12 Art Installations to Visit at Church-Wellesley

Public art you must see along Church-Wellesley’s pedestrianized neighbourhood

By Jessica Mazze

Photo Credit: Wellesley Pride TTC Installation by Jieun Kim, Photo by Samarika Dhiman 

This feature is part of Fieldnotes, a public art blog series by STEPS that promotes inclusive and innovative public art through interviews, storytelling, case studies, and knowledge sharing.

Toronto’s Church-Wellesley neighbourhood is a vibrant community that is rich in history and activism. While many frequent the village for its club scene, drag bars, or made it their home, upon your very first visit, you will find yourself surrounded by art, preserving the collective memory of the neighbourhood. 

At STEPS, we have previously examined the importance of queer placemaking, and the rise of the ‘gaybourhood’ in cities across North America. Church-Wellesley has gone by many names over the years, while it remains Toronto’s friendliest 2SLGBTQIA+ neighbourhood, it is often referred to as the ‘village’ to those within and around the community. 

Like many queer urban enclaves, Church-Wellesley was formed through the resistance of queer and trans activists. Though the community is no stranger to the rising cost of living and gentrification, it remains a home to many. 

This summer, Church-Wellesley is conducting a pilot project, thanks in part to the City of Toronto. From Wellesley St. E to Alexander, these two blocks will become fully pedestrianized between June 19th and August 21st. Chris Moise, city councillor for Toronto Centre, plans to partner with community organizations to curate fun activities, placing a call out for innovative placemaking and street beautification ideas. 

This Fieldnotes blog will take you on a walking tour of the public art that exists in the Church-Wellesley neighbourhood. Many of the installations are from the Church Street Mural project, an art series co-curated by Dr. Syrus Marcus Ware and James Fowler.

We sat down with Syrus to discuss how the Church Street Mural project came to be and its long-term impact on the community. As well, we interviewed artists who worked on the murals to learn more about the design, consultation and community process that came with creating their art pieces.

You can follow along with our downloadable map below and visit all 12 art installations for your next visit to the Village!

1. March of the Dragon by Jieun Kim

Photo Credit: Wellesley Pride TTC Installation by Jieun Kim, Photo by Tone Bailey

If you’re coming to the downtown core, there is a likely chance that you are taking the TTC to get to the Village, which is also the first stop on your walking tour, the eclectic Wellesley Station. 

Last year, Councillor Chris Moise championed and garnered the support of City Council to fund this installation.

STEPS, along with community partners of the TTC, Church and Wellesley Village BIA, Pride Toronto, and the Church Wellesley Neighbourhood Association, together played an instrumental role in the design development as part of their efforts to create 2SLGBTQIA+ community-supportive spaces through public art. If you stand under the awning of Wellesley Station, you will see coloured clouds engraved on the roof.

Walk out from underneath the awning, and be amazed by March of the Dragon, designed and installed by Jieun Kim, a multidisciplinary artist primarily working in public art, illustration and mural-making. 

“March of the Dragon was inspired by its location at Wellesley Station,” says Kim when asked about the inspiration behind the mural. “[It is] a gateway to the Village, and my desire to create an artwork that celebrates the diversity, inclusion, and vibrant spirit that the Church and Wellesley community represents.”

Kim has worked on various projects with STEPS. The mural began as a digital art illustration, which helped with the scalability of this mural project, ensuring that the images can be adapted across different formats and mediums. Kim then produced a large-scale vinyl installation that is wrapped around the station awning.

“The community elements in the installation were designed to capture the essence of the neighbourhood where the work resides while reflecting the values and message I hope to share,” says Kim. 

In collaboration with Chris Moise, the artwork from March of the Dragon will be distributed as fans for Pride 2026, allowing recipients to have a piece of Kim’s artwork with them during the parade. Additionally, STEPS is working with the TTC to realize a public art project within Wellesley Station. Be sure to keep an eye out for STEPS’ new project and snap a picture with it!

The next stop on your visit will be the first mural of the Church Street project series. From the station, we walk east towards 66 Wellesley Street, visiting a corner called Dapper Lane, a fitting name for what lies behind this unassuming laneway. 

