Critical Distance PROGRAMMING PUBLIC ART: Billboard on Shaw by Adrià Julià

Billboard on Shaw presented by Critical Distance, featuring A Very White Flower, by Adrià Julià, 2022.

A Very White Flower references Julià’s ongoing interest in the history of production, consumption and expansion of popcorn in modern colonial history. The image of a single kernel of popcorn functions as a prompt to consider Julià’s reflections on the historical and socioeconomic intricacies of the global corn industry and its relationship to Mexican culture and the popularization of popcorn in the United States after the Great Depression, especially in regards to popcorn’s connection to cinema.

A Very White Flower is presented in the context of Place Settings II (curated by Noa Bronstein), a large-scale, durational project that considers how food functions to connect and disrupt. Focusing specifically on the intersections of food, public space, and architecture, Place Settings II points to formal and informal structures that offer forms of nourishment, be they physical, emotional, social, or political.

Place Settings II continues this summer with performance-based projects staged throughout the city of Toronto. Each project engages in a discursive gesture that considers new possibilities at the intersections of food practices and public space, revealing the shareable and relational qualities of both. Click here for full program details.

Place Settings is made possible through the generous support of the Toronto Arts Council, City of Toronto, and ArtworxTO: Toronto’s Year of Public Art 2021-22.

A Very White Flower, 2020,  is on view at 180 Shaw Street, outside Artscape Youngplace, through August to September, 2022.

Image: Adrià Julià, A Very White Flower, 2022. 8 x 8 foot billboard at 180 Shaw Street in Toronto’s West Queen West neighbourhood.