Image
Top
Navigation

Drawing a Line (Toronto)

Drawing a Line (Toronto) took place on April 30, 2011 at Broadview and Queen, using water drawn from the Don River. In the performance, the artist re-performed Drawing a Line to mark the location of Napier Street, where her father grew up in the 1950s. In 1968, homes in the area were destroyed in order for the city to construct the Don Mount Court Housing Complex, which was intended to improve the neighbourhood by providing residents with centrally located low-income housing. Instead, inhabitants were alienated from the surrounding neighbourhood, and by the late 1970s, the development had become unstable. In 2004, the development was leveled and replaced with mixed-use housing. By performing in the imagined locations of the audience, and the remembered locations of her father, gesture becomes a form of personal and spatial encoding, drawing together personal history, public policy, gentrification, and migration.