ArtworxTO Urban Art Festival
From Fall 2021 to Fall 2022, Toronto sponsors graffiti and street installations.
In the illustration for this article you see one of the thousand-plus art objects decorating Toronto as part of the ArtworxTO festival. In downtown Toronto, foam iceberg houses float in a fountain in Nathan Phillips Square, Canada's largest city square. The author, John Notten, wants to draw attention to the rising sea level due to global warming with this art object.
The festival has its own mobile application, where you can find any art object on an interactive map, make your own route or walk through one of the already created. Mainly the festival presents graffiti painted by professional artists and carrying some idea, such as symbols and images from the legends of indigenous peoples. Graffiti in the metro depicts people living in the city and old streetcars; there are geometric abstractions and optical illusions that have to be looked at from a certain angle. There are sculptures on display in the city's parks.
This summer, Toronto artists plan to paint new graffiti that will include health and safety messages as well as phrases from local laws regulating people's behaviour in the city. Citizens are invited to participate in developing slogans for the installations.
