Peace Taxi: Project and Documentary
Peace Taxi catalogue cover, 2003. Design by LEVEL.
Site specific artworks in Toronto taxis
Opening: Wednesday, August 6, 2003
6pm-9pm
Meet at Downsview subway station at the passenger pickup and take a ride in a Peace Taxi.
Peace Taxi: A Documentary
Free screening at the Royal Ontario Museum
Friday, May 14, 2004
8:30 pm
Peace Taxi is an art project conceived by Rashmi Varma with Rachel Kalpana James and curated by Cyrus Irani. SAVAC’s programming committee: Cyrus Irani, Rachel Kalpana James, Riaz Mehmood, Amin Rehman, and Rashmi Varma invited cross cultural artists to join them in creating site-specific artwork inside Toronto taxis for the month of August 2003.
Peace Taxi is an art project that brings cross-cultural artists, taxi drivers and the general public together in response to globalization and the threat to civil liberties around the world. In part, this project examines the reaction of taxi drivers to the events of September 11. In New York City, taxi drivers displayed the US flag as a unifying symbol, a specific declaration of allegiance to the “right side” in the battle against terrorism. Some Sikh taxi drivers even added mini-flags to their turbans for extra symbolic protection.
Taxi drivers are workers who occupy a private/public space with their customers and are more vulnerable to racism and hate crimes. Taxi drivers are predominantly from immigrant communities. Regardless of professional training and due to systemic barriers, taxi driving is one of the more accessible forms of available employment, despite the growing dangers.
Peace Taxi aims to bring attention to the situation of these "frontline" workers. The participating artists are: Judy Cheung (Toronto), Shilpa Gupta (Mumbai, India), Hawra Harianawala (Toronto), Joanne Hui &Jan Schotte (Montreal), Anita James (Toronto), Rachel Kalpana James (Toronto), Arshad Khan (Toronto), Nas Khan (Toronto), Jennifer Matotek (Toronto), Riaz Mehmood (Toronto), Amin Rehman (Toronto), MSC Satya Sai (Noida, India), SPURSE (Austin, Texas), Darshana Vora (London, UK), Rashmi Varma (Toronto) and collaborative artists: Alia Toor(New York), Nitin Mukul (New York), & Farjad Nabi (Lahore, Pakistan).
The artworks are not limited to any specific medium. They are symbolic objects hung from the rearview mirror, audio pieces played in the interior of the taxi, take-away postcards and change purses, questionnaires and interviews, installations that transform the interiors of the taxis, a variety of bookworks, text and image interventions and more. These site-specific works hope to stimulate consideration of the everyday experience of the taxi drivers and the idea of the taxi as a shared private/public space. Peace Taxi hopes to demonstrate the power of art as social activism, engaging artists and cross-cultural communities in innovative art process and practice.
