During a massive spring migration, while most humans are asleep, the airspace above Toronto is abuzz with over 50 million birds – 16 times that of Toronto’s human inhabitants. The event is mystifying. Home to 3 million people and 180 languages, the City is familiar with a myriad of migration stories. This year’s spring bird migration provides an opportunity to celebrate and reflect upon the many stories of migration in this city, which include moments of failure, perseverance, self-determination, and success.
Please join the Toronto Bird Celebrations on Thursday, May 20th at 7 pm for a one-hour event featuring four stories from Justyna Werbel, Aaron Tucker, Flora Terah and Peter Quincey Ng. The stories serve to honor and reflect upon the nature of migration – its histories, opportunities, and compromises – and its role in shaping life for humans and nonhumans alike.
Watch 6 powerful stories:
ELLA TETRAULT
(b. 1983, Port Williams/ unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq People ) is an artist and Ph.D. Candidate at York University where she holds an SSHRC Doctoral Award. She completed an MFA in Public Art and New Artistic Strategies from the Bauhaus University (2011-2013) and a BA in International Development from the University of Toronto (2003-2008). She is co-founder of the Fuller Terrace Lecture Series and founder of the former Miracle Baby Gallery in Oakwood Village, Toronto. Tetrault is a sessional instructor at the University of Cologne in the Institute for Art and Art Theory alongside Stefanie Busch, a sessional lecturer at the University of Toronto, and former faculty of the Alps Art Academy. She has exhibited in Canada, the United States, Poland, Greece, The UK, and Germany and in 2017, co-edited her first book with Konstanze Schütze and the NRW Forum in Düsseldorf, Pizza is God.
ANDREW BATEMAN
Andrew Bateman is a documentary media artist working with film and photography to explore performance and politics, human relationships with objects, and environmental justice. His films have been screened in Berlin, Toronto, Edmonton, and Portland while his artworks have been exhibited in Toronto, Berlin, Bergen, Istanbul, and Brussels. His most recent film, Four Days at the National Preservation Centre, is premiering at Hot Docs this year. He is also a PhD Candidate at Ryerson University and his practice-based research unravels the myriad connections between the Canadian Arctic and Toronto.
JUSTYNA WERBEL
Justyna Werbel works both as an active visual artist and curator. She received her BDes in Industrial Design and is currently perusing her masters in the IAMD program at OCADU. Werbel’s MFA thesis explores sonic awareness by interpreting audio recordings of sonic masses in motion, into large and small scale drawings to create a new way of investigating her drawing practice. She is exploring this practice through inhabiting and becoming sonically aware of her invisible topography, focusing on the body in a space that receives and produces sounds. Werbel transcribes minimally edited mono recordings made using a mobile phone, which documents the everyday experiences of the recordist. The transcriptions are made with tools and materials she has acquired and developed over several years of research and studio-based practice. She has both exhibited and presented in Poland, Germany, Israel the Czech Republic, Uruguay, Brazil, India and Canada.
FLORA TERAH
Flora Terah is a Kenyan-Canadian award-winning author, a compelling storyteller and a most sort inspirational speaker who shares her powerful lived experiences of undying human spirit to help advocate for women and girls’ rights around the world. As a victim of horrible violent acts, the need for peaceful solutions is never far from her thoughts. She has combined her experience as a fundraiser, grassroots organizer, an educator and as a women's and girl’s right defender with experience as a survivor of violence to become a powerful role model for Human Rights defender in Canada and around the world.
AARON TUCKER
Aaron Tucker is the author of the poetry collection Catalogue d’oiseaux (Book*hug Press, Spring 2021) as well as the novel Y: Oppenheimer, Horseman of Los Alamos (Coach House Books) which was translated by Rachel Martinez into French as Oppenheimer (Éditions La Peuplade) in the summer of 2020. In addition, he is the author of Irresponsible Mediums: The Chess Games of Marcel Duchamp (Book*hug Press) and punchlines (Mansfield Press). He is currently a PhD candidate in the Cinema and Media Studies Department at York University where he is an Elia Scholar, a VISTA doctoral Scholar and a 2020 Joseph-Armand Bombardier doctoral fellow. He is currently studying the cinema of facial recognition software and its impacts on citizenship, mobility and crisis.
PETER QUNCY NG
Peter Quincy Ng is a climate scientist, has been a postdoctoral fellow and has completed a Ph.D. in Environmental Science at the University of Toronto, where his dissertation concerned the potential migration of trees in Toronto’s urban forest under climate change. Curious about the world around him, Peter spends his time contemplating human geographies, unusual plant forms while trying his hand at being a polyglot.
