Queer the North

By Kirsten McCrea (Toronto, ON)

54 Elgin, wall next to Zigs across from McEwen School of Architecture
August 2016, Up Here 2

Sponsored by McEwen School of Architecture

Toronto-based Kirsten McCrea is a notorious collaborator. Her work embodies wild growth in all directions, resembling layered, torn bits of patterned paper. Kirsten uses patterns because they are universally present in all cultures. These patterns resemble the geometric symbols used on the legends of geological maps and the vintage wallpaper patterns of a classic home in Gatchell.

Kirsten Mccrea lives in Toronto by way of Montreal, where she first honed her in that city's collaborative art scene, crafting both indoor and outdoor pieces. In 2009, McCrea founded the affordable art subscription Papirmass, which has mailed over 50,000 art prints around the world for less than the cost of lunch. Named a Top-30-Under-30 artist by Blouin Artinfo, her work has exhibited in Toronto’s AGO, Montreal’s Musée des Beaux Arts, and many other galleries, and has appeared on the Today Show and GIRLS, and in The Globe and Mail, Canadian Art, The National Post, and BUST Magazine.