Team Anholt

Images of the design concept

Team members

Jill Anholt Studio, artist
PFS Landscape Architects, landscape architecture
HOK Architects, architecture
Faith Moosang, researcher and writer

Design intent

Our submission for the commemorative artwork is an 11 metre tall bronze sculpture depicting the spiral flight pattern of sugar maple keys energetically dispersing on a large wind or quietly twirling to the ground to take root.

Our piece is meant to contain the pushes and pulls that Global Affairs Canada employees encounter everyday in their working lives – expansive curiosity about the world and its people against a quiet missing of home and country, learning what it means to be Canadian in places far away from Canada, rotational postings that are sometimes accompanied with that sense of floating between worlds and asking the question of where do I belong?

For those who never made it back, this artwork is the seed on the wind that attempts to return them to this place. For those who are facing outward, this artwork is the seed that will accompany them to new soil.

Transcript of the Global Affairs Canada Commemorative Artwork Team Anholt video

Video length: 1:30 minutes

Text on screen: [Global Affairs Canada Commemorative Artwork, Team Anholt]

[Photograph of leafless sugar maple tree set against blue sky and snow-covered ground; transitions to show same tree changing through different seasons]

Voice of Faith Moosang: “Our concept looks to root in Canadian soil, the grief of families whose loved ones met tragedy while working overseas.”

[Soft music playing]

Voice of Faith Moosang: “It also wants to honour the impulse of these individuals to undertake this kind of work in the first place - curiosity towards places, people and situations unknown.”

[Close-up video of green leaves and daylight showing through tree canopy]

Voice of Faith Moosang: “We hope to capture the oppositions of return and departure, home and away, while considering the ambiguous space in the middle - a space of hovering between, a sense of belonging neither here nor there.”

[Close-up video of brown sugar maple seeds hanging amongst green leaves]

Voice of Faith Moosang: “Feelings that often accompany those experiencing grief and those perpetually on the move.”

[Video of brown sugar maple seeds spiraling against white backdrop, then against blue sky]

Voice of Faith Moosang: “Global Affairs Canada staff rotate in and out of overseas missions every few years. This rotation has historically taken place in the late summer and early fall, the same time that Canada's national tree, the sugar maple, releases its rotating seeds to the wind.”

[Animation of singular green sugar maple seed’s spiral flight pattern]

Voice of Faith Moosang: “This spiral flight pattern is our inspiration.”

[Rendering of commemorative artwork, a tall sculpture with multiple bronze pieces spiraling around a central axis, summer scene with people]

Voice of Faith Moosang: “In the spirit of holding different perspectives, the work can be seen as multiple maple keys in different parts of their rotation or one key in slow motion; lifting away or quietly settling.”

[Rendering of commemorative artwork in snowy winter scene with people, then shown from south end of the site]

Voice of Faith Moosang: “The warmly coloured bronze artwork is 11 metres high, visible from all directions, unique from all approaches.”

[Rendering of aerial view of the commemorative artwork design]

Voice of Faith Moosang: “Intimacy and connection will be designed by echoing the spiral pattern in site furnishings, landscaping and the pathways that lead people inward toward the work [...]”

[Rendering of commemorative artwork, scene with people sitting and one person looking at the inscription]

Voice of Faith Moosang: “[...] where they'll discover the names of the deceased on the bottom maple key, the one that is planting itself into the soil of home.”

Text on screen:

[Credits: