Monument To Construction Workers | Part 1

My name is Margaret Priest. I’m an artist and I’m the artist who designed the Monument to Construction Workers. I didn’t create it, the construction workers created it.

Not one person ever builds anything. Building is very much a collaborative affair, and a beautifully collaborative affair.. And today in this extraordinary mix that is Toronto, and I’m part of that mix, I felt that the mix of what the workers brought should be present. So I wanted the monument to take the mystery out of the construction industry, because a lot of it’s hidden – the electrical stuff, the pipes, the foundations – so much of what a construction worker does is hidden. I wanted to pull that into public sight and create a museum for it, and the museum is this wall.

The unfilled squares in the grid have a very particular role to play. Their absence talks of ruin and loss and it also speaks of the future, what might be there. So I wanted them to be the presence of an absence. The other thing they do is I wanted them very specifically to frame that old wall on the building behind with the sort of bulging mortar and the decaying brick. That building is a sign in a way of the crumbling nature of cities, of the dark alleys, the dirty corners, that make cities in many ways exciting places to be.

Want to hear more? Check out Part 2.

Runtime 00:01:51