Local Toronto artist tours art installation to protest gun violence

A local Toronto artist took his unique anti-gun violence protest to the downtown core midday Tuesday in a temporary installation.

Viktor Mitic, known for using guns to make bold statements in his artwork, toured his piece “Shot Up Car,” which features a vehicle riddled with bullet holes. The installation was created in an attempt to bring attention to the recent rise of gun violence in the city.

“You have to get people as close as possible to what the destruction of a gun can do,” Mitic told Global News.

“This way, they can come touch and feel it, see it for themselves.”

Mitic said he originally created the car in 2010 in response to ongoing turmoil in Afghanistan. It was featured in an art gallery on Richmond and Bathurst streets for a month and has since been in storage. He said recent gun violence in the city prompted him to bring it out again.

“There’s a lot of stuff going on in this city, in the country and the world when it comes to gun violence, and I think it’s really important to put the face to the name,” he said.

Standing in front of his “Shot Up Car” creation, which was placed almost in the middle of Dundas Square with the assistance of a tow truck, Mitic watched as people nearby snapped photos, ran their hands along the bullet holes and looked into the backseats to gaze at shards of glass and bullet casings.

A local resident, Ewan Whyte, said the installation is really about humans.

“This is really about us as humans being inured to violence, to things around us, and we can turn a blind eye to really horrific things. It’s a reminder that it’s all with us now, it could happen to anyone,” he said.

“In terms of current news, it’s a reminder, of course, of recent violence. What are we going to do about it?”

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Mitic said he bought the car for the purpose of using it in an art piece and said it was initially in almost perfect condition.

“It was a working car I took to a specific location that I’m not going to disclose, and we modified the car to look the way it is. It’s a better statement this way,” he said, referring to the condition of the car.

He said he used real guns and around 6,000 rounds were fired into the vehicle to create the final product.

On Tuesday, he toured his artwork to busy locations downtown, including Nathan Phillips Square, with the help of a tow truck. The installation lasted two hours.