“All love is powerful” tonight

WHAT? Opening and reception of “All love is powerful,” a new public art intervention
WHEN? Tonight (May 23), from 4:30pm to 11pm
WHERE? Mile End Mission (99 Bernard West, at St. Urbain) and the Park With No Name (Van Horne and St. Laurent)

Dare-Dare, the Mile End arts centre, continues its tradition of innovative community-based art with “All love is powerful,” a new creation by Buenos Aires-based artist Andrea Cavagnaro. Over the past two weeks, Cavagnaro has covered part of the façade of the Mile End Mission, a social service organization at the corner of St. Urbain and Bernard, in a kistchy food-printed vinyl wrap. It’s all part of Dare-Dare’s mission to disrupt daily life and force people to reconsider things they have overlooked or taken for granted. Here’s the official spiel:

From May 5 to 23, Andrea Cavagnaro will intervene with the Mile-End Community Mission upon the building that houses it and on its premises. Using various materials from a kitsch aesthetic, she will open breaches in daily life and its power struggles, by proposing a transformation of the building’s facade and a new reading of its interior space.

Some of Cavagnaro’s projects call attention to the fragmentation of public space in Latin American cities like São Paulo. A public space is not public, but it’s not private either. It is ambiguous; it is both things at the same time. A public space always belongs to someone and it could also be shared with neighbours and pedestrians concurrently.

“I always think about these small, inconsequential gestures that change the conventional stability, they are substantially helpful. They bring art to private life in a nameless and silent way: the audience doesn’t know what is happening is ‘art’. They simultaneously reveal – in a deeper, quite subversive manner – things the system tries to hide: everything could be different, nothing is in jeopardy, nothing wrong happens. It’s just different and intimate from the extremely boring everyday life. The possibility of altering the most private domestic space becomes clear; these gestures cross-examine and evaluate the world.”

“All love is powerful” will open tonight with an event at the Mile End Mission from 4 to 8pm. Bring some non-perishable food to donate! Afterwards, the party will shift over to Dare-Dare’s Parc sans nom, at the corner of St. Laurent and Van Horne.

Photos courtesy Dare-Dare