A Temporary Place to Land

‘A Temporary Place to Land’ is a site-responsive installation by interdisciplinary artist Alize Zorlutuna that explores hospitality, temporary dwelling, and the objects, memories, and relationships we carry with us as we move between places.

Responding to the lobby of Le Germain Hotel Toronto Mercer, the project considers the hotel as a space of passage, where people arrive, depart, and briefly inhabit unfamiliar surroundings. Drawing on material and relational practices from Anatolia and Central Asia, Zorlutuna brings together objects gathered through their travels with newly made ceramics, textiles, and works incorporating Ebru (Anatolian water marbling) to consider how cultural knowledge and relationships to land travel and transform across geographies, generations, and materials.

Inhabiting the open shelves of the hotel’s lobby, the installation unfolds as a constellation of objects shaped by processes of travel, exchange, apprenticeship, and experimentation. Handmade vases, bowls, and other domestic forms associated with everyday rituals of dwelling and hospitality enter into conversation with objects carrying traces of other places. Responding to the environs of the lobby, these arrangements consider how the things we surround ourselves with participate in making a place feel like home.

Within the transient environment of the hotel lobby, these objects find a momentary place to rest, inviting visitors to reflect on the gestures of care, exchange, and hospitality through which unfamiliar places become, however briefly, places of belonging.

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‘A Temporary Place to Land’ is organized by DesignTO in partnership with Le Germain Hotel Toronto Mercer. The DesignTO Festival is supported by the Government of Ontario and the City of Toronto.

About DesignTO

DesignTO is a charitable arts organization celebrating 17 years of shaping a more sustainable, just, and joyful future through design. From January 22-31, 2027, the DesignTO Festival offers 100+ free events and exhibitions across Toronto, showcasing hundreds of artists and designers. As Canada’s largest annual design festival, DesignTO has welcomed over 1.2 million attendees, garnered 2.7 billion in media reach, showcased 7,500+ artists and designers, and generated $600 million in tourism impact since 2011.