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Exhibitionists·Video

This is what happens when you ask an artist to design a holiday tree

At Toronto's Gardiner Museum, 12 artists are spruce-ing up the season with their takes on a certain famous tree.

At Toronto's Gardiner Museum, 12 artists are spruce-ing up the season

Mercedes Grundy, Lucius Dechausay · CBC Arts ·

What happens when you ask an artist to design a holiday tree

7 years ago
Duration 1:24
Take a tour of 12 imaginative holiday trees created by local artists at Toronto's Gardiner Museum.

Toronto's Gardiner Museum isn't afraid to think outside the box when it comes to the holidays. Each year the ceramic museum enlists 12 local artists to design holiday trees, and this year's crop of trees are far from your typical firs.

With artist Douglas Coupland and curator Ben Mills serving as co-curators, this year's theme was "let there be light" — and it's clear that the artists had some bright ideas for interpreting that theme. The trees range from digital to abstract, including a stack of cyanotype boxes lit from within and a 3D animation inspired by a classic holiday film.

Evan Biddell's tree. (CBC Arts)

In this video, we take you on a tour of the 12 trees that might have you pine-ing for a VR tree in your own living room.

Watch CBC Arts: Exhibitionists online or on CBC Television. Tune in Friday nights at 12:30am (1am NT) and Sundays at 3:30pm (4pm NT).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mercedes Grundy

Mercedes Grundy is a producer for CBC's Unscripted division. She has played an integral role in the creation of series like Exhibitionists, The Filmmakers and Canada's a Drag as well as special projects like Superqueeroes and The 2010s: The Decade Canadian Artists Stopped Saying Sorry. Collectively, these projects have won Grundy 5 Canadian Screen Awards. She has an educational background in photography, and produces film and theatre when not busy here at the CBC.

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