The Ghost Apartment

The Ghost Apartment is multimedia art installation by Nikola Steer (AKA Coco Framboise) developed with the generous support of Canada Council For The Arts. This work (in process) resurrects the artist's childhood living room which was in Thorncliffe Park, a neighbourhood in former East York, Toronto. 

Inspired by an extensive collection of slides created by the artist's father, Dr. Karl M. Steer, and discovered after his passing in 2018, Nikola uses a panoramic set of slides shot on December 25th, 1973 to create the projected "room." This photographic version of the room is then filled with transparent illustrations and tracings of the family inhabitants based on source photos from the 1970s and 1980s. These drawings are suspended from the ceiling and anchored to the floor, and positioned approximately where the people were standing in the space when the source photos were taken. In the full form of this installation, visitors would be able to enter the apartment and carefully move between the “ghosts” of aunties dancing to a large stereo systems, babies being fed in a high chair or taking their first steps, and young sisters working on a jigsaw puzzle. Everyday scenes of a Black family at home.