06/02/2026
What makes you stronger in the face of challenges?
Goethe asked artist Lisa Hirmer (Canada/Germany/Mexico) to think about the guiding question of the Goethe-Institut Toronto’s year-long project (re)Open Minds: Adapting to the Future.
Throughout the year, we are sharing Lisa’s seasonal images and thoughts as impulses to consider our own cultural resilience in times of converging crises.
☝Let us know where and how you draw strengths.
Lisa Hirmer:
💨“From the atmosphere I’ve learned about strength that comes from always being in the process of being made. The oxygen-rich blanket of gas that surrounds this planet and sustains its life is the ongoing result of billions upon billions of exchanges between planetary beings and the air in which they live. It is a never-ending process of co-creation shared by all planetary beings including humans: a strength that comes from a planet-scaled accumulation of many tiny acts.”
Lisa Hirmer is a Guelph-based artist concerned with the collective nature of being. Spanning photography, sculpture, installation, social practice, community collaboration and writing, her work explores collective relationships both within human communities and between humans and the more-than-human-world. Her work has been shown at Art Gallery of Ontario, Queens Museum, Flux Factory, and many more, and she has held residencies with Arts House Melbourne, Santa Fe Art Institute, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation among others.
Part of the program (re)Open Minds: Adapting to the Future
Presented by the Goethe-Institut Toronto
Image Credit: Lisa Hirmer, The Atmosphere Always Still Being Made, 2022, photo documentation of sculpture made from carbon absorbing lime, post-industrial olivine, straw, charcoal, and graphite. Created through Waterfront Toronto’s Artist Residency supported by Waterfront Toronto and the Waterfront BIA.
