A year ago, early on a Sunday morning, I walked past the Gardiner Museum as they were hoisting Jun Kaneko’s giant ceramic head onto its metal pedestal in front of the building. A year later, I revisited the head for a bit of night photography. You can see the results below.
Naturally, I wondered what the head means. Last year, women were wearing horizontal stripes everywhere, and I wondered if maybe the head was a fashion thing. Then I discovered that Kaneko had made the head in 2002, so it seems unlikely he was working in cahoots with the fashion industry. Then I noticed the horizontal stripes at the University/Bloor intersection where pedestrians cross and I wondered if maybe the head was part of a themed city planning exercise. But “planning” and “city” aren’t exactly two words you hear a lot in the same sentence, at least not in Toronto.
One possibility that seems more plausible is that the stripes speak to the hybrid identity that most people in Toronto experience by virtue of having come from somewhere else. Born in Japan, Kaneko now makes his home in Omaha, Nebraska, so he may be familiar with that experience. I asked the head if it had any thoughts on the matter, but it had no comment.
