Knockin' Pictures Off the Wall (Kill Yr Idols)
Knockin’ Pictures materializes Toussaint-Baptiste’s research into sub-bass and architecture, which has encompassed lowrider car culture, DIY sound systems, sonic weapons, and the felt effects of these technologies on the individual. Toussaint-Baptiste identifies bass as an ambivalent, inescapable aspect of urban experience that particularly affects Black and Brown communities—such as proximity to highways or heavy industries. At the same time, the artist celebrates the capacity of bass to claim spatial agency.
Composed of a DIY car sound system and a metal plate flanked by subwoofers, Knockin’ Pictures Off the Wall underscores the haptic properties of bass. Toussaint-Baptiste’s sculpture emits rhythmic thudding as subwoofers shake the wall, causing the metal plate to tap a fastener beneath it, the result of subwoofers in creative, iconoclastic misuse. Knockin’ Pictures inverts the logic of sub-bass and sound: whereas sub-bass is usually a byproduct of sound, in this work inaudible bass causes audible sound.
The Blackwood
University of Toronto Mississauga
3359 Mississauga Road
Mississauga, ON L5L 1C6
[email protected]
(905) 828-3789
The galleries are open. Hours of operation: Monday–Saturday, 12–5pm.
Holiday hours: regular gallery hours are in effect until and including Saturday, December 6. The galleries will then be closed for the holidays, except for regular hours on Saturday, December 13. In 2026, the galleries reopen Monday, January 5.
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The Blackwood is situated on the Territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit, Seneca, and Huron-Wendat.