(with Meech Boakye)
May 2056 - August 2026
Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, Art Museum, Toronto, ON
In imprecise monuments, Meech Boakye and Bhavika Sharma explore migrant species and discarded materials found at Thommy Thompson Park in Toronto, Ontario. Through fieldwork and material research, the artists work with plant pulp and soap as their primary mediums to trace their observations of this disturbed landscape in a series of small sculptures. The work recalls observations and encounters with species characterized as “invasive,” including Mute Swans (Cygnus olor) and Phragmites (Phragmites australis). Together, the sculptures take on the form of weathered construction waste and embed eroded brick, tile and glass fragments collected on the Lake Ontario shoreline. Displayed on a round table, the artists invite the audience to participate in their own material play, calling attention to how matter, sites, and relationships shift through time, touch, heat, and pressure. This installation was produced as a part of a group exhibition titled Little and Often.
Artists: Maureen Gruben, Rana Nazzal Hamadeh, Rachel Crummey, Miguel Caba, Meech Boakye & Bhavika Sharma
Curator: Chloe Gordon-Chow
Exhibition Documentation: LF Documentation courtesy of Art Museum
Little and Often traces how our relationships to land, material, and one another are sustained within disturbed ecologies and conditions of precarity. In the work of Maureen Gruben, Rana Nazzal Hamadeh, Rachel Crummey, Miguel Caba, and Meech Boakye and Bhavika Sharma, life continues to be negotiated amidst ecological, political, and social disturbance. Working with seeds, soils, mushrooms, and plants, these artists hold onto something at risk of being severed. Their works are collaborative efforts between communities of people, more-than-human beings, and place.
We would like to acknowledge funding support from the Ontario Arts Council and the Government of Ontario.