Mercer Union’s SPACE billboard commission has invited artist Shellie Zhang for its 2021–22 season for a yearlong series titled, A day passes like a year. Known for her highly composed still life works that assemble objects of pop iconography, cultural construction, and diasporic memory, Zhang’s photographs offer vibrant gestures of reclamation, humor, and dissidence.

In a quadriptych portrait of the year ahead and a reflection on the year that has passed, A day passes like a year looks to the Chinese four seasons painting traditions and the immediate locale of Mercer Union to glean a format for telling time in its place through change, personal connection, and collective association.

Ode to Autumn is the first edition in the yearlong series; accompanying the work is a text written by Maya Wilson-Sanchez that can be found below.

Let’s trace our neighbourhood through this image. Artist Shellie Zhang tells me that some of the candle holders are from the Salvation Army close to Mercer Union. These wonderful golden grapes—so plastic, so abundant—are also from the same place. The apple-scented air fresheners are from AGP Mart—that convenience store near the Lansdowne subway entrance. If you keep going down the same street, you’ll see the Bargain Club Super Store. That’s where Zhang got the air sprays and the aerosol can. The goldenrod in the planter, which blooms in late summer and into the fall, is one of the weeds you’ll see growing near these places. It’s a plant native to Ontario that’s very popular amongst pollinators. Other items are more personal. The planter was a gift to Zhang from a friend who lived at Lansdowne and Bloor and gave it to her when she moved away.

I moved to this neighbourhood seven years ago, and it has always provided whatever I’ve needed. I don’t think I realized that until I reflected on the nature of this part of Toronto with Zhang. She lives in Parkdale, a neighbourhood directly south of Bloordale with lots of things in common with this place—significant and diverse newcomer populations, lively spaces with numerous small businesses, and ongoing displacement caused by gentrification.

Zhang describes the series of photographs making up this commission as still life portraits of the neighbourhood of Bloordale. Inspired by the Chinese painting genre of the four seasons, she presents four images that mark each season, starting with this portrait of Bloordale in the autumn of 2021. This kind of Chinese painting tradition represents the seasons through landscape, flora, and fauna associated with each time of the year. Titled Ode to Autumn, this first image examines how objects convey expressions of nature and the environment. What does a crisp fall day look like in Bloordale? Does it smell like artificial apple spray? This series of works use the commercial language of contemporary still life photography to create an image responsive to a particular time and place.

For Zhang, the gathering of objects in Ode to Autumn is an exercise in getting to know this neighbourhood more intimately. As I write this, it feels fitting to mention that I will most likely be displaced from this neighbourhood soon. The news came just a couple of weeks after I met with Zhang to discuss this work. I’m sad but not surprised. Displacement and loss are common stories here. Thinking of my departure makes this portrait of Bloordale even more significant. I feel an intimate, almost familial, or domestic desire to take this photograph and put it in my wallet or attach it to my fridge door with a magnet. It marks a time and a place that I want to remember dearly.

— Maya Wilson-Sanchez