'Now Here Home'

Now open at stackt Market

Now Here Home is a contemplative space for reimagining shelter.

This social-practice installation by multidisciplinary artists, The Broadbent Sisters, addresses the homelessness crisis in Toronto. Through artistic representation, Now Here Home shines light on a solution for tiny home shelters gaining traction in Seattle called ‘True Hope Tiny House Village’. This meditative space plants a seed and imagines how container homes can be an affordable solution to help transition people off the streets.

A warm bed, a safe space, a door that locks, a place for your belongings. However tenuous or temporary, the idea of ‘home’ is essential and evokes a deep physical and spiritual need in all. A home is a place in which we live our private moments, a place where one can be unguarded, a place where we can be ourselves.

Now Here Home is a quiet and meditative installation, where city grates become glowing wooden crates that form a bed. On the back wall, sunset coloured candles and markings of ash act as the writing on the wall for swift action. Softened by the elements: bricks, tiles and rocks, gathered from Leslie Spit, are ritually laid out on the wooden crates. This sacred collection, made up of individual discarded objects, seem to speak to each other and unite as one. On the wall, an orange light shines through the slats of a window blind, evoking an environment of privacy and solitude. The Broadbent Sisters painting, ‘Into the Fire’ hangs on the wall and a monitor loops documentation of the ‘True Hope Tiny House Village’ in Seattle. The mural painted on the side of the building, invites the viewer in, and sends a message of creating more shelters, here & now.

The vision of the Now Here Home Village is an artistic proposition in collaboration with So Good City meant to inspire creative thinking and solutions by our community and our politicians. To join the conversation, please check out our Facebook page @NowHereVillage​.