TRACES

Poetic vision of an uncertain future and a reflection upon our present, the TRACES art installation situated on the Canada Pavilion site at Expo 2020 Dubai, challenges visitors and raises awareness of the growing threat to ecosystems caused by climate change. Commissioned to populate the Plaza grounds leading up to the Pavilion Entry Hall, KANVA took a national, yet universal approach to designing a public installation that aligned with both Canada’s participation at the Expo and Expo 2020 Dubai’s themes of Opportunity, Mobility, and Sustainability. The concept began with the location of the Pavilion in the sustainability sector of the Expo grounds, and with the theme of Canadian landscapes and natural diversity. KANVA embarked on a mission to connect hearts, heads, and hands in pursuit of a brighter future that reinterprets relationships between inhabitants of the planet. In developing a concept that would be artistic, poetic, and meaningful, they studied habitat degradation before embracing a visual that captured the very essence of their message – a rising murmur of birds, swirling across the sky in a massive, collective movement. In order to capture and convey a message of urgency surrounding the issue of rapid habitat decline, KANVA insisted on the fossilization of an inhabited landscape, where birds are suspended in motion in a fossilized form that preserves “traces’’ of their existence. The installation unfolds in a series of eight boxes, spread across the plaza grounds of the Canada Pavilion. Each box, measuring 8’ x 8’x 8’, contains a precious object that embodies the beauty of dynamic life in suspension, complemented by multimedia interactions. As visitors weave their way towards the pavilion, they move through multisensorial experiences of discovery and self-appropriation. The Jewel initiates conversation by placing fossilized birds on a pedestal. The Nearness highlights the movement of birds within a vertical landscape. The Memorial symbolizes a horizontal tomb where visitors pay tribute to a fallen species. The Forgotten are stacked cubes of illuminated prototypes that have been cast aside, symbolizing the careless discarding of objects we once cherished. The Seat is an old school desk that reveals a distressed bird in a seascape of black ink. It invokes a sense of individual responsibility by depicting the effects of ocean spills on the specie. The Gathering focuses on collective responsibility, embodying the process of problem solving around a table, and inspired by a cube of fossilized birds emerging from the center. The Sanctuary is an enclosure devoid of human interference with its white canvas animated by a flowing stream of birds. The last box, the Awareness, consists of four chairs with an empty bird cage suspended from the ceiling. As visitors take a seat and face each other, the ambiance softens to a soothing garden serenade of singing birds. KANVA also designed the mural of the entry hall to the Canada Pavilion. While the mural is a fixed presentation for Expo 2020 Dubai, the eight cubes are destined to travel the world, where they will persevere as flocking ambassadors of hope.