Memory Work

May 1, 2022 – April 30, 2024

Situated at the western entrance to The Bentway, Memory Work is a mural made up of twelve embellished photographic portraits of revolutionary women and non-binary figures from a future Toronto. 

Initiated by studio From Later with artist Rajni Perera and Memory Work Collective, this speculative monument imagines a city characterized by collective care and politics that value nurturing over growth.

Listen to an audio experience offering additional narrative information about the Mothers of Invention:

Memory Work is a monument that commemorates a speculative world. The people depicted in these portraits belong to a group known as the Mothers of Invention, abbreviated as MOI, and pronounced like the sound of a kiss. They are a group of revolutionary scientists, healers, creators, entrepreneurs, engineers, and organizers, represented in photographs taken by Omii Thompson of Mecha Clarke, Jennifer Maramba, Xiyao (Miranda) Shou, Zanette Singh, Cheyenne Sundance, and Dori Tunstall.

Each is a leader spearheading change in their community, a present-day seed of the character they portray, prefiguring a transformed city. Each wears their own apron, designed by Tala Kamea and Naomi Skwarna, as a distinctive uniform that is both protective and decorative, offering clues to the values, aesthetics, and labour of their time. Rajni Perera has applied a textured layer of mythical landscapes and organisms onto the portraits, envisioning the environments of these destined luminaries.

Unlike many futuristic artworks, Memory Work is grounded in research and interpretations of actions and events observable today. The project began with a research phase led by Toronto-based studio From Later, which examined emerging forces of change—analyzing their potential effects, cataloguing uncertainties, exploring scenarios, and dreamscaping with communities. This pattern of research and imagination is echoed in the processes used to create the mural. The individuals photographed and embellished in Memory Work are people whose lives and work demonstrate the city that Memory Work Collective is anticipating. The mural reflects a process of elaborating, exaggerating, and extrapolating from lived experience and present-day signals of change and glimmers of hope.  

Memory Work offers multiple portals of entry. The double-sided mural at the Bentway site is supplemented by a phone number that visitors can call to hear more details about the commemorated figures. The website—memory-work.com —contains a soundscape and offers a network of sources that inspire, ground, and inform this potential world. Both physical and virtual, Memory Work is intended as an exploratory platform, and the beginning of a possible story. It invites participation. 

A monument recalls and engages. It asks viewers, “do you know the story of these people who take up public space in remembrance? Do you know why they are important?” As a monument to a future Toronto, this collaborative artwork asks the public to engage with the changing city. It asks how we can go beyond idyllic or heroic images of the future; it presses us to ask who will nurture this new world. In a world full of images, how can we be more deeply invested in understanding what we’re seeing? How do visions change alongside an evolving city? Memory Work offers a means toward understanding our relationship to the future, so that we might see ourselves creating it.

(Exhibition Essay by Mandy Harris Williams)

Embellished photography: Rajni Perera with Omi Thompson

Costume design: Tala Kamea and Naomi Skwarna

Concept: From Later

Model: Cheyenne Sundance

Memory Work is co-presented by From Later and The Bentway with support from the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival as part of ArtworxTO: Toronto’s Year of Public Art 2021–2022.

Additional support from the Canada Council for the Arts, City of Toronto, the Toronto Arts Council, and The Bentway’s growing family of supporters.