2. Pin Button Pride by William Craddock

Photo Credit: Pin Button Pride Installation by William Craddock, Photo by Tone Bailey

After making your way out of Wellesley Station, you’ll head straight towards the intersection at Church, where you will first encounter one of the 12 public art installations from the Church Street Mural Project. Just around the trees, you will see the first button, “I’m One Too.”

This mural was designed by William Craddock, the artist for the Pin Button Pride mural. Buttons play a huge part in the history of queer activism, made by community members and worn at protests, queer festivals and other initiatives that reflect the diversity of the community, and yet, the shared struggle that comes with being at the intersection of multiple identities: renegotiating your place within a community.

The project was first dreamt up in a meeting organized by Kristyn Wong-Tam, who at the time, was a rookie councillor for Ward 27. James Fowler had been in attendance during these early meetings and was inspired to create a mural series that would preserve the community’s collective history and identity.

“He [James] was sort of dreaming into a way of capturing our stories, a way of making sure that what had happened in the village would stay and would be something that would last,” says Syrus Marcus Ware, activist, artist and scholar. 

Ware’s artistic practice is rooted in speculative fiction, with a focus on Black activist culture and building beautiful futures that are rooted in survival. As a co-curator of the Church Street Mural project, we sat down with Syrus to learn more about the creation of the mural project and the consultation process that relied heavily on community input.

“We were able to create quite an amazing thing that now lives on” Ware recounts in his interview. “You’re walking down Wellesley Street, and you see Will Craddock’s mural that says ‘I’m one too”, ‘Gays live here’, ‘Queers of African Descent.’ You come into the village, you see that, and you’re like “oh, yeah, I’m welcomed here.’”

3. Kiss and Tell by Natalie Wood

Photo Credit: Kiss and Tell Installation by Jieun Kim, Photo by Tone Bailey

Opposite of Craddock’s pin button mural, you’ll come across four different queer couples kissing on the left wall of Butterland’s mural. Designed and created by Natalie Wood, this mural was modelled after a political art campaign by Gran Fury, an AIDS artist collective that created the Kissing Doesn’t Kill: Greed and Indifference Do posters that were produced in the late 80s, to protest against inaction during the ongoing AIDS epidemic.

“Two of the people who are kissing in it are Annette Clough and Krin Zook,” explains Ware. Both Annette and Krin were responsible for founding the Lesbian Conception Conspiracy, creating an informal gathering and advocacy group for lesbians who wanted to become parents, during a time when many had no legal recognition for parenthood. 

“Krin ended up passing away from cancer, but it is a moment captured in time of them kissing together,” explains Ware, who included the piece in his book, Marvellous Grounds and Queering Urban Justice. It is moments like these, when love, partnership and advocacy come together, immortalized for passersby crossing Dapper Lane.

4. UltraChurch, 50 VIP Party People 1948-2014 by Lily Butterland

Photo Credit: UltraChurch VIP Party People, 1948-2014 by Lily Butterland, Courtesy of Syrus Marcus Ware’s website

There’s a reason Dapper Lane received its name, as there is more than just one mural that exists. As you walk down Dapper Lane, you will find yourself face-to-face with figures from the queer scene and ballroom scene. Artist Lily Butterland reimagines figures who were prominent in Toronto’s party scene, marrying the past and what was then-present.

Butterland’s mural captures a story that is often ‘unsung’, according to Ware, which came at a time “where people were trying to disavow partying and have respectability politics.” 

Although the current iteration of the mural has seen the test of time, it is still worth visiting to not only pay homage to, but to appreciate the existence of this art while it is still here. A recent motion proposed by a developer has placed the site of these three murals at risk. You’ll even see art tagged by Jieun Kim (March of the Dragon artist) and other local artists along the side walls of Dapper Lane.

5. Intersections by Meera Sethi

Photo Credit: Intersections Installation by Meera Sethi, Photo by Tone Bailey

By now, you’ve arrived at Church Street, the very intersection that makes up Church-Wellesley. Along the south wall of 552 Church, you’ll find Meera Sethi’s mural Intersections. This was the first mural project for Sethi, a multidisciplinary artist whose references draw from textile histories across South Asia and its diasporas. 

