As the Archive Dreams

 

 

This website features the diverse creative works of VIS 431 /VIS 43o 2025 Thesis students in the Bachelor of Arts in Visual Studies program at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto.

VIS 431/VIS 430 is the culmination of the Specialist in Visual Studies or Critical Practices streams. This year-long course is comprised of research-creation Thesis Projects in the practices of writing, publishing, studio work and critical analysis and form the basis for the student-organized final exhibition that occurs at the end of Winter term of works developed and produced over the year.

As the Archive Dreams is a group exhibition that will showcase the final thesis projects of the 2025 cohort from April 17–19, 2025 (Instagram @uoftvisthesis). The exhibition invites viewers to engage with the exhibit as a living, breathing entity—an assemblage of memories, stories, and objects that transcend time and space. Each work here approaches the roots of an archive not as a static repository, but as a dynamic process of preservation, transformation, and renewal. Drawing upon personal histories, cultural narratives, and communal legacies, we reinterpret what it means to document, remember, and reimagine.

As visitors engage with these works, they become participants in the archival process. In witnessing, remembering, or even contributing, they too help shape an ever-evolving narrative. The archive grows and dreams, not as a keeper of the past, but as an active participant in the present and the future.

Here, the archive becomes alive—a testament to action, transformation, and the enduring power of memory.