We are all going to die - so why not talk about it?​

Dying. is an event series, explores death ​through ​the lens of design and art, running during the DesignTO Festival.

Dying. is in fact about living, living with the human experience of dying: What are we avoiding talking about? What matters at end-of-life?

​The Dying.series events bring together perspectives from artists, families, caregivers, clinicians, and researchers to spark public conversation through community creation and interactive experiences. The series invites us to think about our relationship with death and dying as an individual, a member of a family, social network and as a member of a community. Let’s get comfortable with the uncomfortable and start talking about what truly matters.

“The only way death is not meaningless is to see yourself as part of something greater: a family, a community, a society.”
(Atul Gawande, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End).

Design TO

📅Jan 23 – Feb 02 2025
👥Exhibition | In-person
📍Youngplace180 Shaw Street, Toronto

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​Beyond losing loved ones, individuals encounter loss and death daily across contexts and scales, for example, in losing a job, losing a pet, or losing biodiversity in surrounding forests. Each loss, no matter its scale, elicits a nuanced range of emotional and physical responses, which are shaped by cultural, social, and personal factors. The diversity of these responses underscores the myriad ways people express grief and contemplate dying. Although the ever-presence of death is as relevant as that of life, it is a topic that – in Westernized societies – has been often left aside in daily life interactions and conversations to instead be put away with other taboo topics. However, artists across the globe and across centuries have embraced this so-called taboo topic to produce artworks in which death is one of the main subjects. In the Dying.series’ latest group exhibition, ‘Multiple Endings’, the group gathered pieces from diverse artists and designers to curate an experience that prompts dialogue and reflection about end-of-life in individuals who often see death as a taboo topic. This exhibition embraces the capacity of art to foster emotional engagement and openness to put death front and centre.
‘Multiple Endings’ aims to look into existentialism across the realms of fragility, death, dying, loss, and grief through socially engaged art pieces that embrace diverse cultural and spiritual lenses. As a collective, our mission is to change the public narrative around dying – particularly through participatory art and design pieces and public symposiums – to empower people across generations and lifestyles to reflect and rethink their relationship with death or even re-connect with the human experiences of living and dying.