The Bentway’s summer exhibition, Sun/Shade, lets artists, designers and researchers explore new thinking about comfortable urban spaces. Under the Gardiner Expressway, artists are transforming overlooked urban space into a functional response to the heat. The four works illustrate how architecture, materials and innovative public art can be used to combat urban heat.

In response to increasingly inhospitable urban areas facing climate change, can we design more livable, adaptable public spaces? Second Shade by Mary Mattingly envisions the city’s skyline as an integrated, climate-attentive ecosystem. She combines lush greenery and repurposed construction materials into an abstracted urban canopy.

Edra Soto’s la sombra que tu cobija / the shadow that shelters you references shade-making façades of working-class Puerto Rican bungalows. The expansive, sun-filtering threshold sits in a geometric pavilion under the Gardiner. The project reflects on the intersection of heat-responsive architecture, place-making and cultural heritage.

Secwépemc artist Tania Willard approaches the space below the highway as a tree canopy in Declaration of the Understory, reminiscent of the “understory” floor of southern Ontario forests. The mixed-media installation, floral motifs, iridescence and powerful slogans offer a mediation on the power of shade as a life force.

Like a sun catcher, artist duo Celeste’s majestic, quilted Casting a Net, Casting a Spell weaves in archetypes that have surrounded the sun since ancient times. This installation also offers relief from the heat and a space for gathering.