LANDSCAPES
installation and MURAL 
 Royal Bank of Canada, Main Branch, Union Station, Toronto.

LANDSCAPES

​Anna Binta Diallo
2022
Powder-coated aluminum
Dimensions variable

Curated by: Corrie Jackson and Stefan Hancherow, RBC
Presented by : TOWARDS 

Fabrication:
Aluminum panels: Alto Allumnium
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" Human beings have long used story-telling and folklore as a way to assign meaning and impose order on an otherwise chaotic world. For Anna Binta Diallo (b. 1983, Dakar, Senegal), interrogating these stories is an opportunity to question their fundamental nature – why they exist, how they’ve been constructed and told, and how they’ve ultimately shaped our world. In doing so, she raises questions regarding memory, identity, migration, personal and collective mythologies, as well as the relationship between language and history.

Spanning science, literature, and historical photography, the characters within Landscapes reference a diverse set of stories – extending to Canadian histories and how the country’s landscapes have been portrayed through visual media, art and language over time. At the center of Diallo’s work remains a fundamental question – How does one try to reconcile the complex, and often times conflicting elements of one’s own identity? And with Landscapes, what defines “Canadian” identity? Diallo expands this investigation into the ecological world, examining the ways in which humans have attempted to comprehend and exert control over the natural environment, and how migration has shaped that history. Taking the form of large scale, immersive installation, the works within Landscapes, combine human and animal forms with various scientific and ecological elements.
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Drawing from a wide set of references – spanning geographies and epochs, these hybridized figures seem to exist somewhere outside of the natural constructs of space and time. They appear simultaneously both futuristic, yet are firmly rooted in history. Through this, the work offers a space of possibility – one in which to slow down and re imagine how we might move towards a more symbiotic relationship with Canadian history and landscape. Diallo holds an MFA from Transart Institute and a BFA from University of Manitoba. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally including exhibitions in Toronto, Winnipeg, Montreal, and Berlin. "