====\\DeRAIL Platform for Art + Architecture is a non-profit, independent arts producer and alternative platform for dialogue and collaboration across disciplinary, geographical, and ideological boundaries. ====\\DeRAIL commissions and produces place-specific art projects to foster new conversations about public space design and contemporary city building. We bring a linear landscape to life through contemporary art by moving beyond the walls of traditional gallery spaces to offer a new experience to both citizens as participants and artists as contributors.

Founded in 2015, ====\\DeRAIL is the vision of designer and public art curator Gelareh Saadapajouh and landscape architect Victoria Taylor OALA who, with years of combined experience as designers, artists, exhibition and public art curators, push the definition of public art to produce unique and creative socially-engaged/place-specific programs to explore the shared linear landscapes of our city.

In 2016, ====\\DeRAIL commissioned Mobile Ink Factory by Jason Logan/Toronto Ink Factory for Doors Open Toronto. Through public participation and site walks, the work celebrated many ideas of beauty through the urban palette of a 2.4km car-free linear park, the West Toronto Railpath.

In 2017, =====\\DeRAIL commissioned Pause Platforms, a series of three, 8FT diameter wood and raw steel platforms inspired by the concept proposed by Parkdale resident and designer Andrew Jones and fabricated by Marek Kubat. Pause Platforms are an artistic response to the recently decommissioned groundwater pumping wells, installed by RioTinto in 2006 as a part of the 158 Sterling Road Groundwater Pump and Treat Groundwater Remediation. Pause Platforms are located along the West Toronto Railpath, just north of the Dundas/Sterling entry node in the Junction Triangle neighbourhood (Ward 18).

To learn more about ====\\DeRAIL visit derailart.com.

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