55 Mercer Street, a 47-storey mixed-use tower, designed by IBI Group Architects, is located in the heart of Toronto’s Entertainment District. Taking inspiration from the building’s relationship to Canada’s storied film industry and the world-renowned Toronto International Film Festival—which takes place annually in the neighborhood—de Beer’s Cinema Sculptures examine the great Canadian wilderness as imagined through iconic cinematography.

Using images of landscapes from iconic films, all themed around “stories told at the end of the world,” de Beer exalts the diversity of the Canadian landscape—from the vast wilderness to imposing cityscapes. Embedding images from David Cronenberg’s Stereo, Bob Rafelson’s 5 Easy Pieces, Patricia Rozema’s Into The Forest, Zacharias Kunuk and Natar Ungalaaq’s Malglutit (Searchers) into circular sculptural forms adapted from the praxinoscope, a 19th-century French animation machine. Altering and iterating on the original form of the machine, de Beer presents her images as stills—rather than producing the illusion of movement. The cylindrical forms—with the images embedded inside—are then suspended from the ceiling. Floating above the viewer, these grand cylindrical forms, with their images of places frozen in time, offer viewers the opportunity to focus on the beauty and majesty of the great Canadian landscape.