kinza Zafar/CanCulture)

Elicser Elliott is one of Toronto’s most notable graffiti artists. Some of his most recent works have showcased his appreciation for COVID-19 frontline workers and his passion for the Black Lives Matter movement. 

Oliver Cuoto, owner of The Bee Shop on Bloor St. West in Toronto, provided this conceptual design to artist Slavka Kolesar, who spent the month of July 2020 making their collective dream come to life on the side of Cuoto’s store. (Kinza Zafar/CanCulture)

This original mural depicting the world of honeybees is a collaboration between a shopkeeper, Oliver Cuoto, and an artist, Slavka Kolesar. While illustrating motifs of Mother Earth and the life cycles of honeybees, Kolesar also reflects the ever-existing human-nature relationship. The large-scale street art acts as a constant reminder to passersby that the nature around them desires respect from humankind.

When people are exposed to significant, and often large, pieces of art in their daily lives, the meaning behind those pieces becomes more and more evident. Street art sparks conversations about the issues surrounding each work, whether that be current social justice issues or moments in history that have shaped the country. Ultimately, visible, accessible and meaningful art forms like these not only allow bystanders to appreciate them, but also reminds them that art is a means of fighting for what you believe in. 

Street art can be found in every corner of Toronto, and ArtWorxTO has collected over 1,500 pieces of street art as part of “Toronto’s Year of Public Art 2021-22”. To start exploring the beautiful creations made by Canadian artists, check out their Artworks Map, which lays out murals, architecture, sculptures and so much more for the public to enjoy.

How 2 Toronto projects are creating dialogue about BIPOC art and communities

BIPOC communities are making their mark on Toronto’s growing art scene — and they’re just getting started

By: Kayla Higgins

Initiative creator Zayn Ojoawo delivering land remarks at the beginning of ArtWorxTO’s “Stolen People, Stolen Land” on Oct. 6, 2021. (Kayla Higgins/CanCulture)

A collaborative initiative in Toronto is hosting events and projects to highlight art created by young Black and Indigenous artists.

ArtWorxTO’s “Stolen People, Stolen Land” is a series of interconnected films and poems from exclusively Black and Indigenous Toronto-based youth, aiming to present similarities between experiences and stories of diaspora, grief and survival.

Taking place over the course of four days at the Artscape Daniels Spectrum, the project was done in collaboration with the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre (CFMDC) after a callout to Toronto-based artists on Facebook.

The project was funded as part of ArtWorxTO's Year of Public Art 2021-22, as "an opportunity for residents across the city to learn more about the vibrant and diverse public art in our city and the talented artists who have created it," said Mayor John Tory during the launch of the city-wide project in September.

The young creatives were paired with a mentor, who worked together on the project over the course of a year. Each film was approximately two to five minutes long with stylistic choices ranging from animation to short, poignant clips. Their poetry guided their films through the stories they chose.

"We took short films, ideally with no dialogue, created by Black and Indigenous filmmakers and paired them with our youth poets," said Zayn Ojoawo, creator and artistic director of “Stolen People, Stolen Land.”  

Ojoawo found the Facebook callout with less than a week to the deadline and was inspired to apply. Time management and organization were challenges for Ojoawo, but in the end, it was worth it. “It was so fulfilling and I'm very proud of the way everything turned out."

Ojoawo hopes that programs such as these offer safe spaces and more nuanced conversations around colonial violence and shared trauma. "Creating change and dialogue around these topics, even just in and around Toronto, is a great place to start."

There are multiple initiatives in Toronto that are dedicated to fostering and promoting BIPOC identity through art, including Akin Collective: a Toronto-based arts organization run by a small team of artists that provides creative studio space for young people, as well as arts-based programming.

The Akin Studio Program is one of many opportunities offered by the collective that creates space for applicants that are art practitioners, curators and writers to lease shared studio space. Selected artists are then eligible to participate in four seasonal public “Open Studio” events that include opportunities to present workshops or artist talks. 

