By Serena Lopez
Placed at the entrance of the exhibit is a 29Rooms sign that guests see as they embark on their journey. (CanCulture/Serena Lopez)
Media company Refinery29 brought their immersive and collaborative art exhibition into Toronto for the first time this September.
For its debut in Canada, 29Rooms was set up as an art park where all inventive dreams can come true, and was a perfect showcase of feminism and activism between Canadian artists, partners, and excited audiences.
Hosted at Queen Elizabeth Theatre in downtown Toronto, each session ran for 2.5 hours to give guests a chance to view what each room had to offer.
Feminism
Audiences were given writing prompts to help brainstorm their own female character that they would like to see on the big screen and were invited to attach their character to the writers room board. (CanCulture/Serena Lopez)
Throughout all of the rooms, certain themes were presented. This room in particular showcased the extreme creativity of the event and the need for a feminist perspective.
Designed in collaboration with Shatterbox — a series of short films created by female storytellers — this room, appropriately called "Now Casting: Female Storytellers,” included a faux movie set inspired by the lack of female representation in the film industry to shine a light on women and voice a female perspective in Hollywood.
In this room, guests were given a notepad to write into existence their own lead female movie characters as part of the writers room experience. Viewers got to decide their character’s passions, motivations, and goals to be added to a vision board.
The designer of this exhibit set up what is meant to be a mosaic of black female culture. Guests had the opportunity to have their fortunes read in an Ancient Egyptian practice. (CanCulture/Serena Lopez)
While taking a stroll across the art park, guests would find an installation, which, at first glance, looked like a fairytale version of the aesthetics exhibited in Beyonce’s “Homecoming” Coachella performance. This room — called “A Long Line of Queendom” — was a celebration of all black women and black empowerment across the world.
The room was brought to audiences by Refinery29’s Unbothered platform — an online community specifically dedicated to Black millennial women and their stories.
The exhibit gives the viewer a glimpse into the cultural and historical belongings which are a part of and are synonymous with black culture. Included are displays of bamboo earrings, golden bonnets, and a powerful encapsulating display bringing to light particular aspects of the black female experience.
Nostalgia
A large fridge of milk and cookies that depicts a flowing carton of milk straight into the glass. This installation was accompanied by a milk carton that had made sounds for audiences to create their own musical beats. (CanCulture/Serena Lopez)
Got milk? This room takes the audience on a trip down memory lane to the simple times where a big glass of milk and chocolate chip cookies were relied on for an adequate calcium intake. In this showcase, the Dairy Farmers of Ontario have remodelled and resized their #whatcantmilkdo campaign — which educates Canadians about all the benefits of milk — to recreate those nostalgic feelings by building a room with a large white glass of milk made out of milk cartons and a gigantic fridge with cookies.
Canadian Influence
The “Be You” wall showcasing the exquisite portrayal of a retro-dance party. (CanCulture/Serena Lopez)
As an art gallery would feel empty without the sound of music, Toronto-based DJ, Bambii, brings the party to a room that shares similarities with a high school formal.
The room, entitled “Dance Break,” was set up as a party within an intimate myriad of streamers, neon-light signs, and booming bass beats. It came together to create an atmosphere that felt so wholesome and personal that guests may have contemplated dancing as if nobody was watching.
Canadian artist, Hanski, a.k.a Hannah Epstein, collaborated with 29Rooms to create an interactive two-sided piece that viewers can actually spin like a coin.
(CanCulture/Serena Lopez)
In a phone interview with CanCulture, Hanski described her work overall as being, “lowbrow, folk-craft, that’s presented in a high art context.”
The use of traditional rug-techniques in her work is inspired in part by her East Coast upbringing in Halifax.
"It wouldn’t have been enough just to have a large 3-D structure in an art-park space and not have it be interactive,” said Hanski.
The piece represents the notion of choice and the different ways in which one decision can create a multitude of possibilities.
From Covergirl’s “Lash” playground to Shoppers Drug Mart’s all-pink workshop class, outside-the-box ideas came together to create a selfie-utopia that were both thought provoking and modernistic.
Other rooms included giant vending machines where real people cooked food in a slot where guests could see it being made, a mock Parisian diner decked out with golden french baguettes and macarons and a pilates room to sweat it all out and rid any guilt of giving into the temptations.
The 29Rooms: Expand Your Reality tour is an experience that encapsulates the magic that comes from collaboration in art and design. It had something for everyone — both artists and art appreciators alike — and also didn’t compromise on the photos for Instagram opportunities.
The 29Rooms tour stop in Toronto commenced from Sept 26 to Oct 6. For those that are in for an adventure, the event will be heading next to Washington D.C. from Oct 18 to Oct 27, Los Angeles from Nov 8 to Nov 17, and New York from Dec 6 to Dec 15.