Toronto Food Stories: An art residency

Meet the artists

Ehiko Odeh

Originally hailing from Lagos and currently residing in Toronto, Ehiko is a versatile artist with a diverse background spanning seven years.

Her creative journey is deeply intertwined with her spiritual beliefs and a profound sense of playfulness. Ehiko’s work encompasses a wide range of themes, such as decolonization, coiffure, ethnobotany, memory, and play.

Follow Ehiko @ehikoo
Check out her work at ehik0studio.cargo.site

Nathan Baya

Nathan is an artist, songwriter and performer born and raised in Toronto.

Nathan’s parents immigrated to Canada from the Democratic Republic of Congo. His cultural heritage has influenced his musical sound and through his electrifying energy, he’s performed on over 100 stages across the city. You can listen to his tracks, 24, Mi Amor, Wavy and many more on your favourite streaming platform.

Follow Nathan on Instagram and Spotify @nathan.baya
Check out his work at nathanbaya.com

Sun

Sun is a wiggly inter-dimensional being.

They are an AuDHD, Nonbinary, Queer Tamil Artist, from a farming village in Tamil Nadu, raised in Scarborough and Seattle. Sun uses found, recycled, and living materials to create multi-media artworks to share their intersectional world experience with others. Their work is heavily inspired by their sense of justice, love, and peace, as well as their relationship with their Tamil heritage, the land and all beings.

Follow Sun @lilsun.draws
Check out their work at www.lilsun.art

Raoul Olou

Raoul is a multidisciplinary artist based in Toronto.

He creates work that references personal experiences, race, ontology, intuition, and shared anthropologie inspired by quantum physics and speculative fiction.

Follow Raoul @raoul_o
Check out his work at raoulolou.com

Learning stage: Kicking off at BCI Farm

The Toronto Food Stories art residency began with Moe, Hansel and the artists meeting each other (many for the first time) over a shared meal of jerk chicken, rice and peas, and coleslaw with the School Grown team at Burnhamthorpe Collegiate Institute (BCI) Farm.

At the farm, Moe and Hansel facilitated a workshop where the group discussed the tensions between food justice, food sovereignty and the right to food, considering questions like:

💭 What are the differences between food as a right and food sovereignty?
💭 What does it mean to take a rights-based approach on stolen land built with slave labour?
💭 How can we navigate those contradictions?

Finally, Ekow — School Grown Youth Engagement Coordinator at FoodShare – gave the group a tour of the farm at BCI.

Scenes from the BCI Farm meet-up

First site visit: Emmett Avenue Community Garden

After getting to know each other and sharing a meal at BCI Farm, the artists visited the first community partner, Emmett Avenue Community Garden.

This green space of 40 plots is located in Eglinton Flats Park, where community members from the Weston-Mount Dennis area can come together to learn about and take part in community food growing.

Led by Charlyn Ellis, the garden engages a diverse group of residents, many of whom live in high rise buildings in the neighbourhood and have limited access to outdoor space, providing them with an opportunity to bring together knowledge from their various homelands.

During the visit, community grower Jordan Ghedle gave a tour of the garden and shared her personal experiences with returning to her Eritrean roots to uncover the medicinal and healing properties of plants, using food as medicine and food growing as a healing practice.

Scenes from the Emmett Avenue Community Garden site visit

Second site visit: Black Creek Community Farm

Next up the artists visited Black Creek Community Farm (BCCF), an 8-acre urban farm located along Jane Street between Steeles and Finch.

During the visit, executive director Ohemma Boateng shared about the history of the farm. The original labour was done by Black youth from the Jane and Finch area under the leadership of Solomon Boye. They had almost no machinery at the time and cleared the lands by hand.

Ohemaa explained that despite attempts by the City and various corporations and non-profits to take control over the land, the conception of the farm is owed to Black and Indigenous farmers and food growers who started the work and continue to advance it to this day.

Anna Mancuso, the farm’s Program Manager, and Ohemaa also gave the artists a really fun tour of the farm. The group had the opportunity to sit around the fire pit, feed the chickens, and snack on raspberries, cucamelon, and so many more herbs, fruits, and veggies. 🐔🌿

It was a day full of really rich discussion along with lots of laughter and play!

Scenes from the Black Creek Farm site visit

Final site visit: Malvern Urban Farm

For the final site visit the artists met with another community partner, Malvern Urban Farm.

A project of the Malvern Family Resource Centre, Malvern Urban Farm is a 2-acre farm located on Morningside between Neilson and McNicoll. There are around 14 farmers, each with 1600-square foot plots on which they grow food for themselves, their families, and their neighbours.

