edge/threshold/brink

edge/threshold/brink, a new public realm commission, was first exhibited in the group exhibition Dream Time: We All Have Stories curated by Karen Alexander for Nuit Blanche Toronto 2018.

edge/threshold/brink references historical narratives that defined and redefined the city of Toronto in relation to its landscape. The work is a commentary on the cultural importance of water and land to the Mississauga of the New Credit and the ways the water and land of Toronto were later wrestled into a metropolis. The piece is a re-presentation of the geography and history of Toronto, specifically St. Johns Ward. Once situated on the footprint of City Hall, the ‘Ward’ was settled by successive waves of new arrivals to the city, including numerous residents escaping slavery in the 19th century by means of the Underground Railroad.

Asking local tour guide Richard Fiennes-Clinton for an introduction to the area, initiated a series of investigative walks, as well as conversations and correspondence with historians and archivists Dr Alison Norman, Kathy Grant and Barbara Myrvold, which in turn led to research into archival maps and letters, and some of the original artefacts unexpectedly unearthed during construction work in the vicinity of City Hall in 2017. The work of Canadian archaeologist, historian and author Dr Karolyn Smardz Frost, and Toronto-based writer and historian John Lorinc revealed the astonishing story of a young escapee, Cecelia Reynolds – the foundations of a house also unearthed in the 2017 dig were found to be her home for a time. edge/threshold/brink makes specific reference to Cecelia’s life.

The piece is a series of prints: new photographs taken on the investigative walks; photographic record of what was found at the dig; and two archival letters. Six prints were treated with water and installed at scale, six were duplicated and scattered on site, and facsimile of the two letters were secreted into walls.

From sunset to sunrise edge/threshold/brink subtly interrupting and disrupting the everyday perception of Toronto’s Dundas/Trinity Walkway, a much traversed transitional space. The work became a ‘mirage’ of the former natural state of this urban landscape, simultaneously honouring both the Mississauga who originally occupied this place and the new settlers who made it from the antebellum southern states of America.

Copyright © Maria Amidu, 2018