Registration now closed

Artist Talk: The Story Behind the Tower of Banned Books

A Discussion with Kelly McCray

Join artist Kelly McCray for a compelling talk on the creation and evolution of The Tower of Banned Books, now on display at OPL’s Central Branch.

The Tower of Banned Books is an art installation built from hundreds of challenged and banned books, symbolizing the ongoing fight for intellectual freedom.

McCray will share the journey of the tower - from its origins as the Surveillance Tower, which referenced our everyday keyboards and the data they collect, to its transformation into a striking statement on book bans and censorship. 

Read McCray’s full statement below: 

“The Tower of Banned Books installation depicts the weight of censorship through the ages while amplifying the on-going saga of books facing untold challenges in libraries, schools and bookstores, including works by contemporary children’s and young adult authors. The sculptural installation is comprised of 500 – 600 used books, opposing convex mirrors and an armature. The top of the tower is crowned with a chaotic assemblage of open books that are heavily redacted with red reflective tape.

The banned book tower was first introduced to the public in the 2023 Artist Project at the Better Living Centre/CNE grounds. It was then installed at the Toronto Reference Library towards the end of 2023. 

The Tower of Banned Books was modified from the original Surveillance Tower that was exhibited at the Indexing Resistance group show featured at the Toronto-based Plumb Gallery in 2022.  The Surveillance Tower was titled as such due to the exterior surface of rows of unbound fore-edges of books that referenced our innocuous keyboards; the same keyboards compiling our personal data collected and sold through our social media sites. The floor and ceiling convex mirrors were added to the inner column of the tower, weaving the reflected banned books to infinity.  

In this talk, I will trace the journey of the book tower from its early inception to its current banned book tower theme and beyond.” 

Photo of the Tower of Banned Books, taken by Ian MacLeod.

Artist Biography:

Kelly McCray has exhibited and curated extensively over the past 30 years. His Tower of Banned Books was exhibited at the Artists Project and the Toronto Reference Library in 2023. His Surveillance Tower was installed at the Plumb in 2022 for the Indexing Resistance group exhibition. The steam portraits were exhibited at the Gladstone Hotel for the 10 x 10 Portrait Project and in 2015 Stephen Bulger Gallery hosted his Lens Krafter books. His 2003 Ken Portraits series, was exhibited at the MOCCA and in 2001, the Gnawts Project was exhibited in the Breath Taking at Gallery TPW, for which he received the Pollock-Krasner award.

Curatorial and Co-curatorial projects include the 2013 Rare & Raw show for the Leslie & Lohman Museum in New York as well as numerous Edward Day Gallery exhibitions. In 2016, he curated the First Canadian Place Gallery and public lobby spaces from 2014 to 2019 and was co-founder of the Artists Protest Projects for the 2019 Nuit Blanche projection walls. He completed his MFA at York University in 2021.

Follow Kelly on Instagram at @kellymccray7590.

Upcoming events