A Change Is Purposed for This Site (2026), Site-Specific Photo Installation; 8 days (June 6-13); photos, receipts, magnets, community consultation flyer; 0.8m x 0.8m x 1.5m; inside, over and surrounding the refrigerator of #1-164 Isabella St. which hosted Spaces We Leave Behind, Toronto, Canada
164 Isabella St. is an old Victorian-style building proposed for redevelopment into a new high-rise condo in the coming years. It is a house full of stories, haunted by ghosts, soon to be demolished, and you are standing inside it.
A tower may rise here one day, just as workers laid its bricks and tiles one or two hundred years ago; either way, it is the same earth beneath. This land is stitched together by such rises and falls — ground connected to ground, parcelled out by colonizers, then woven into communities, homes, fragments of story.
The government has decided these stories are due for renewal, so I received a letter informing me of the changes. I am a temporary passing presence, and through that "community consultation" letter I caught a glimpse of this slice of history.
When curating the work, I chose to post these notices on the refrigerator because the fridge is ordinarily where plans, calendars are pinned, whereas I use grocery receipts to commemorate what it keeps inside, i.e., the food I need to eat soon. As a result, the fridge holds the most up-to-date record of a life being lived: the the immediate and perishable food inside and the "news" outside.
