What's next for Toronto public art? A visit from Monument Lab

In late July of this year, just as Canada was about to mark its first formally recognized Emancipation Day, the city of Toronto unveiled a new monument. Rendered in bronze, the piece is a tribute to Joshua Glover, an abolitionist who escaped slavery in Missouri, eventually making his home in Etobicoke. And it's in Etobicoke that the statue now appears. Local artist Quentin VerCetty, a scholar of Afrofuturism, created the work, and in the piece he depicts Glover as a 19th century gentleman with a cyborg arm, a symbolic nod to his "crushing [the] chains of slavery."

The work was the winning proposal in a public-art competition held by the city, and it's a point of pride for VerCetty, albeit one that raises mixed feelings. "I created — this year — Toronto's first monument to a person of African descent," he says. "Much as I'm honoured to create that piece, you know, to me, it's very surreal."

In short: what took so long, and why aren't there more monuments like it? "There are so many people that we can pay homage to, and so many more movements as well," says VerCetty.

And perhaps right now, you're brainstorming your own list of potential subjects. What kind of monument would you want to see in Toronto? Yeah, you. Because if you're in the GTA, the MonumentMobile is ready to hear your feedback.

Where to find it

What, exactly, is MonumentMobile? Presented as part of ArtworxTO: Toronto's Year of Public Art, you could think of it as a sort of roving art installation/research project. Beginning Friday, and continuing through Nov. 3, a special truck — the "MonumentMobile" in question — will pull up at a different location daily from noon to 3 p.m.

VerCetty is a co-curator on the project, and he also produced a number of new artworks that will be at each site, including a 3D-printed sculpture and images that will partially wrap the truck itself. He's plastered one side of the vehicle in a collage of his favourite Toronto monuments. Among the items represented in the image: the peace monument in Parkdale, the Toronto Inukshhuk, even the Gardiner Expressway. "They're monuments across Toronto that I felt were very inclusive — that very much celebrated the idea of community, per se."

In a more whimsical vein, another work with local flavour is a tribute to trash pandas and Canada geese; it's VerCetty's "homage to the curious animals of our city." And the passenger side of the truck has been made over to resemble a sort of "futuristic frame," the artist explains. Through it, visitors can peer inside to find even more art, including a work by Anishinaabe artist Solomon King: a proposed city memorial to residential school survivors. 

Also inside the truck: a bird's-eye-view image of city. It's a reminder to "think about the wider Toronto," the world beyond the downtown core. And to that point, the stops on the MonumentMobile's itinerary will cover extensive ground throughout the GTA. After launching at Nathan Phillips Square (Oct. 29), it will roll to Roundhouse Park (Oct. 30), Cloverdale Mall (Oct. 31), Scarborough Town Centre (Nov. 1), Wexford B.I.A. (Nov. 2) and Mel Lastman Square (Nov. 3).

All of the art that's installed in and around the MonumentMobile, in addition to further on-site programming (TBA), are meant to get visitors thinking. They're creative prompts of a sort. Because on site, people will be asked for their answers to one open-ended question: what's next for Toronto? Ultimately, the information gathered over the tour's six days will be delivered to the City of Toronto's Arts and Culture Services.

'The Monument Lab method'

VerCetty isn't working alone. The project is led by Monument Lab, an organization that was founded in Philadelphia by Paul Farber and Canadian artist Ken Lum, who are colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2015, the duo began travelling to neighbourhoods around Monument Lab's home city, and at each location, they polled passersby: what is an appropriate monument for Philadelphia?

That methodology has become Monument Lab's calling card, and they've run dozens of similar projects in other cities, predominantly in the States. Some of these activations have evolved into larger projects. In 2017, for example, Monument Lab produced a citywide exhibition of public art — a collection of all-new civic monuments informed by the feedback they'd collected two years prior.

For MonumentMobile, which Lum describes as Monument Lab's "first full-fledged project in Canada," the focus, at this stage, is simply gathering feedback. They're here to "demonstrate the Monument Lab method," if you will.

And that method does not involve analysis, Lum explains, even though Monument Lab will produce a report based on the feedback they collect. "We don't interpret the data, we just accumulate the data," he says, emphasizing their role as artists, not social scientists. Respondents are traditionally asked to supply two identifying details: age and location (a zipcode is requested at U.S. activations). But the information is largely organized by common themes and keywords. "We try to break it up into categories," says Lum. "Like, say, how many people want masonry, how many want steel?" he chuckles. "How many [pitches] are conceptual and can't be built? How many are aspirational?" Monument Lab will create a category for anything, he says, and to that end, all responses are represented. "So it's like an infinite cloud, you might say."

Even at the polling stage, Monument Lab keeps the process open-ended. They're not even working under a set definition of "monument," although the word itself comes with a textbook meaning, of which any respondent would be familiar. Maybe a bronze statue springs to their mind — maybe not — but a monument is, of course, a work produced to elevate something of significance to the culture that built it. Maybe the subject is an event, a collective, a concept, a dead white dude on a horse. 

"Really often we'll get respondents and they'll say, 'What do you mean by monument? How do you define it?' And we never answer that," says Lum. We say, 'What do you think? That's up to you.'"

Things get interesting when people begin to chew on that question, he says. Their answers might reflect local history or neighbourhood concerns, whether new or long-festering issues. And collected, the feedback becomes an illustration of what happens when you flip the traditional process of monument-making — when you ask everyone, not just those in power, about what matters in the time and place they occupy. 

I think one of the biggest uproars that is happening right now with public art, with monuments, is that the story is unbalanced.- Quentin VerCetty, artist

In late September, Monument Lab published an audit of monuments found throughout the United States. The findings are unsurprising to anyone who's walked through a city square, but they still hold a mirror to the myths and values upheld by American culture. The majority celebrate war and conquest, and to quote one of the report's introductory key findings: "The monument landscape is overwhelmingly white and male." 

The research was funded by the Monument Project, a $250 million (US) granting program that was founded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 2020. Among its objectives is a re-evaluation of the United States' "commemorative landscape." 

There's no direct equivalent to Monument Lab's audit in Canada, although it would seem we're in a moment that would welcome an accounting of such things. Toronto, to use the local example, is publicly reckoning with the people and values its celebrated in the past. In separate conversations, Lum and VerCetty bring up two highly publicized examples: the city's decision to rename Dundas Street and the case of "X University" (the institution formerly known as Ryerson). 

"I think Toronto's a great city, and because it's a great city, it deserves to look at all kinds of things that could make it greater," says Lum. "I think that's the motive of Monument Lab."

"Diversity and inclusion is so important," says VerCetty. "I think one of the biggest uproars that is happening right now with public art, with monuments, is that the story is unbalanced. The story is very skewed and it's very one-sided." The work done through MonumentMobile is an opportunity to change that, he says. 

So what happens after the city comes out to share their ideas? In a phrase, what's next for Toronto?

Says VerCetty: "What's next should be more art — more public art."

MonumentMobile: What's Next for Toronto? Oct. 29 to Nov. 3. For more info, visit www.artworxto.ca.