Pick A Parkdale

An exhibition exploring how individual stories in Parkdale can preserve community identity amid gentrification.

Inspired by Toronto Parkdale’s strong sense of community, this group project addresses how individual stories can be preserved in a larger communal context. Individual universes and characters were developed for alternate narratives of Parkdale, each occupying a different moment in time and architectural circumstance, yet all located in the heart of the community. Each universe is represented by a character manuevering the space around them and preserving their narrative in the form of drawings, recordings, and physical artifacts.

The goal was to investigate how the consequences of gentrification can lead to the removal of a community and the introduction of a new culture, causing tensions and altering the atmosphere of an entire neighbourhood. It hopes to illuminate the different ways storytelling can preserve a community’s history, and how in that preservation, a community can find togetherness and resistance.