Ocean Dreams
Project Details
Project dates
Project Lead
I began this project by making artwork of fishes, turtles, and whales and writing wishes and questions from their perspectives. I then placed these up around my neighbourhood in Toronto as a way of sparking a sense of interconnection between a large land-locked city and the ocean. At the Urban Learning Journey in Halifax, a fellow Ocean Bridge Ambassador, Callum Soong, and myself hosted a table at the harbourfront where people were invited to make their own art inspired by ocean and waterway conservation. There were cutouts of water creatures and people stopping by the table were invited to write wishes from this creature's perspective. They could either take them home and paste them up in their neighbourhood or leave them at the table, where I would paste them up back home in Toronto. There was also a watercolour painting of a globe where people were invited to write and share their own wishes and dreams for the world and for themselves.
Project Description
Ocean Dreams aims to tap into the world of possibilities beyond current unjust and unlivable realities. Inspired by artist Candy Chang’s “I Wish This Was” (2010) as well as Eve Tuck’s Desire-Based framework (2009), it is my hope to offer a space to imagine and empathize with the wishes, desires, and dreams of water-life. This project is a small way to give voice to water-life and intervene in the everyday when people are not expecting it, making space for and sharing non-human perspectives on the climate emergency in one’s own neighbourhood.
We all have wishes, desires, and dreams for this world and for ourselves. But they can be hard to hold onto. It is my hope that by writing or drawing some of these dreams onto the water-colour painting of the globe and on sticky notes to paste in our neighbourhoods, that we can honour and give voice and attention to our wishes, desires, and dreams. No one is alone in our desire for a more just and liveable world. To give some time and heart to imagining possibilities is one way to build personal and community power and to nourish change.
Thank you to Ocean Wise for their endless support in this project and thank you to my community for their encouragement and nourishment.
