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2023 CreateSpace Public Art Forum
Location: Participants, facilitators and keynote speakers gathered from across Canada, including New Brunswick (Riverview, Fredericton), Ontario (Pickering, Richmond Hill, Thornhill, London, Toronto, Brampton, Woodbridge, Orton, Windsor, Thorald, Mississauga), Alberta (Edmonton, Medicine Hat, Lethbridge, Sherwood Park, Calgary, Siksika), Yukon Territory (Whitehorse, Dawson City), Quebec (Longueuil, Montreal, Matapedia), Manitoba (Winnipeg), Nova Scotia (Middlesackville), British Columbia (Sechelt, Prince George, Vancouver, Port Coquitlam), Saskatchewan (Saskatoon, Regina)
Year: 2023
Artists: Mael’Sir, Ra’anaa Yaminah, Taylor Webb, Nadia Mariyan, MaKaydin Jackson, Marcella França, Tish, Leaf
Forum Facilitators: Anna Jane McIntyre, Adriana Alarcón, Laara Cerman, Eduardo Aquino, Queen Kukoyi, Nuff, Adrian Stimson, Tiffany Shaw, Alejandro Romero, Ruth del Fresno-Guillem, Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan (Keynote Speakers)
Services: Artist Capacity Building
About the CreateSpace Public Art Forum
The 2023 CreateSpace Public Art Forum is a digital forum that virtually convened 54 participants who identify as Black, Indigenous (First Nations, Inuit and Métis), racialized, rural and/or youth with disabilities and between the ages of 18-25. This forum fostered connections, built understanding across geographies and cultures, and provided emerging equity-seeking participants with the skills, relationships and support needed to develop public art practices.
Through this program, participants:
- Watched pre-recorded online workshops and a live keynote by public art facilitators and artists
- Engaged with peers through the community Discord
- Attended one-on-one studio visits with established public artists
- Created visual public art responses and received feedback during the studio visits
“As someone who hadn’t worked much within the realm of public art, this residency was an amazing introduction to different professional artists in the field and to their artistic processes.”
– Nadia Mariyan, 2023 Forum Artist Participant
Terms of Reference Details
CreateSpace Public Art Forum participants were provided with three (3) Terms of Reference documents to choose from: 525 John St (Burlington, Ontario), Mount Royal Park (Montreal, Quebec), and St. Vital Park (Winnipeg, Manitoba).
A Terms of Reference document acts as a call for submissions. When creating their public art concepts, participants considered the space and created a public artwork unique to that space. Each document highlighted a different location from across Canada and provided images, a brief history of the area, the project goals and design considerations.
Mount Royal Park (Montreal, Quebec)
Participants who chose this term of reference had the challenge of activating and animating Mount Royal Park with a unique and visually interesting public art piece. Design considerations included:
- Creating a sculptural and/or architectural piece that is 3D in design and viewable from all angles
- No larger than 10 x 10 feet
- Geological history of Mount Royal and the interaction between the land and inhabitants of the park and surrounding areas
- Materials that are lasting and durable to accommodate the weather conditions in Montreal
“The artist talks and resources that were provided were very insightful and I feel equipped for future work in the public art sphere.”
– Taylor Webb, 2023 Forum Artist Participant
Artistic Responses
Hover over the image and click the arrow to see the artwork and meet the artist behind each project! Read the accompanying artist statement and artist bio below the artwork. All credits and image rights go to the artists who participated in the forum.
Gasp-Easy by Mael’Sir
Artist Statement
Gasp-Easy speaks of the local grounds. As a triangular meeting between the three main cultures of the Gaspésie region, this art-piece of wooden letters embedded in pottery made from local material (cedar trees and clay from a surrounding river), spells haïkus describing anglophone, francophone and first nation (Migma) culture.
Artist Bio
Mael’Sir is a bilingual slam poetry artist with more than a decade of experience as a master of ceremonies, coach and performer, from Toronto to Moncton and even all the way to Paris. Proud to participate in the CreateSpace Public Art Forum, he also recently produced his first movie: Slambahia.
Liberation in Our Lifetime by Ra’anaa Yaminah
Artist Statement
The prison industrial complex is a harmful system that disproportionately affects members of marginalized and disenfranchised communities. Liberation in our Lifetime is a commentary on the ways in which collectively we can abolish these systems, and how unified we can liberate ourselves from white supremacist institutions for a holistic and happier tomorrow.
Artist Bio
A cultural curator and visual activist, Ra’anaa Yaminah has facilitated and collaborated in numerous Afrocentric endeavours in their community. Co-founder and Chair of Black Lives Matter Sudbury, and Installation Coordinator for Up Here: Urban Arts Festival, Ra’anaa explores the intersection of arts and activism in their personal and professional practice.
This Is Where We Part by Taylor Webb
Artist Statement
“This Is Where We Part” is a walk-through sculpture where the public can choose their own path through the piece as a group or as individuals. The inspiration for this piece comes from the land’s name in the Mohawk language, where Montreal is called “Tiohtià:ke” abbreviated from “Teionihtiohtiá:kon,” loosely translating to “where the group divided/parted ways.”
Artist Bio
Taylor Webb (she/her) has been creating art for the past two years, working in ink and film photography. Most recently, she has completed an artist residency with MedeArts. She has work published in multiple zines, such as Mind Over Matter, and was a featured artist on Cosy Land.
