Explore Softer City at The Bentway
In an increasingly hard city, how do we soften the barriers that separate us? The Bentway’s summer public art exhibition under the Gardiner Expressway invites you to a series of soft encounters, where “softness” is embraced as a collective strategy for building a socially connected city.
Until October 6, 2024
The Bentway, Toronto
Free
Photo: Samuel Engelking
Holding Space by Nnenna Okore
Inspired by the role of public space in softening our cities, Chicago-based Nigerian artist Nnenna Okore’s dynamic art installation envelops the benches and bioswales around The Bentway’s skate trail. Okore uses scaffolding, pipe, and Ankara – a versatile and iconic African fabric that embodies a deep sense of identity and community – to create a new space for human connection. Vibrant fabric hues weave around the Gardiner’s hard edges, softening the concrete infrastructure and holding space for people to dialogue, think, care, and rest.
Photo: Samuel Engelking
Tracings by Nico Willams
How can we show care for our infrastructure and, by extension, for each other? Nico Williams applied “patches” to the Gardiner’s concrete columns, incorporating traditional Indigenous regalia designs. The patches take the form of floral cut-outs and geometric designs interwoven with jingle cones, which dance and sway in the wind. These soft interventions add joy, beauty, and a caring touch to the Expressway.
Photo: Samuel Engelking
Wind Ensemble by Heather Nicol
Rippling through the tunnel created by the concrete columns under the Gardiner Expressway, the wind at The Bentway carries the sounds of the city. As these streams move through the site, they also have the power to carry our voices, enabling new forms of connectivity and gathering. Toronto-based artist Heather Nicol responds to these sonic streams with Wind Ensemble, a sound and soft sculpture installation that invites us to pause and connect to our surroundings and to one another.
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While you’re at The Bentway’s main site, share space together and align perspective with Chloë Bass’ sculptural benches, Perspective Alignment, situated around the skate trail. Take in the Walking:Holding Portrait Series by Rosana Cade and Kirk Lisaj to see the city from someone else’s perspective and consider how our identities can affect our experience of different spaces.
A few blocks away at The Bentway Studio across from Canoe Landing Park, relax and fall back at Soft Fits, a playful lounge-scape under the trees, created by WIP Collaborative and local teenagers.
Upcoming Events
August 16: Roller Skate Party
August 17: Learn to Play Dominoes
August 24: Dino Run
September 14: Dino Run
September 22: Dominoes
September 27: Roller Skate Party
About The Bentway
The Bentway works to ignite the urban imagination, using the city as site, subject, and canvas.
Anchored under Toronto’s Gardiner Expressway and guiding its complex future, The Bentway is a growing public space, and much more. The Bentway is a new type of civic organization: a not-for-profit, powered by vital partnerships with the City of Toronto, residents, supporters, artists, city-builders, and dreamers. The Bentway is a catalyst rooted in experimentation, leading a creative movement to re-imagine the opportunities of urban spaces.
The Bentway
250 Fork York Blvd, Toronto
thebentway.ca
hello@thebentway.ca
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Accessibility:
The Bentway is fully accessible. For more information, visit here.
The Bentway’s Summer 2024 season is generously supported by: Ontario Cultural Attractions Fund, Dream Community Foundation, Hal Jackman Foundation, Partners in Art, and RBC Foundation, Muskoka Brewery.
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