We Watch as the World Opens
This was one of the art pieces that was created as part of our Transforming Perspective project in 2025 that was focused on understanding the ways art can be used as a way to engage in dialogue, deep learning and collective systems transformation. Read more about the project here.
We Watch as the World Opens
By Timiro Mohamed
What of the world we will into existence,
The possibility waxing and waning
along its horizon.
What of the world that emerges
In community with one another.
At the altar of creativity.
The labour of exploration, of making, of doing, of stumbling,
The transformation taking place even in the minutiae
What of the world we will into existence
In the seeming stillness,
The beautiful chaos of solitude
The labour of knowing the self
Of preparing hearts and minds for the ascending dawn.
Aren’t you tired,
Of the anger,
Rivalled only by the apathy threatening to drown us all.
Maybe the hurting, is how we remain human,
Maybe the wound is an opening, a portal
A bearing witness.
The olive tree severed from its roots, planted 7 generations before.
The baobab trees pregnant with our sisters.
The Sapele, Iroke, and Wenge, cleared again and again, so the earth can be split in two, and children sent to its depths.
The spruce tree, growing to shade the earth taken from itself.
Maybe the wound is an opening, a portal
A commitment to acknowledge the suffering,
we so badly want to turn away from,
And to let it move us to change.
To stop severing ourselves from the people,
Who reflect self back to self.
To stop severing ourselves from the innate knowing that we can have more.
In the liminal space between;
The past ancestors crafted from impossibility, and
The future we ancestor into existence,
There is a slow emergence.
Weeping petals split, the sky bursts with new light,
And we watch as the world opens.
How the light surfaces anew
In the wake of memory
The possibility inviting us to nurture it.
Perhaps the new world already exists
It just awaits our open arms.
Can’t you see it now, a parallel universe awash in the new horizons light.
Alternate worlds mock us with the beauty of possibility,
Asking us to simply usher in all that we could be,
If only,
We didn’t fear our own potential.
Artist Statement
The piece thinks about systems transformation; the individual and collective conditions necessary to galvanize it, the current system and the liberatory future we seek to create. It expands on the three horizons framework, moving through an analysis of the conditions governing Horizon 1, 2 and 3. It plays with time and space in the same way the three horizons framework does, suggesting both the systemic conditions of the present and the future can co-exist. It honors the necessity of horizon 1, in that at one point the current systems where revolutionary and brought us forth from a different landscape. Still it pushes us to imagine more. In considering the conditions of Horizon 1 which CFRAC seeks to disrupt, I thought about the consequences of hegemonic white supremacy and colonialism. I reference the native trees of Palestine, Sudan, the Congo and Canada, using each to build metaphors for the destruction of land and people by colonial systems. The piece asks us to consider the gravity of each small movement towards change, the interconnected nature of our existence and choices as global citizens, and our collective capacity for systems transformation.
Artist Bio
Timiro Mohamed is a multidisciplinary artist and anti-racism educator inspired by the generations of storytellers before her. She is a visual artist, spoken word poet, and published author. Timiro is Edmonton’s former youth poet laureate, recipient of the ACGC Top 30 under 30 award and Edmonton Artist Trust Fund Award, has performed across North America, and competed at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word. She’s passionate about the uses of art in community development, anti-racist education, and political advocacy, and looks to an Afro-futurist Black feminist praxis to inform her creative process and approach to systems change.
