Water is Life

Lake Ontario provides drinking water to 9 million people. In June 2021, a series of regulations that set the limits for direct discharges of toxic pollutants to Ontario’s lakes and rivers were repealed. This leaves Ontario with no sectoral standards for industrial water pollution.

This mural depicts a glass of drinking water being filled with water from Lake Ontario. Showing a fantastical depiction of waste, it imagines what it would be like if invisible contaminants were instead obvious. This mural asks: How would we act if the microplastics that can never be fully filtered from our drinking water were visible? How much more concerned would we be if we could witness, with our bare eyes, the increasing threat to our drinking water? I hope that my mural will serve as a reminder that protecting and healing our bodies of water is work that we cannot afford to lose sight of.

About the Artist:
Hello Kirsten (she/her) is a muralist and artist who lives in Toronto with her partner and collaborator JP King. Inspired by textiles, her detailed artworks showcase layered histories, using ornamentation and patterning to reveal alternate narratives that celebrate diversity in all its forms. She approaches each public artwork as representative of a particular time and place, one that speaks not only to who has passed through and who is here now, but also who might come in the future. In the complicated reality of a contemporary globalized world, Hello Kirsten’s paintings are a commentary on the fact that we are all in this together: collaborating, teaching, learning from, and inspiring one another. She has been creating murals and public art installations for over a decade, in cities spanning the globe.

About Women Paint Riverside:
‘Women Paint Riverside: Currents of Change’ is a public art program about transformation, community, and our relationship to the Don River and Lake Ontario into which the Riverside community flows. Twenty+ murals that form this project add beauty and colour to the laneways in the Riverside community, celebrate our important relationship with water, and were created by women and gender diverse artists from various backgrounds. This project is a partnership between East End Arts, Women Paint, Native Women in the Arts, and the Riverside BIA. #WomenPaintRiverside

This project was made possible with funding support by StreetArt Toronto, Hullmark, Streetcar Developments, and the Riverside BIA.

For more information on this mural visit:
http://www.eastendarts.ca/women-paint-riverside

Where to Find This Mural

Location: 678 Queen St. E, Toronto, ON, M4M 1G8 Get Directions

Accessibility: No Accessibility Constraints