EDMONTON artist, Ravina Toor, will be unveiling a mural celebrating the rich diversity of the city she calls home.
Commissioned by the Meadows Community League, Ravina created an original art piece for the ice rink at Larkspur Park as well as the garage door adjacent to the community league building. The objective of the mural was to create a welcoming environment for residents and visitors while incorporating elements of cultural diversity, beautifying the park, and fostering community and youth engagement.
In order to co-create the mural with local youth, Ravina held two paint workshops to collect ideas for the final piece.
“It was incredibly important to the community league and myself for this to be a mural that represented the values and sentiments of the local community. I was inspired by the art pieces created by the children and it was a meaningful experience to incorporate their ideas into the final artwork,” says Toor.
Born and raised in Edmonton, Toor has been creating art since she was a child but started sharing her work publicly through social media in 2020. She has amassed over 75,000 followers on her social media platforms and has been involved in a number of creative projects including a commission for Disney, a feature in a Rails, Jails and Trolleys Documentary, a publication in the Art Table Book by Product of Culture and much more. She has also been featured in a number of exhibitions across Canada.
In August 2021, Toor painted her first mural in partnership with Harneet Chahal and Zoe Harveen Kaur as part of the YYC Bump Festival. The mural was inspired by the farmer protests taking place in India and the three women used art as a form of advocacy.
This will be Toor’s first solo mural and that too in her hometown.
The general public is invited to the mural unveiling which will be taking place at Larkspur Park, Edmonton, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. There will be musical performances, bouncy castles, face painting and food trucks. This will also be an opportunity to have a meet and greet with the artist and engage in community.
“Growing up in Millwoods where there is so much cultural diversity, I never saw that represented in traditional art spaces. This mural was an opportunity for me to create artwork in which people could see themselves represented in the city they call home,” says Toor.