About This Project

Art of the Danforth

Sean Martindale, Rebecca Noone, Ryan Park
MANGO PEELER, Mahmood Popal, and VSVSVS

May 02–11, 2014 – East Danforth, Toronto

 
Aisle 4 was invited to co-curate Art of the Danforth’s second edition, responding to the theme Art, What Have You Done For Me Lately?, a self-reflexive exploration of the role of a community art festival in a neighbourhood on the brink of gentrification. The resulting program was a series of multifaceted interventions along Danforth Avenue between Greenwood and Woodbine that served to engage local residents and revitalize overlooked spaces and facades, from businesses, to residential spaces, to natural environments. Each project aimed at fostering connections within the neighbourhood’s existing communities, with the hope that audiences would look at the familiar with fresh eyes, and acknowledge the potential of art to inspire new perspectives. To those who viewed the area as foreign, the interventions served to make the eclectic strip a destination place, using art as a tool for exploration, with the goal of bridging the gap between east and west Toronto.