"A lot of the work that I do is an invitation and an exchange," said Yasmeen Nematt Alla, an installation and sculpture-based artist and marketing specialist at Akin. "How do we ask people to tell us about their loneliness and have them feel safe and comfortable to brandish that sort of information to us in the first place?"

Nematt Alla said that building an unapologetic space for BIPOC communities to exist in is the first step forward. "Recognizing that in order to move towards creating care-based communities is the first step; we need space by us, for us,” she said. “We have to believe in each other.”

Toronto's emerging artists are drawing their inspiration from the city

These young artists are helping the city recover from the impacts of the pandemic

By: Teresa Valenton

The arts and culture scene in Toronto has grown rapidly through a collective search for local representation. While searching for local talents, ArtWorxTO was created to spotlight artists that reflect the cultural vibrancy of the city.

As the city of Toronto works together with local artists and institutions, they hope to play a key role in artistic recovery. In fact, many of the artists that have been featured on ArtWorxTO have drawn inspiration from the city into their own works.

As Toronto works to economically recover from the past year, emerging artists have become a point of interest. Through ArtWorxTO’s 52-week spotlight on emerging artists programs, they seek to uplift local voices. As they play a role to keep communities vibrant, the impacts are everlasting.

Isabelle Fong, also known as @whenthecity on Instagram, an emerging Toronto-based musician and one of ArtWorxTO’s spotlighted artists, finds that Toronto has shaped her work in numerous ways. Through her local approach to music, she finds beauty within her everyday experiences in the city.

(Courtesy of Isabelle Fong)

“I remember when I was younger, my favourite memories of going to the subway were just hearing the jazz that was going on there,” Fong says. “Whether it’s coming from the radio on the TTC or someone who’s just playing there.”  

Fong’s experiences are one of many, but they reflect a collective experience that most Toronto-based artists seem to have.

Not only has Toronto changed the lives of emerging artists, but it has created safe communities for individuals to freely express themselves. Through the diverse populations living in Toronto, artists are guaranteed to identify with others.

Alten Wilmot, a theatre and dance artist in Toronto and another one of ArtWorxTO’s spotlighted artists, compares his different experiences living in the city to his time in Kitchener-Waterloo.

“I feel there is a sense of community and belonging. That was a shock for me when I moved here,” Wilmot said.

Whether it be the city itself, or the individuals within it, local artists like Fong continue to draw inspiration from their own experiences.

“Toronto is an amazing city that I feel like there’s something for everyone. I love walking around downtown, early mornings, late nights,” she says. “What’s so amazing is that it’s constantly changing.”

Toronto has become a hub for creators to share and connect with each other's stories.

“There’s so many stories that opened up my own personal stories, which then I’m able to share,” Wilmot said. “I think the amount of art in Toronto, the amount of culture in Toronto, only inspires me more to contribute to that.”

(Courtesy of Alten Wilmot)

Wilmot particularly highlights the collective creative atmosphere in Toronto that he says is like “his fuel,” and one that he believes only exists in the city.  

Fong’s approach to her creative process centres around Toronto, but also looks outwards towards individual experiences. In order to grow her audience, she hopes to make music that connects with those beyond the city.

“I want everyone to look at it from their own point of view. There’s absolutely no correct answer,” said Fong. “However they interpret it in my eyes would be correct.”

On the other hand, Wilmot looks beyond the lives of the individuals he encounters.

“When I talk about the people of Toronto inspiring me, even just witnessing them, there’s always these people for me that just tend to glow,” said Wilmot. “There’s something in there that I admire and feel is missing for me or just really important to me.”

Artists such as Fong and Wilmot display a greater message beyond their artistic motives: they prove that Toronto has the ability to inspire. 

While communities adjust themselves to the ever-changing situation of the pandemic, the artistic drive to create new spaces never changes.

Although creative processes may differ, artists are always finding new ways to incorporate the city. Wilmot and Fong demonstrate the willingness to prevail in expansive spaces.