“I wanted to think about the presence of queer and trans South Asian people and organizations and parties in that area,” explains Sethi. “How can I kind of foreground this idea that we’re all made up of these different intersections?” Sethi says. 

The mural is four storeys tall: 37 feet high and 33 feet wide. The brightly coloured paint is meant to reflect and honour the presence of queer South Asian and Desi community members in Toronto’s gay village. The gold edging, which Sethi used in her studio practice, required heat to achieve the metallic sheen it still has today. 

“I actually had to get a hair dryer and find a way to plug that in with an extension cord and heat all of the gold to create this like metallic sheen, so it was quite an involved process,” Sethi explains.

A moment that brought the mural to life includes a spontaneous protest just months after Sethi installed the mural in the fall of 2013, in what was known as the global day of rage.

“It felt like it became a living community site, where people from the community claimed that intersection as their own at that moment,” says Sethi. 

 “It was really incredible and beautiful for me to just see that a mural on the wall could actually create a living location where people could feel like they belonged, and we could all claim our belonging to the gay village, to Church and Wellesley.”

6. Platinum China Anniversary by Alexa Hatanaka and Patrick Thompson

Photo Credit: Platinum China Anniversary Installation by Alexa Hatanaka and Patrick Thompson, Courtesy of Syrus Marcus Ware’s website

To look at this mural, you’re gonna need to cross the street at Wellesley and Church and walk up until you are just in front of the 519, a community hub and the site of our next mural.

Platinum China Anniversary by Alexa Hatanaka and Patrick Thompson takes its inspiration from The Body Politic, one of the first openly gay Canadian magazines that published monthly from 1971 to 1987. According to the Canadian Encyclopedia, the Body Politic was a crucial part in the lesbian and gay movement here in Canada and was crucial in reporting on the Bathhouse raids, but was also a publication to report and write about the AIDS epidemic.

Hatanaka and Thompson decided to create a mural piece that came from advertisements readers would buy to celebrate anniversaries with their partners, the few ways queer partners could publicly celebrate and validate their relationships

“That was an ad on the long side of the newspaper, so that, when you turned the page, it said something like “John loves so and so, happy anniversary,” so they created something that said “Happy anniversary, Alex and Pat,” which was sort of gender-neutral,” explains Ware.

According to Ware, part of the challenge that came with creating this mural was finding a building long enough to recreate just how long and narrow the advertisement was in the Body Politic. While their initial idea was not doable, the team agreed upon painting the mural on the north-facing wall of 552 Church St.

The best way to view the anniversary mural is to cross the street and walk towards the 519 building.

7. LGBTQ+ History & Community by John Kuna and Christiano de Araujo

Photo Credit: LGBTQ+ History installation by John Kuna, Photos by John Kuna

The 519 is the community centre to Church-Wellesley, celebrating 50 years in the community as of 2026. On the north-facing wall along Church, another mural dedicated to 2SLGBTQ+. 

“What I like about murals is that it makes the invisible, visible, especially if the murals have some historical context” says John Kuna, who is the original designer and artist of the 519 mural.

“I wanted to take something that creates a dimensional impact from using the actual images that invoke the history of where the neighbourhood was, and where it is now,” explains Kuna. He had gone on to reach out to several archival groups to receive materials to help create the design.

“Some of the people that are in the middle of the mural are actual people from the neighbourhood,” He explains further. This piece was one of two projects painted by the same artist, Christiano de Araujo, who had finished the mural just hours before Toronto hosted World Pride in 2014. However, Kuna is the one who created the concept of the mural and included the many different components of 2SLGBTQ+ in his design process.

“It was an integrated kind of piece, like a whisper to people passing by, of something that was there,” Kuna reflects.  

