So the city can exist

The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the grating of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls.

-Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 1972

In Italo Calvino's now fabled text, Invisible Cities, the reader is led, page by page, across imagined cities and spaces populated by the multitudes that cities contain. The cities we encounter are, at their very essence, revelations in multiplicity - of people, of details, of sights and smells and sounds that are forever changing, and in motion. The history of a city, real or imagined, as Calvino notes, is written in every detail, every contour.

Cities are places of both promise and possibility, but also of struggle and instability. They are sites for interconnectivity, for cultural mixing and intermingling, and movement, and this influx of peoples and ideas is both exhilarating and fraught. The histories cities contain are made manifest through the remnants that illuminate these dichotomies. 

For the artists in So the city can exist, the city is muse. A particular city or cities, real or imagined, function as a recurring source of inspiration, fostering ideas with which to respond to, react against, or deeply engage with over a sustained period of time. The exhibition artists represent discrete elements that comprise a city's unique features - its architecture, power grids, façades, signage, and the people that inhabit it - through a range of approaches and viewpoints. Varied and somewhat disparate, the works on view offer particular visualizations of the urban landscape. The city has long been a site for artistic exploration and creative experimentation, and the artists in So the city can exist build upon these legacies, albeit in forms that are often altogether different in intention and scope than their predecessors.

Curated by Nick Makanna and MacKenzie Stevens