Baketigweyaa, an Anishinaabemowin word for the curve or bend of a tributary, traces the slow meander of rivers across time. The work is a six metre hanging sculpture of five winding wooden beams, each inlaid with mirror, suspended within the new John Innes Recreation Centre.
The form draws from the Two Row Wampum, reimagining its parallel paths as living waterways. Where the original belt holds two vessels travelling side by side, here the rivers bend toward one another. Banks shift. Channels braid. Communities overlap and converge.
The mirrored inlay carries the building and its visitors into the wood, so the sculpture holds whoever stands beneath it. Treaty becomes landscape. Landscape becomes reflection.
Commissioned through the City of Toronto public art competition, with support from Highness Global.