8. The Dandelions: Queer and Trans* Performers in the Wind  by Nadijah Robertson and Elicser

Photo Credit: Dandelions in the Wind installation by Nadijah Robertson and Elicser, Courtesy of Syrus Marcus Ware’s website

As you walk down Church Street, you’ll be heading toward an iconic building known by many partygoers. Crews & Tangos is the quintessential drag bar in the middle of the neighbourhood, and has most recently become a point of contention between a developer group that plans to take down the building to create a condo. 

Although the community has continuously pushed back against the redevelopment of the building, the future of the bar is still up in the air, just like three other mural sites included in the Church Street Mural project. 

When reflecting on the project, co-curator Ware reflects on the pride that comes with accomplishing a project and that the team had told complex stories about the Village back in 2012. 

“It was quite a radical thing to talk about QTBIPOC leadership in the village,” explains Ware. “There has been a narrative that has erased some of those stories. For this project in 2012 to have told the story of Desh Pradesh, or trans sex workers, or to tell the story of Jackie Shane.”

Jackie Shane was a transfeminine musician and singer who was renowned for influencing the Toronto Sound, making her a pioneer in the R&B scene in the 1960s. Her likeness is captured along the side of Crews & Tangos, along with many other trans women and drag queens who were often forgotten about within the community’s history

“There were these complex stories; it wasn’t just the same stories that we were used to hearing, and I think that was a great thing,” says Ware.

9. Lupus Inter Homo by Rocky Lawrence Green

Photo Credit: Lupus inter Homo by Rocky Lawrence Green, Photo by Tone Bailey

By now, you’re probably thirsty or hungry from all the walking you have been doing. O’Grady’s pub is the next stop on the tour, home to DJ sets and drag shows. If you happen to sit on their patio, look up to their second floor, where the next mural lies.

Lupus inter Homo was created by artist Rocky Lawrence Green, a painter who is as elusive as the artwork. If you’re under the O’Grady’s patio, it might take you a minute or two to find this mural. There are two portraits installed on the second floor of O’Grady’s, one with an old man sitting on the sidewalk with a dog, an apt name for the portrait. The next panel is a figure sitting in front of a yellow brick wall.

It is unclear as to the significance of this portrait. Is it that of a queer elder, one who has survived through so much? The question remains unanswered, though many can enjoy this mural as they dine or walk to our final three stops.

10. The Bathhouse Raids by Troy Brooks and Christiano De Araujo

Photo Credit: Bathhouse Raids Installation by Troy Brooks and Christiano de Araujo, Photos by Christiano de Araujo

In 1981, Toronto police conducted the largest raid into Toronto bathhouses, publicly exposing 250 gay men for ‘illicit activities within an illegal establishment. As a result, Toronto’s 2SLGBTQIA+ community came out in droves to protest against this raid and to fight for better protections and rights. This mural captures the first of many protests that occurred, which would then eventually lead to becoming what we know today as Pride.

The Bathhouse Raids was another collaborative mural between Christiano De Araujo, a Toronto-based muralist, sculptor and founder of Toronto Artists Studio, and Troy Brooks, a canvas artist known internationally for his painting and portraiture of glamorous women. Although Brooks came up with the concept of the Madonna-like figure, De Araujo was the primary painter, due to his extensive experience on mural painting, and the speed at which he conducts his craft. 

“The lady is representing visibility and power, because the bathhouse raids were suppressing the gay community, and then they came out strong as a phoenix,” explains De Araujo. While Brook’s iconic figure stretches throughout the height of the mural, behind it is the silhouette of two cowboys holding hands, standing in front of a Toronto Police Services car from the 1980s, along with a group of protestors, an homage to the previous mural that was once painted along the building.

The building, formerly known as the Marquis of Granby, has a long and sordid history in the Village. Before it became the Marquis, this building was home to the oldest gay bar in Toronto, The Barn & Stables. On the side of the bar there used to be a mural with two cowboys staring off into the sunset of a country range. 

“The gay village loved that mural,”  De Araujo recalls. “[This] was the very first gay bar back in the 70s, and they had the mural there too, so it’s kind of a really iconic landmark for the community.”

While only 10 percent of the mural remained when De Araujo first started working on the project, he knew there would be pushback from the community. De Araujo used his intuition as an artist to include the cowboys in the new iteration. “When I was painting the mural, a lot of people were passing by, and they were like “Oh my god, you brought the cowboys back.” 

