Co-designed with Badanna Zack,
Serpentine Mounds was a site-specific environmental art installation featured
as part of the Toronto zooarts Festival, which ran
from June 29 to September 29, 2004, at the Toronto Zoo. The
installation was composed of 42 obsolete cars, which were stripped
and cleaned to remove the toxic elements and embedded in two
mounds of earth, covered with turf and ground cover. It was 45,000
square feet by 27 feet high (13,716 square meters by 8 metres high),
and was located on unused land in the African area of the Toronto
Zoo. Serpentine Mounds transformed a conventionally landscaped area
in to a sculptural environment.
Serpentine Mounds portrayed the continuing
battle between our natural world and our love affair with the
automobile -- our modern beast of burden -- and the promises offered
by "ever-improving" technological innovations. Serpentine Mounds was not
only a visual art installation with
fundamental visual concepts that triggered interest and questions,
it was a means from which to express ideas of environmental
conservation and sustainability.
Serpentine Mounds was built
with the help of the City of Toronto Solid Waste
Management Services, Standard Auto Wreckers and Terrafix Geo whose interests
in the concept uniquely tied in with their environmental mandates. We
are grateful to these partners for their generous support and to the Toronto Zoo for providing the
location. Ian Lazarus and Badanna Zack also gratefully acknowledge support from OCAF,
Canada Council for the Arts and Toronto Arts Council. Our special
thanks go to Noel Harding and Walter Willems, without whom this
project would not have been possible.
The Rise of Serpentine Mounds