Phantom Pain, 2019
Site specific installation
Steel
Dimensions 6,5 x 3,5 meters
The work was commissioned by River Valley Art Program and the Toronto Biennial of Art, and a partnership with the City of Toronto and Toronto Region Conservation Authority.
Accumulations and processes between different beings including water and land make a place specific. Phantom Pain references human interventions in the Americas that have affected the specific interactions of water with other beings and with place-making. Waterways have been buried, deliberately drained, desiccated and filled in or have had their courses diverted.
The Don River’s course was "straightened out" so that they would ‘fit’ between the highway and the railroad tracks and thus its beingness was removed from the interactions possible at their original course which would place them in Riverdale Park next to the farm adjoining a field. Steel plates reflecting the environment meander into the space as a reminder of a relationship between water, land, sky, birds, and animals that has been obliterated.