inSPIREd Sunday

June 2018 - Toronto ON

I've shown you the Church of the Redeemer before but it had caught my eye this week with its red geraniums.

I quickly forgot about the flowers as I saw the red dress hanging outside.

Red dresses are a reminder of the estimated 1,200 missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada.

The REDress Project was started by Winnipeg-based Métis artist Jaime Black in 2010 and this is its first tour through Toronto.

“Through the installation, I hope to draw attention to the gendered and racialized nature of violent crimes against Aboriginal women and to evoke a presence through the marking of absence,” Black said in her artist’s statement.

According to the Native Women’s Association of Canada, Indigenous women are almost three times more likely to be killed by a stranger than non-Indigenous women, and nearly half of these cases remain unsolved.

This project is part of a permanent exhibit at the Canadian Museum of Human Rights which we were lucky to see last September while in Winnipeg.