Like Sethi’s mural, the Bathhouse Raids mural is the site of major redevelopment for a condo. According to BlogTO, developer Fitzrovia bought the land beside the building to create a 39-storey condo, creating 319 rentals for the city. Due to the proposed site having the lobby entrance through the wall where the bathhouse mural exists, the wall will eventually come down, and with it, the art piece.

Despite the bleak reality, Fitzrovia has reached out to De Araujo in finding a way to restore and create a new mural for Fitzrovia’s lobby. Although this was back in 2021, condo development has slowed considerably in Toronto for the last few years, so it is unclear when development will begin. De Araujo plans to create a brand new mural with Fitzrovia, while keeping elements of the bathhouse raids mural and the iconic cowboys.

“I haven’t designed the new mural yet, but my intention is to create a contemporary piece that represents where the LGBTQ+ community is today in Toronto,” De Araujo says. “In a way, I envision the future mural as a reflection of the community’s past, present, and perhaps even a glimpse into its future.” 

11. Love makes community by Alex Flores

Photo Credit: Love makes community Installation by Alex Flores, Photo by Tone Bailey

One of the final stops before you finish your walking tour of the Village is right along Church and Carlton. Alex Flores’ mural Love Makes Community is wrapped around 389 Church, a women’s-only building under the Toronto Community Housing (TCH).

According to the Church Street Mural blog, Flores has extensive mural and multimedia experience and was inspired by mural work in San Francisco. The mural contains many feminine motifs, with flowers and fish flowing over the awning of the building entrance.

Flores had consulted the tenants on what they wanted to be included in the design process, and had agreed upon adding fish to the mural rather than the proposed whales that Flores had intended to include. 

Some of the challenges that came with creating this mural were the backlash from a few tenants who were not thrilled with the idea of the mural and its connection to the village. 

“There were some people in the building who came out and said some homophobic things and said that they weren’t queer and they didn’t want queer things on the outside of their building,” explains Ware. Part of the process in this mural project included protecting the artists and ensuring that they were safe while painting.

“That impacted the way that we took on caring for each other while we did the project. How do we make sure that we keep us safe while we do this?” Ware reflects.

12. ELLA by Red Dress Productions

Photo Credit: ELLA Installation by Red Dress Productions, Photo by Tone Bailey

The last mural in this walking tour is just opposite of Flores. Meet ELLA, a 10-foot mosaic just off the side of 389 Church. ELLA stands tall, defiant and underneath the protection of a pink umbrella, with her fist raised

ELLA is a homage to trans sex workers in the community, created by Anna Camilleri and Triston Liston, co-founders of the art production company, Red Dress Productions.

Camilleri and Liston designed by first cutting out and sketching their design using wood. The duo used thousands of colour-coordinated tiles to bring ELLA, and the history of trans women to light.

While the art lives on, the future of Church-Wellesley is constantly ever-changing. While gentrification threatens to change the very fabric of the neighbourhood, and the art that exists, it is important to appreciate what it represents and protects.

“We can world-build and create anything we want together,” Ware says. “The reaction and response to systemic oppression has always created resistance and revolutionary conditions where magic can happen.”

While the Village may be changing through time and through gentrification, art and activism can go hand in hand in helping a community reimagine a safer future. It’s not the location of the village that matters, but the possibility of co-creating a safer future, to interrogate what that will look like, where it will exist and what do individuals need to do in order to achieve it?

“In order to get there, we need artists now; we need activists now to really help people to make that kind of imaginative leap to a freer future,” says Ware, “It’s the little everyday choices that we make that just start to ensure that we’re living, you know, towards the future.”

About the Writer

Jessica Mazze (she/her) is a Toronto-based writer completing her master’s at Toronto Metropolitan University. Her research interests lie at the intersection of technology, community engagement and its influence on media systems. As the Cultural Content Writer for STEPS Public Art for the Summer of 2026, Jessica looks forward to connecting and sharing the work of artists across the city.