Canada’s architecture is film-famous but unlike Paris, New York, London, or Rio de Janeiro, our cities rarely play themselves in film and television. Toronto stands in for Tokyo, for example, while Vancouver and Montreal masquerade as Moscow, Paris, and New York.

Impostor Cities is an international exhibition that seeks to repatriate our architecture and celebrate the legacy of over a half-century of Canada’s most renowned architectural doubles. Impostor Cities also introduces a playful yet pointed counter-proposition the popular image of our national identity by investigating why Canada’s buildings are so good at doubling as elsewhere. How do we think about authenticity and identity in an age where artifice in media becomes indistinguishable from reality? Impostor Cities digs deep to examine how this artifice has shaped our buildings and spaces as it has our culture and politics; our understanding of the past, the design of our present and how we imagine our future environments.

EXHIBITION

As Canada’s official representation, Impostor Cities, will take over the Canada Pavilion from May 22 to November 21, 2021. The exterior of the pavilion will be wrapped in green fabric, drawing attention amidst the biennale excitement and highlighting the controversial symbolism of the pavilion’s ‘tipi-shaped’ architecture. Online and on camera, using green screening technology, an iconic Canadian building will take the pavilion’s place in the Giardini and transform a historic part of Venice into Canada.

Inside the pavilion, an interactive multi-screen video installation will induce new ways of experiencing Canadian architecture through film. Combining supercuts of film footage and an interactive library of the real buildings, explain how fictional worlds rely on our real cities and expand uncanny moments of recognition: a new recognition of the Canada Pavilion and the shock of recognition of familiar cityscapes and buildings in a film. Impostor Cities highlights the importance of architecture, Canadian architecture in particular, and the role it has quietly played in shaping the world’s cultural narratives through film.

Impostor Cities was selected through a national juried competition, with Mirko Zardini (Executive Director and Chief Curator, Canadian Centre for Architecture), Kitty Scott (Carol and Morton Rapp Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto),  Sasa Radulovic (Architect, 5468796 architecture, Winnipeg) and Manon Asselin (Architect, Atelier TAG, Montreal) on the selection committee.

https://impostorcities.com/