During the visit, Claire Perttula — Food Justice Projects Coordinator at the Malvern Family Resource Centre — gave the group a tour of the farm and shared some of her future visions for the space. She also brought the crew over to the weekly farmers’ market which takes place on Wednesdays, where farmers can sell their produce to the community.

Scenes from the Malvern Urban Farm site visit

Showcase stage: Celebrating the artists’ creations

After being thoroughly inspired by the work the community partners are doing and connecting it with their own perspectives and experiences around food, the four artists spent several months working on their creations and now it was finally time to showcase them.

Moe and Hansel designed the showcase events to be a collaboration with community partners across the city — an opportunity to invite other local artists to share their work and encourage knowledge-sharing amongst the artists, community members and community groups.

Sun x Malvern Urban Farm

For Sun’s showcase event in April 2024, the team partnered with Malvern Urban Farm at their event ‘Unearthing Stories of Food Justice: Films and Conversations about Farming, Food Justice and Art’. This event was an opportunity for the Malvern community to come together and learn more about the significance of BIPOC-led urban agriculture projects.

At the event, three powerful films were screened, highlighting the journeys of BIPOC Canadian farmers and exploring themes of food sovereignty and community through stories of Indigenous resurgence and regenerative farming practices.

Following the film screening, a panel discussion took place spotlighting Malvern-based farmers Sumathy Thankan, Jennifer Forde and Hermmela Tafesse, who spoke about their experiences with accessing and growing food, and how farming has given them new ways of relating to the community and themselves.

The event featured the launch of resident artist Sun’s zine, ‘Eating is Hard, Food Sovereignty is a Journey,’ a piece that explores food joy and their relationship to food.

Watch our reel spotlighting Sun’s artwork, the film screening and panel discussion here.

Scenes from Sun’s showcase event

Nathan x BCCF

Nathan’s showcase event was held in collaboration with Black Creek Community Farm and their Earth Day celebration in April 2024.

This was a day of community building and land stewardship, and an opportunity for community members to come together and take part in a farm clean up, seed exchange, plastic upcycling workshop and other activities centered on urban agriculture and waste reduction.

Event attendees had the opportunity to view the launch of Nathan’s music video, ‘Real Me’, which revisits the building where he grew up in the Jane & Finch neighbourhood, and how his artistic practice changed his life.

And finally, local artist and farmer Siki Soberetonari read from Assata: An Autobiography and performed several of her own spoken word pieces.

See a brief recap of Nathan’s showcase and the whole Earth Day celebration at BCCF here.

Scenes from Nathan’s showcase event

Raoul x Greenest City

Raoul’s showcase event, Archives of the future, took place at Greenest City’s lush Milky Way Gardens in May 2024. At the event, Raoul spoke about how he used pulp to make paintings that blurred timelines, creating compositions that juxtapose past, present and visions of the future.

Through these paintings, Raoul encouraged attendees to consider a future Toronto in which we’re able to see open skies with countless stars, and what else that might indicate about our environment, climate and food access.

Guests also had the opportunity to participate in a still-life drawing session led by local artist Sarah Aranha. With a variety of foods available as inspiration from instant noodles to fresh produce, participants were guided through drawing exercises that invited them to release judgment from their illustrative outcomes and to see how all foods can be beautiful and nourishing.

View some of the highlights from Raoul’s exhibit and Sarah’s still life drawing workshop here.

Scenes from Raoul’s showcase event

Ehiko x Recess Community

For Ehiko’s event in July 2024, the team partnered with Recess Community to hold the event in their creative community space.

The event began with an artist talk where Ehiko shared a series of cyanotype prints on wood which she created during the residency, and discussed her inspiration for the paintings. She explained her journey of experimenting with a new technique (cyanotyping) while learning about the critical role of Black youth farmers in establishing Black Creek Community Farm.

After Ehiko’s talk, attendees gathered for a Wildflower Floral Design Workshop with Nadine Phillip. Using a locally sourced selection of wildflowers and edible flowers, Nadine gave a tutorial on methods for building a bouquet, and facilitated participants in creating their own unique bouquets.

Check out footage from Ehiko’s showcase featuring Nadine’s floral workshop here.

Scenes from Ehiko’s showcase event

Toronto Food Stories: Looking ahead

After one year of working together, the Toronto Food Stories art residency is now coming to a close.

The team at FoodShare is so grateful for all of the artists, food workers, community groups and community members who came together to make this project possible.

The residency provided an opportunity to explore the local food movements that are shaping Toronto’s food landscape, and to think about how art can be a meaningful way of engaging with and supporting food sovereignty work in the city.

Stay tuned to find out what’s next from FoodShare:

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