Growing With Nature by Nadia Mariyan
Artist Statement
Growing with Nature is a homage to the hundreds of thousands of protesters over the years who have taken the streets of Montréal in the name of climate change action. The installation consists of many life-sized archival images of past protests which often culminated at the Parc du Mont Royal Park or the adjacent Parc Jeanne-Mance. The work attempts to grasp the ephemeral nature of protest and keep the sentiment visible. Participants can walk through the four-sided pillars and experience the liminal state between past action and future change.
Artist Bio
Nadia Mariyan (they/them/any) is an interdisciplinary artist with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from Concordia University. Nadia’s work examines both ecology and place as active participants of the human experience. They aim to reimagine intersections of art, technology, the natural environment and to blur the lines around what is traditionally constituted as art-making.
Mother Earthship by MaKaydin Jackson
Artist Statement
This project’s main focus was to animate Mount Royal Park by incorporating whimsical architecture for people to sit in and for kids to explore. This stone and glass sculpture consists of four connecting pillars shaped like female figures. All the figures form together, leaning into each other making more figures and a tower dome shape. The sculpture’s base is below land level with steps going down. Inside the center of the dome lays a pond with fish, the floor is circular and a moon phases calendar is painted on the floor. In front of each figure in the dome is a bench surrounded by plants. On the outside, the figures lean together making the doorways. Each figure represents one of the elements; earth, water, fire, and air representing the Kanienʼkehá:ka and Ho-de-no-sau-nee-ga belief in protecting mother earth.
Artist Bio
MaKaydin Jackson (she/her) is a Windsor-based artist who specializes in sculpture and painting, who studied at the University of Ottawa and is currently studying at the University of Windsor for Fine arts. Inspired by her life experience as a Black Canadian, Jackson’s work focuses on themes of black identity, LGBTQ+ representation, mental health and spirituality. For Jackson art is spiritual and she believes that through art we can heal ourselves and our communities.
Water Memorial, Mount Royal Park by Marcella França
Artist Statement
This is a memorial honouring the First Nations, valuing the sustainable ancestral wisdom of nature through reflection on the importance of protecting freshwater as a source of life, revering the past, and the noble generations through the representation of the water cycle. My permanent public art would be a water fountain with a cloud of fiberglass screens, durable and fireproof, that would rain continuously inside an artificial lake located below the cloud. I intend to engrave the world map with the territorial division of the Americas and other regions of the world divided by the territories of the First Nations, on the stones at the bottom of the lake. Steel cables will attach the cloud to 3 totems, representing the Americas, where the names of all First Nations will be engraved in bronze.
Artist Bio
Marcella França (she/her) is a contemporary artist and performer from Brazil based in Montreal. Trained first as a dancer, painter, and video artist, França holds a BFA in Visual Communication specializing in audiovisual and experience projects. Her artistic practice utilizes a multidisciplinary approach to create powerfully evocative, immersive, and experiential art that speaks to the physicality of the human form. França expands the conventions of art to create public art, performances, video arts, and immersive installations that investigate the relationship between nature, and contemporary existential questions intertwining with ideas of time, memory, decolonial issues, ecofeminism, and immigration.
Tiohtià:ke by Tish
Artist Statement
Music is a powerful tool for cultural preservation and transmission; the drum was an important part of the Mohawks’ tradition. The presence of drumsticks after a performance suggests that the drum was played, but no one stayed to play it. This wooden sculpture, which I gave the working title “Tiohtià:ke”, measures 5 feet in height and 8 feet in width.
Artist Bio
I’m Tish (Albert -Talabi Oluwatise), and I hail from Nigeria. I am a visual artist who draws inspiration from the people and places I encounter in my day-to-day life and from my studies at the University of Windsor. I’m all for minimalist designs that convey their message clearly and leave viewers in awe.
Parting Ties by Leaf
Artist Statement
Created for the Mount Royal Park, the shape from both overhead and side perspectives is designed to reflect that landscape. The string symbolizes the act of separating paths, while maintaining roots and connection. White was chosen to showcase the way these relationships change with time. This prototype is installed in the fountain space of an abandoned Leipzig recreation facility, by invitation of the artist who had restored and maintained it.
Artist Bio
Andi Leaf Pankratz (they/them) is an emerging nonbinary, HoH artist whose work focuses on the interdisciplinary usage of visual arts and contemporary performance. They have trained with SITI company, Prairie Circus Arts, NBS, and RMTC. Their work has been shown internationally, most recently at the Helmut Gallery in Leipzig, Germany.
Funders and Partners
CreateSpace Public Art Forum is supported by Canadian Heritage and Canada Council for the Arts. We also acknowledge the support of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation with funding provided by the Government of Canada.
Le Forum d’art public CreateSpace est soutenu par Canadian Heritage et le Conseil des Arts du Canada. Nous reconnaissons l’appui de la Fondation canadienne des relations raciales grâce au financement fourni par le gouvernement du Canada.
STEPS believes that public art should reflect the diverse identities and perspectives of the communities that host it. Artists have a critical role to play in shaping cities, and our Artist Capacity Building Programs are designed to amplify the work of Black, Indigenous, Persons of Colour, female, LGBTTQQIAAP and newcomer artists in public spaces.