Heritage Toronto

Stories and Storefronts, 2023 Public History Award nominee. Photo by Carmen Chen. Image courtesy of Waard Ward.

Stories and Storefronts, 2023 Public History Award nominee. Photo by Carmen Chen. Image courtesy of Shellie Zhang.

Stories and Storefronts, 2023 Public History Award nominee. Illustration by Flo Leung.

Stories and Storefronts

Project Lead: Negin Zebarjad

Project Website

Date of Release: June 23, 2022

Stories and Storefronts was a multi-venue exhibition from June 23-July 24, 2022, that explored brick-and-mortar stores as a framework for understanding the movement of diverse cultural communities into and across Toronto.

The exhibition focused on the changing neighbourhood of East Danforth, and its diasporic cultural heritage. It invited artists with various immigrant backgrounds to animate immigrant-owned shop windows and storefronts in the community through the creation of sculptural and sound installations.

Mani Mazinani (b. 1984, Tehran, Iran) designed a musical instrument, Mobile Melody, that transformed the façade of Hirut, an Ethiopian cafe and restaurant. Pedestrians became listeners while also “playing” the work by moving their bodies through aural space and revealing a melody.

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Building upon her series of neon light window installations centred on Toronto’s cultural histories, Shellie Zhang (b. 1991, Beijing, China) designed a custom neon entitled Bigger and Better Than Ever in the shape of a fruit basket for Vincenzo Supermarket and in honour of immigrant-owned fruit shops along the Danforth.

Waard Ward presented the project Flowers for East Danforth, delivering weekly flower arrangements by Syrian florist Abd Al-Mounim to Arabic-speaking businesses.

Sarindar Dhaliwal (b. 1953, Punjab, India) repurposed a curtain from a former apartment into a backdrop for embroidery in her work George and Vernon. Using text from a story she wrote about arriving in her neighbourhood of New Toronto, Dhaliwal layered her own lived experience of searching for comforting foods upon the diverse food and merchant histories of East Danforth.

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Additional Project Members:

Charlene K. Lau: Co-Curator, Co-Editor, Writer

Mani Mazinani: Artist, Writer

Sarindar Dhaliwal: Artist

Shellie Zhang: Artist, Writer

Waard Ward: Artist Collective

Petrina Ng: member of Waard Ward, Writer

Janika Oza: Writer

Phillip Dwight Morgan: Writer

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Stories and Storefronts

Stories and Storefronts

Stories and Storefronts

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