Zone A Exhibition
Image by Daniel Ehrenworth
Curatorial Statement
What Were We Before?
The area around Yonge, Dundas and Bay Streets is an environment that is participatory, interactive and inclusive - a space where the public can become inspired and engaged in their own individual encounters with art. What were we before? will be a nocturnal urban fantasia through which the moving crowds will ponder their individual pasts and present within the context of Toronto’s own history and of the larger expression of art on a grand scale.
"Any revolutionary project today, whether utopian or realistic, must if it is to avoid banality, make the re-appropriation of the body, in association with the re-appropriation of space into a negotiable part of its agenda" - The Production of Space, Henri Lefebvre, 1974.
— Thom Sokoloski
Commissioned Projects
Paulette Phillips, AS COULD BE
Gordon Monahan, Space Becomes The Instrument
Erwin Redl, SPEED SHIFT Toronto
Bill Viola, The Reflecting Pool & Ancient of Days
Shaun El C. Leonardo, Battle Royal
Open Call Projects
To encourage involvement by a wide range of artists - established and emerging - each exhibition includes projects selected by the curators through an open call process.
Cara Spooner, Robin Lasser, Adrienne Pao, Ice Queen: Glacial Retreat Dress Tent
Graffiti Research Lab, Pwn the Wall - Graffiti Research Lab
Curator Biography
Thom Sokoloski trained in New York City and Paris as an artist, producer and curator. He produced Sid’s Kids - the punk musical, Michael Nyman and band, the Master Musicians of Jajouka (because the ghost of Brian Jones told him to), worked with R. Murray Schafer, created his own works and directed site-specific opera and theatre (in a train station, science centre, swimming pool, castle, canals, abandoned cirque d’hiver, etc.). His work has been presented by the Holland Festival, Toronto’s WorldStage, Ars Musica Brussels, Strasbourg’s Musica, Musique-en-scène Festival, Huddersfield Festival, Opéra de Lyon, the Canadian Opera Company and Opéra de Montréal. In 2004, he left the performing arts to focus on large-scale public art installations. He premiered Confinement of the Intellect at the inaugural edition of Scotiabank Nuit Blanche in 2006, and then as The Encampment in New York City in 2007 and Ottawa in 2008. He also curated for the McLuhan International Festival of the Future (2004), Toronto International Art Fair (Interactive 2005) and Contact (2007).
