Toronto's Mille Femmes

Continuing with my love for large public art project, I went and saw this installation at Brookfield (formerly BCE) Place. It is another hanging installation in the Galleria, but this time it's 1,000 portraits (each chain 4 down, different photos back to back) of "artistic, creative and inspiring women from Toronto and their proteges, who embody the passion and heritage of the city".

After giving Luminato such a hard time, I have to give them full marks for this. I was continuously surprised and delighted by the number of familiar names and faces I saw. I had expected the usual suspects - writers, actors, dancers and broadcasters - but in the collection I saw designers, technicians, administrators, FOH managers, marketing people, and the most amazing of all, freelance and independent artists. Whoever compiled the list for Pierre Maraval deserves HUGE kudos.

The photos themselves are stunning. Each one of them has one adjective on them, plus their name. Everyone looks fantastic. They tell me the photos will be collected in a book and sold in the fall. It's one book I really want to add to my collection.

Check this out if you at all can.

Comments

Anonymous said…
The adjective was, well, it didn't have to be an adjective, we were just asked to choose a word, without any parameters, people chose different words for different reasons.

They chose 500 women, and then we (the first 500) each chose a 'protege' to fill in the next 500.

As far as who chose the initial 500 women, I'd love to know more about this too. When I was having my makeup done for the shoot I asked them if they knew. There was apparently some kind of selection committee that chose us, but the details on who might have been in said arts selection committee was not so clear.

There's a write-up on the gala opening on my blog at http://www.mooneyontheatre.com/?p=25