space for grief
November 4 — 17, 2023
Overview
Returning for its second iteration, "Space for Grief," launches as part of the Good Mourning festival, with an extended stay throughout November 2023.
This installation featured multiple interactive areas across Evergreen Brick Works, each carefully designed to lead visitors on a personal and contemplative journey. Wayfinding guides assisted in navigating the space, encouraging deeper exploration. Visitors encountered prompts that gently invited them to reflect on how grief surfaces in their own lives. while ambient visuals and composed music played, enhancing the emotional atmosphere.
A second space allowed for communal expression, where visitors inscribed their thoughts and feelings about grief on bird-shaped notes, which were then hung for others to read. This created a powerful sense of shared experience, connection, and understanding among participants.
A soundscape, composed and performed by Ziyan Hossain and Rakat Zami returned to accompany past and new visitors. By sonically evoking feelings of nostalgia, memories, and daydreaming, visitors were able to enter a deeply meditative space.
The installation also introduced The Museum of Grief, a new addition to the larger Space for Grief exhibit. The Museum of Grief is a powerful illustration of how grief quietly permeates every aspect of daily life and delves into the hidden roots of grief embedded in our societal systems.
Reclaimed household objects and familiar artifacts, all painted in stark white, create a striking visual contrast with vibrant, colorful flowers. This capture the intricate, often overlooked ways grief is interwoven into our experiences, offering a poignant reflection on loss and resilience.
Location
Evergreen Brickworks
550 Bayview Avenue, Toronto, ON, M4W 3X8
Why Brickworks?
Evergreen Brickworks hosts The Good Mourning Festival, a community event that Space for Grief is presenting during, and one that advocates the same values. Both events strive to:
reclaim death as a special part of life.
explore and honour the significance of mourning in public spaces
create a space where grief can be expressed, shared and understood.
The Good Mourning Festival is more than an event –
“it’s a chance for people to embrace the full spectrum of human emotion in our public spaces.”
Partners
Presenting Sponsors
Partners
Team
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Mimosa Haque (she/her) is a Toronto based Floral Artist, classically trained Odissi Dancer, Set Decorator and Sound Facilitator-in-Training. Strange Phool (formerly Strangelove) is Mimosa’s evolving floral practice that is deeply inspired by nature, its imperfections, and our interactions with it. She is at heart a lifelong student - eager to learn from everything and anything and is fiercely passionate about caring for community and uplifting marginalized voices. She has an Honours Bachelor’s Degree in Neuroscience & Psychology from University of Toronto and a Graphic Design certificate from OCADU.
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Madi Chambers is a collaborator and strategic planner with a focus on capacity-building for impact-focused initiatives. Firmly rooted in a vision for a more equitable future, she centres her skill set on system design and framework development to bring people together for meaningful collaboration. Her work spans across art, community building, climate and food justice, and includes the development and management of multiple Toronto-based farmers’ markets, nonprofit startups and the Neighbourhood Food Hub, an innovative model for neighbourhood-based solutions to food insecurity.
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Rakat Zami is a music composer, record producer, and sound designer. His expertise ranges from producing records to writing music and designing sound for visual media such as films, documentaries, advertisements, and animations with nearly a decade of experience in the field and a diverse clientele such as Nestle, Unilever, OCADU CO, and BRAC to name a few. His music compositions are featured in various short films on multiple OTT platforms with the latest being “Foreigners Only” released under 20th Century Digital. Rakat is also a live sound engineer with experience in leading live sound production teams at stadium-sized concerts and events.
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Ahniin, my name is Toni Sunday. I am from the Anishnaabe Nation of G'chi Mnissing. I am Golden Eagle Women (Ginekwe) of the Bear Clan (Mkwa ndodem) and a 2nd generation residential school survivor. I am currently studying at Fleming College, pursuing a diploma in Forestry. I’m currently on the board of directors for the Peterborough Native Learning Centre.
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Fran Quintero Rawlings is an artist, researcher and facilitator passionate about creating interactive experiences and is curious about the intersections between art, social justice and broader systemic change.
Fran is drawn to create speculative experiences through installations and exhibits that provoke important social conversations around equity, wellbeing and gender. In 2019, Fran completed her Master of Design at OCAD University with research on designing more inclusive death and grief practices in western culture. Since then she has been exploring these themes in her artistic practice through installations and exhibits.
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Ziyan Hossain is a musician, composer and foresight/systems practitioner, specializing in projects exploring culture, technology, science and innovation. Ziyan has been a practicing musician for over 20 years, involved in performance, composition, event programming, and curation. In 2018 he released a critically acclaimed album with Canadian metal band Sundecay.
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Calla Lee is an interdisciplinary designer, researcher, and visual communicator who uses an intersection of art and data to understand how people and systems relate, interact, and overlap with each other.
Her work explores art, culture, community, entrepreneurship, and the spaces in between that connect us to each other. Through co-design and collaboration, Calla seeks to create interesting and provocative conversations and spaces that engage people’s curiosity in order to catalyze systemic change for the future.