Juxtaposing the stories of Scarborough’s roots against Rouge Park’s changing seasons, Where the Trees Speak is a participatory audiovisual installation that represents the community’s migratory origins.

Rouge National Urban Park, a cyclically-changing natural landscape, bares many parallels to Scarborough’s dynamic and vibrant demographic history. Where the Trees Speak connects Rouge Park’s history and location as a metaphor for the migratory waves that have come through Scarborough. Viewers will experience and actively participate in the interplay between our natural environment and diasporic movement through a series of prompted questions that play throughout the night in context to the musical score.

Produced with the support of the Toronto Arts Council and Toronto Public Library.

Where the Trees Speak debuted at Nuit Blanche 2022.

Score:



Installation video:

The Wave Art Collective were the 2020-2021 artists-in-residence at the University of Toronto Scarborough’s Doris McCarthy Gallery through the Equity and Diversity in the Arts (EDA) initiative.

Adapting from a traditional in-person residency to an virtually-produced community engagement project, the Collective worked closely with the Doris McCarthy Gallery to research and produce The Space Between Waves. The project centres around a three-part, sound-based narrative collage that blends music, song demos, candid conversations and field recordings, archival clips that reveal the history, geography, and culture of Scarborough through the interwoven voices of its migrants, politicians, artists, ancestors, and landscapes.

As part of the residency, Sampreeth Rao and Kevin Ramroop also participated as guest lecturers for UTSC’s Virtual Artist Lecture Series (VALS) in June 2021, where they engaged in a conversation around the creation of the first part of The Space Between Waves and how the process is directly related to the subject matter of Scarborough, the Rouge Nation Urban Park, and its migratory history. In October 2021, the Collective led a guided walk through the UTSC’s Highland Creek Valley, which was free and open to students and faculty of UTSC as well as the larger community. The guided tour was anchored by stopping at different points of interest in the valley and taking the time to engage the group in a question or conversation contextualized by a point of interest in a selected part of The Space Between Waves. The walk concluded with a live performance from Kevin Ramroop at the edge of the Rouge River.

Soon, the project will be expanded with a participatory website component with annotated captions of the audio series and space for listeners to respond to questions related to specific sections and conversations from The Space Between Waves.

In the heart of the pandemic, between January and May 2021, four writers and four photographers were selected to be part of the second iteration of the Wave Art Fellowship. The New Normal on the Margins is the culmination of these artists' photo and literary work exploring the experience of the pandemic on the economic and geographic margins of the city. Together, the book serves as a living, breathing document - a map through our Scarborough and how art, community, and connection provided a steadfast compass for all of us in uncertain times.

Thanks to the ongoing support from the Doris McCarthy Gallery and UTSC, selections of each of the fellows’ works were displayed as a part of an installation inside the UTSC library, and at the book's release event WAVE 2.

Operated by the Ward Museum, Block by Block is a multi-year series of block party art exhibitions that uses oral history interviews and archival research to feature migrant stories of those living in Agincourt, Victoria Park, Regent Park, and Parkdale. As a young research/curator focussing on the Agincourt community, our team created Home, an art exhibition highlighting the stories of ten Agincourt residents from a diverse range of backgrounds.

Online exhibition here.

Writing:
Dumplings, Pasta, and Samosas: The Experience of Lunchtime in Scarborough Schools in the 90s

Press:
CBC
CityNews