BigArtTO at Etobicoke Civic Centre

^{Image from the 'Adé series' by Destinie Adelakum}

BigArtTO featuring "Echoes of Community" by Destinie Adelakum, Walter Segers, Hatice Erdoğan, and Franziska Barczyk.

Presented with Akin Projects

Wednesday October 13 - Saturday October 16, 7:00 pm – 10:00 pm nightly.

How do collective and community rooted experiences radically reimagine art practices? How does ancestral knowledge of the past and the future inspire our making? What is revolutionary about community ties and how do we utilize those connections to upend oppressive systems? Akin is a Toronto-based arts organization that provides creative studio space as well as arts-based programming.

Destinie Adelakum is a self-taught artist; she was born in Lagos, Nigeria and raised in Nagpur India, and she currently lives and works between Toronto and New York City. Her work extends from photography to film, paintings and sculpture; which explore themes of pre-colonized African/Indian history, mythology, religions, and spirituality. Her goal as an artist is to empower people of diaspora by narrating the African/ Indian folklore and mythology. She utilizes individuals in her work as a personification of principles and ideas, and re-illustrated African and Indian mythological tales. She celebrates women of the African and Indian diaspora and plays with adornment that embodies the creative direction of the work. Her paintings and photography provoke social commentary and critique old-fashioned perceptions of what defines beauty through socio-political and historical social norms as they relate to anti-blackness, shadism, and colourism’ – as well as their universal implications of the female body. 

As a 2SLGBTQIAP artist, Walter Segers emigrated from Belgium in 1993 and currently lives and works in  Toronto. He graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design University in 2008 with distinction  and received OCADU’s prestigious M.C. McCain Post Graduate Photography Residency in 2009. He was  an artist in residence at the Museum Of Contemporary Art Toronto (MOCA) through Akin studio  programming in 2019. His work has been shown internationally at Leslie Lohman Annex Gallery in NYC, Canadian Cultural  Centre in Paris, Peter Deckers in Belgium, Galerie AMU in Prague and Galerie 12 in Zlín in the Czech  Republic. Segers’ work is published in ArtWindsor, muse magazine (Canadian Museums Association) as  well as the online magazines Wondereur, Frank by The Genteel, and Pixie & Rotter. His photo-based  works explore issues surrounding gender, sexuality, immigration, belonging and identity.

Hatice Erdoğan was born in İstanbul Turkey. She was educated by the Painter  Gülercan Hacıoğlu. She studied at Marmara University faculty of Fine Art, Painting, for one year and then at Mimar Sinan Fine Art University, Painting department. She has participated in the following exhibitions as a young artist: ‘Contemporary Artists’ Mixed Exhibitions, Museum Art Gallery, İstanbul,  2012, ‘Creative Boxes’ Competition Exhibition Red Bull, İstanbul, 2012, ‘Corridor’ Mixed Exhibition, Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, 2017. She works on expressing her own stance by using different  types of methods such as oilpainting, woodprint, gravure, videoart, and performance art.

Franziska Barczyk is a Toronto based illustrator, art director and gif maker. Her clients include Advertising Age, Apple, the Brunswick Review, Buzzfeed News, Chatelaine, Corporate Knights, LENNY Letter, The New York Times, NPR, NYLON, Penguin Random House, Spectrum News, Quiet Pictures, Refinery29, TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival), tumblr, Walrus magazine, The Washington Post, the Guardian, vice in partnership with durex, D La Repubblica Magazine, and collective living.

About BigArtTO: Explore Art Across The City

Experience art illuminated at BigArtTO, a city-wide public art celebration featuring free access to temporary public artworks projected onto local buildings and landmarks. Created by Toronto artists, the projections will play on a loop so that visitors can arrive at any time. Part of ShowLoveTO.

BigArtTO is the result of a collaboration between the City of Toronto with OCAD University and AVA Animation & Visual Arts Inc.

View all BigArtTO events here.