A day passes like a year, 2021-2022

Ode to Autumn
Ode to Winter
Ode to Spring
Ode to Summer

Inkjet print on vinyl
69 x 119”

A Day Passes Like a Year was created over the course of a year and reinstalled in four phases. Commissioned by Mercer Union and developed during the pandemic lockdown, the work emerged during a period when daily life was largely confined indoors and the passage of time became increasingly difficult to measure. Looking cautiously toward the future, Zhang imagined a quadriptych portrait of the year ahead while reflecting on the year that had just passed. Each phase of the installation centers on objects that evoke a particular season, gathered from shops, street corners, and bins in the immediate vicinity of the gallery. At a moment when access to the outdoors was limited, these found materials became a means of imagining seasonal change through everyday encounters. Collected from a neighbourhood undergoing rapid transformation through redevelopment, gentrification, and the disruptions of the pandemic, the objects register both personal experience and broader social shifts. Drawing on traditions of Chinese four-season painting, A Day Passes Like a Year adopts a cyclical framework for marking time through change, memory, and association. Through the accumulation of local materials, the work traces the rhythms of a place in transition while reflecting on how we orient ourselves within periods of uncertainty and change.

Ode to Autumn is the first edition in the yearlong series. Accompanying the work is a text written by Maya Wilson-Sanchez. Ode to Autumn features objects sourced from a friend who used to live at Lansdowne and Bloor, an internet trade exchanged at the intersection, flora growing at the corner, the Salvation Army, AGP Mart, and Bargain Club Superstore. Ode to Winter is the second edition in the yearlong series; accompanying the work is a text written by Cason Sharpe. Ode to Winter features objects sourced from AGP Mart, Bargain Club Superstore, Chito’s Pizza, Harar Grocery, Hasty Market, Salvation Army, TL Variety and Value Village. Ode to Spring is the third edition in the yearlong series; accompanying the work is a text written by Stephanie Wong Ken. Ode to Spring features objects sourced from AGP Mart, Bargain Club Superstore, Salvation Army, TL Variety, Value Village and neighbourhood recycling bins. Ode to Summer is the fourth and final edition in the yearlong series; accompanying the work is a text written by Letticia Cosbert Miller. Ode to Summer features objects sourced from Hasty Market, AGP Mart, Bargain Club Superstore, Value Village and TL Variety.

Presented by Mercer Union.
Installation photos by Toni Hafkenscheid.