Our Crowns
Our Crowns
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OVERVIEW
Our Crowns
Type: Mural
Artist: Curtia Wright
Artist Assistants: Kanisha Dabreo, Jessica Campbell, Isabelle Loobie
LOCATION: 529 Oakwood Avenue, Toronto, Ontario M6E 2X2, Canada
DATE: September 2022
MEDIUM: Spay paint and acrylic on brick wall.
DIMENSIONS: H: 2.4m [8’ft] x L:20m (65’ft)
PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
Our Crowns uses storytelling to communicate the importance of the community’s support in fostering healthy relationships, the beauty of cultural practices being passed down through intergenerational knowledge and honouring the many immigrant parents who sacrificed a great deal to come to Canada to make a better life for their children. Using storytelling to share two figures, a mother and son, the mural follows the journey of the Mother moving from her home in Jamaica to raise her family in Canada, specifically in the Little Jamaica Neighborhood in Toronto.
Hair is used as a conduit to communicate this journey. Visually the hair melds and shifts itself to show a tableau of the mother’s childhood on the left and flows along to the right side of the piece carving out a path for her son and showing his journey through his hair. The purple silhouettes to the left of the mother figure show her journey through her hair. These stages in her hair journey signify the shifts she experienced throughout her life, as the state of our hair as Black Women can often reflect our headspace and stages of our lives.
Funded by: STEPS Public Art
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GALLERY