One runs east to the lakefront and one runs south to the Museum of Science and Industry. There are two pedestrian underpasses that run under Lake Shore Drive at 57 th Street, each with 34 inset art panels. It will be a wonderful opportunity to meet the artist and ask her a question or two.The 57 th Street Pedestrian Underpass Mosaic Project is a collaboration between the Chicago Public Art Group and local institutions that celebrate the culture and diversity of south side communities.
Rolande Souliere will be giving a talk at Dorset Fine Arts on Tuesday September 29, at 5pm to 7pm. Want to learn more about the artist’s work and practice? The mural is being installed this week and we can’t wait to see the transformation of this non-descript tunnel into a pulsating visual experience. The Aboriginal story here and elsewhere, reaches millennia into the past, but it is continuing into the future and every one of us is part of the future writing of this history. In Rolande’s hands, these parallel threads of a continuing story are abstracted into a geometry whose potency and urgency is unmistakable and immersive. The historical narrative of Aboriginal peoples on the Don River is one in which economy, technology, trade, authority, ownership and travel are interconnected. Rolande’s concept for the site draws on contemporary metaphors of the road and our navigation through urban spaces. Rolande Souliere’s mural for the Bala Underpass uses the colour symbolism of the Four Directions (red, white, black and yellow) in a way that simultaneously evokes the culture and spirituality of First Peoples’ beadwork and the visual language or barricades, police tape, urban roadways and boundaries. The proposal for the Bala Underpass uses the principle concerns and aesthetic of Souliere’s art practice to reference the historical Aboriginal trails and footpaths that crisscrossed the Don Valley, connecting with a larger network. The exhibition was curated by Tania Willard and Kathleen Ritter and showed at Vancouver Art Gallery, The Power Plant, SAW Gallery and Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal. Souliere’s proposal builds on a body of work called “Frequent Stopping, Part I and II” that toured Canada from 2012 to 2014, in the exhibition Beat Nation. She has a strong body of critically engaging work, an arresting aesthetic and her proposal was well-researched and compelling.Ĭrews were hard at work this week, installing a new mural by Rolande Souliere at the Bala Underpass between Corktown Common and the Lower Don Trail. From the proposals submitted, that of Rolande Souliere stood out. I was excited when StART invited me to participate on the jury. StART held a competition for this mural, seeking an artistic concept that would convey the significant Aboriginal history in the area – the Don River and its surrounding valley has been a seasonal hunting and fishing ground for nearly 12,000 years – and link the public art programs unfolding on either side of the underpass. Now, with a mural project funded and managed by StreetARToronto (StART), this tunnel will become a place to pause and reflect. For example, at the edge of the West Don Lands is the Bala Underpass, an important connection to the Don River ravine trail system – and also a space that has for many years been quite unassuming and nondescript. We work with many different partners to bring this activity to our sites. While our public art program is building permanent art collections for our neighbourhoods, temporary arts and cultural programming are an essential part of the revitalization process. Artist Rolande Souliere with her assistants in front of her work in progress for the Bala Underpass.
0 kommentar(er)
