DesignTO on the Danforth: Buy Local, Think Global, and Hug Your Mom
by Anne Marie Kirsten
Image credits: Anne Marie Kirsten, tortoon, Freepik
With the promise of bubble tea and a browse at Book City, my daughter tagged along with me one Saturday in January to see a DesignTO Festival art installation. Most parents of teens will recognize this tried-and-true system of bartering for quality time. Ultimately, driving to the Danforth from Toronto’s West End was a win-win for me.
DesignTO is a non-profit Toronto arts and culture organization that believes design can create a sustainable, just, and joyful world: something that, given the current political climate, many people can certainly get behind. The ten-day event, now in its 15th year, is Canada’s largest annual non-profit design festival. Celebrating design as a multidisciplinary form of thinking and making, it includes over 100 free exhibitions and events that form Toronto’s Design Week every January. The festival attracts up to a million attendees, boasts $120 million in tourism impact, and includes both online and in-person offerings.
My daughter and I arrive at The Secret Planet Print Shop at 918 Danforth Ave. and park. When I announce, ‘We’re here,’ she looks up from her phone, confused. She’d assumed we were headed to a traditional gallery. We get out of the car, cross the street and stand in front of the bright red and yellow shop. “But where is it?” she asks, referring to the art we were meant to see, whilst looking straight at it. The shop has a bunch of boxes piled up in the window. “It’s right there,” I say, pointing. She moves closer, slowly nodding and smiling as she reads the print on the boxes. “This artist…is a real one,” she proclaims, which I interpret as teen slang for ‘awesome.’
The artist, Christopher Rouleau, first exhibited Amazon Sucks at a storefront on Dundas Street in 2017. This year, it is being shown as part of DesignTO for the first time. The exhibit consists of 20-odd boxes piled along the storefront, emblazoned with the word ‘Amazon’ in red and blue ink. When you look closely, you’ll see the word ‘sucks’ in smaller print beneath it. The slogan includes the lines “24,000,000 Giant Size Pkgs.” and “Stuff You Don’t Need…Fast!”
Image Credits: Anne Marie Kirsten
When, a few days later, I touch base with the artist and ask about the inspiration to re-exhibit his work, Christopher says: “I applied to exhibit the work at DesignTO because Amazon continues to dominate the news. I also wanted to share the exhibit in the East End—Secret Planet was a perfect fit.” And it does seem like Amazon, the global company worth nearly $2.5 trillion, is perpetually in the news. Examples of recent headlines include Jeff Bezos’s presence at President Trump’s inauguration, the censoring of a Pulitzer-prize-winning political cartoonist at the Washington Post (owned by Bezos), and the impending closure of Amazon facilities in Quebec, where thousands of people will lose their jobs. Curiously, this closure came after one of the facilities had unionized, although the company denies this was a factor.
“Amazon’s decision to close their unionized [store] comes as no surprise, and it is terrible news for the 2000 employees who were laid off. My only hope is that it draws attention to the broader issues with Amazon’s policies, and people make the choice to shop elsewhere,” he concludes.
With the second Trump term now in full swing, never before has the convergence of issues around consumerism, free speech, climate change, and democracy felt so intense. Reflecting on what he hopes those engaging with his work come away with, Christopher says, “Ultimately, my intent is to draw attention to the larger issues and encourage viewers to think more critically about their online purchasing power. Like a single voice in a protest, or an individual ballot in an election, your actions contribute to direct, cumulative change. Please make a commitment to support and promote local business as often as possible, even if it costs a few more cents than Amazon.”
The second DesignTO installation I visit, this time on my own, is one gracing the Fabric Spark storefront at 1992 Danforth Ave. Portrait of Mother and Son is the work of Cristina De Miranda, a quilter, designer, and owner of Ships & Violins: an online company that specializes in modern quilt patterns. What I stand before is not something you’d find on the bed in your granny’s spare room; the quilt is prominently displayed in the store window and consists of circular components set against a teal backdrop. Upon closer inspection, I notice radiating circles-within-circles that are impossibly woven into a basket weave motif, evocative of a baby in utero. This work, which took an estimated 80 hours to create, is one of three quilts in Cristina’s ‘Motherhood Series’, a growing collection of quilts inspired by her first year as a new mother. She describes her work as follows: “The placement of colour within the woven circles creates the optical illusion of a circle radiating outward–evolving. They serve to show that, as my son was growing, I, too, was growing into my new role as a mother.”
“I wanted the public–beyond quilters and sewists–to see what modern quilts are and to appreciate that they belong on the design stage as well,” Cristina says. The other completed quilt in the series is entitled Good Morning Mom!, and depicts her son’s smile as she greets him each morning. It was juried into QuiltCon 2025, a modern quilting convention hosted by The Modern Quilt Guild. She hopes to have the third in the series complete by the end of the year.
Quilting as storytelling and activism has been around for a long time and continues today. When I enquire about this history, Cristina says: “I’ve never seen a quilt without a story, but social justice has become an important theme within the quilting community in recent years. Organizations like the Social Justice Sewing Academy and Quilts for Survivors use quilts as a mechanism for empowerment, discussion, and healing within their communities. They do incredible work.”
She also credits individual artists with pushing the needle on important issues. She tells me that The American Quilter’s Society (AQS) recently asked that two textile pieces entitled Your Mother. Your Daughter. Your Sister. Your Grandmother. You. by Laura Shaw Feit and Origin by Yvonne Iten-Scott be removed from a Studio Arts Quilts Association (SAQA) exhibit they would be hosting. Feit’s piece was made in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe. v Wade. (1973), and Iten-Scott’s depicted a woman’s womb. Cristina says the quilting community immediately found it suspect that these two quilts were to be censored and unseen. After deliberating, SAQA unanimously agreed to pull their entire exhibit from the AQS show.
Coming back to the theme of her piece on display, I ask Cristina about her journey into motherhood and how it inspires her work. “Sometimes we can brush life events away with a shrug, and that’s not how I wanted to think about motherhood. I wanted to be thoughtful about what I was experiencing. I wanted to put words and visuals to the good, the confusing, and the challenging moments, so that I could remember what it was like and how I came to be where I am. It’s a bonus to see others connect to the pieces as they recall their own experiences as new moms,” she replies.
I don’t know if it’s the weight of global affairs or my internal reckoning with the fact that each day my own children are farther and farther from those baby days, but I am moved by this quilt. The fact that its message is delivered by an object (made by hand, not by Amazon) that’s synonymous with comfort isn’t lost on me. It makes me want to run back home and tell my daughter, the person that made me a mother, she can have as many bubble teas with me as she wants, so long as I can linger a little while longer with her close by in this complicated, tender moment in time.