In Transit: Reflections from Latin American Heritage Month and Canadian Islamic Heritage Month
After nearly a decade and a half in the making, Edmonton’s Valley Line LRT (Light-Rail Transit) from the Mill Woods neighbourhood to Downtown opened on November 4, 2023.
Having first began operations in 1978, the city’s LRT system now serves a daily ridership in the tens of thousands and, within the stations and pedways connecting rail lines across neighbourhoods and the undulating North Saskatchewan River, the diverse beauty of Edmonton’s terrain and peoples emerges.
Recognizing the influential role that physical space plays in connecting a diverse urban population, especially one in near-constant movement, the Paint the Rails project began development in 2017. The concept of Paint the Rails was simple enough, but the scope was enormous: Public murals, conceived and executed by local artists and reflecting the distinct settlement of communities inhabiting the municipal landscape, across a number of Edmonton’s LRT stations. The opening point for mural ideas was both universal and hyper-localized:
Start with stories that need telling.
Members from the John Humphrey Centre for Peace and Human Rights (JHC) spent time over several years with eleven different cultural groups, witnessing their stories of strength, resilience, and celebration. By listening to these un[der]told tales and honouring them through the amplification of storytelling art, Paint the Rails gave a sort of concretely colourful voice and public presence to members of some of Edmonton’s more marginalized and racialized communities.
Two of the communities involved in the Paint the Rails project -- Latinx and Muslim – were recognized recently with national awareness months: October 2023 was both Latin American Heritage Month and Canadian Islamic Heritage Month. Having a month designated to learning about and acknowledging the experiences and accomplishments of these two distinct communities, paired with the opening of a new LRT line, brought us at the JHC back to reflecting on two beautiful transit-based art pieces.
Stories That Weave Us, the mural at the Kingsway/Royal Alexandra Transit Centre, partly manifests and displays stories from Edmonton’s Islamic faith community. Paint the Rails artists AJA Louden, Carla-Rae Taylor, Dana Belcourt, and Matthew Cardinal integrated imagery of balls of yarn with a pair of hands ‘knitting together’ disparate yet connected communities. Within the yarn, elements of Islamic representation emerge: a crescent moon, geometric ornamentation, the city’s historic Al-Rashid Mosque (established in 1938, the oldest mosque in Canada). These images, when viewed within the wider context of the mural, advance and recede in the viewer’s gaze and deftly symbolize the diversity of Islamic identity within the city: As of 2023, Edmonton’s Muslim community surpasses 90,000 individuals from 62 different cultural backgrounds.
Fabric of the City, the mural at the Capital Line’s northern terminus Clairview Station, integrates the colourful patchwork art style of arpilleras – a construction of burlap and scrap cloth most notably used in Chile. During times of struggle, and particularly during the Pinochet Regime years of 1973-1990, arpilleras were made and displayed by women as subversive art. Arpilleras imagery of that time evoked impoverished living conditions and government human rights violations, making the pieces controversial and outright banned. Alongside textile-inspired mural art from municipal Chinese, Sri Lankan, and Filipino communities, Fabric of the City’s arpilleras speak to the histories of trauma, struggle, and solidarity experienced by many of Edmonton’s Latin American residents both in their countries of origin and in Canada. Paint the Rails art team members AJA Louden, Dana Belcourt, and Matthew Cardinal incorporated these stories of resilience in a manner that brings the viewer seemingly inside the fabric itself, wrapping strangers together in a narrative of shared place -- even amongst the hum and restlessness of a busy transit platform.
The arpilleras of Fabric of the City
__________________________
Would you like to see and learn a little more about Paint the Rails?
You can hear about the murals featured in this blog post by watching these two short videos:
Read more about Paint the Rails and the stories that inspired and informed the project here.
Are you an educator or know someone who is? Take a look at our Paint the Rails Teacher Resource.