Art that “belongs to everyone”
FROM APRIL/MAY 2024 ISSUE OF WEST END PHOENIX
Martin Reis adding onto his Tour de Lego at Harbord and Clinton.
Photographer and multimedia artist Martin Reis has a knack for making art that captures the city’s attention. He donned a referee uniform to hand out yellow and red cards to drivers blocking crosswalks and installed colourful Lego installations that bring whimsy and interaction to city infrastructure. His “interventions,” as he refers to these guerrilla-style art projects, ask us to think about the type of city we want Toronto to be
What drew you to art in the first place?
I’ve always had a creative side; photography was one of my first passions. When I joined activist groups, I realized very quickly that I wasn’t very good at letter writing – and my penmanship is not good enough to make beautiful signs. So what could I do that would be useful? Because one of the big rules in activism is trying to find out what your strength is and doing that. So I started volunteering to do photography for different groups, like Fridays for Futures [a youth-led global climate-strike group] and Red Rebel Brigade [performance artists raising environmental awareness], documenting what they do and giving them the images. I got to know the people who were involved in the work, and eventually they challenged me to produce work myself.
Documenting an act of climate resistance for Red Rebel Brigade in Hamilton.
What’s the first piece of art you made after that?
It was a Lego piece that I made by request about a decade ago for a festival called 1,001 Acts in One Day, where artists around the world made 1,001 art pieces. I [was inspired by] a project in Europe called Dispatchwork, which fixes broken walls with Lego. Mine was located [in a broken cement planter] on Bloor just west of Brock. After that, I just kept going; I do a lot of work with an activist group called Urban Repair Squad. We built a Lego bike lane on Dupont and Lansdowne in 2011. One thing led to another, and I started realizing that I get the most enjoyment out of my work in the street. I have a gallery called Lyceum Gallery, where I do photography and performance work. But for the most part, I’m the happiest when I’m outside, doing what I like to do.
What do you like about Lego as a material?
It’s incredibly cheerful, fun and quirky. I always say that I’m trying to add more colour and joy to the city, one piece of Lego at a time. It also has universal appeal – everybody ‘gets’ Lego. And it allows you to be a child again. I guess it’s never too late to have a happy childhood, right?
Live Here, a photographic work by the artist.
Clearly not. I love that you raise important civic questions in such a whimsical way. Why does that approach appeal to you?
I find it breaks down barriers between people. There’s a clowning element to me, where I try to engage people by being silly. A good friend of mine, Shamez Amlani from La Palette, once told me that anger is not really a good emotion if you’re trying to engage people. The angrier you get, the funnier you have to get. So I try to be fun, because then I can say, ‘Okay, isn’t this situation kind of messed up? Can we not [do] this better? Can we get together and make a beautiful city together? We have so much opportunity to make a beautiful city here – every pole could be beautiful, fun, engaging, playful. So why don’t we do that?’ You can ask those questions in a very poignant and serious way. But you can also do it with beauty and laughter. And for me, that’s a lot more gratifying than being an angry person. Because I don’t think that’s me.
Your photographic work documents moments of change in Toronto and other cities, and you’ve shown that work in galleries around the world. How different is your approach to photography from the way you come at street art?
For me, photo journalism and art come from the same place: a heartfelt love for the natural world and empathy for my fellow humans and the places we live in – in my case, a city. However, while I use photography as a mirror held up to reality, I think of art as a hammer with which to shape it; [that’s] Bertolt Brecht. One type of work informs the other.
As Avery Goodcall: Crosswalk Referee, a performance piece that took place in Toronto last summer, Reis served bad drivers with yellow cards.
For example, I spent years documenting how cars can ruin cities and how the tragedy of road fatalities are built into the design of our roads. My response as a street artist was the performance piece Avery Goodcall: Crosswalk Referee. Road safety meets performance art.
Again, as a photographer who responds to light, shadow, colour, form, space and mood, I really began to notice how grey and muted the streets and buildings of our city were. So I responded to this in typical street artist fashion with bright colours. And what better medium than Lego?
What was the inspiration for the Tour de Lego, your recent piece outside the Sam James coffee shop on Harbord?
This is my coffee shop; I’m usually stopping every morning. Last fall, this pillar showed up. It was badly constructed, really ugly looking, nothing on it. It’s a little grotesque. My friends were like, ‘Are you going to do something about this?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I’m gonna put Lego around it!’ Eventually, we realized it was for a school zone sign, which is cool, but I realized this was an opportunity because it’s sort of in a grey zone. It’s on the sidewalk, it’s not on the streetscape. Nobody’s really going to care about it. So I got together with another family, the MacIntosh family, and one of my co-conspirators, Sean Martindale, and we started working. The bottom part was about 45 levels and my friends thought it was done, but as I got more Lego, I kept going. Now, it’s over two meters tall, and I’m very happy for people to play with it or add to it.
An older Lego installation Reis made for a festival called 1,001 Acts in One Day, in a broken planter at Bloor and Brock.
That requires an element of trust, though, doesn’t it? Do you ever worry that someone’s going to vandalize your installations?
I don’t worry too much about that. The thing about street art is, once you put it out there, it belongs to everyone in the community. I take a lot of pride in what I’m doing, but I don’t really expect somebody to adhere to my philosophy or what I think it should look like. Honestly, all my other Lego installations have disappeared, and usually pretty quickly, so this has been a surprise. It has now been here for almost exactly two months. People have added things, a couple of things have been taken as souvenirs – and that’s okay. It’s definitely a community trust project, and the community has come through in spades.
What do you hope people will take away or think about when they see this piece, or any of your work?
I want to remind people that we’re in this city together, and we can build a city together. We have to build our own city – we can’t wait for somebody to do it. We may be told that we don’t have choices, but we do.