Celebrating Project T-Dot At Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport

Short Film: A Celebration of Project T-Dot At Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, Location: Project T-Dot, Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Year: 2024, Production Company: The Ark Media Group, Executive Producer: Ajani Charles, Producer: Ajani Charles, Director: Ajani Charles, Director of Photography: Keegan Tam, Camera Operator: Keegan Tam, Editor: Keegan Tam

DJ, Designer, Entrepreneur: Matthew Romeo, Professionally Known As DJ Romeo, CEO, President: Neil Pakey, Entrepreneur, Producer: Eugene Tam, Location: Project T-Dot, Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Year: 2024, Photographer: Brice Zhao

On Wednesday, February 28, 2024, beginning at 5:30 PM EST, a private celebration of my new solo Project T-Dot art exhibit at Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport took place in the airport terminal’s atrium, in front of my exhibit.

This was remarkable considering that flights were arriving and departing at the airport during the event, not to mention the foot traffic around it.

Thank you to Nieuport Aviation, PortsToronto, the City of Toronto, and Canon Canada for sponsoring the event and contributing to the success of my new exhibit, along with its other gracious sponsors.

Project T-Dot at Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport is currently the largest art exhibit ever installed at the airport and the largest exhibit on hip-hop culture in Canada regarding its physical size, social impact, and total viewership, which is now in the millions.

Moreover, no other art exhibit in Canada today depicts Toronto’s cultural diversity more than my current exhibit.

The exhibit's digital user interface, a 55-inch touchscreen, adds new subjects weekly. 4KORNERS, Christina Cheng, Jayemkayem, Richie Sosa, Rochester, and others were recently added to it; months after it was installed this past January, both the exhibit and its celebratory event seem surreal to me.

Dancer, Choreographer, Educator, Entrepreneur: Marcelino DaCosta Professionally Known As Frostflow, Location: Project T-Dot, Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Year: 2024, Photographer: Ajani Charles

Bringing the exhibit to fruition took enormous time, ingenuity, coordination, sacrifice, and many other crucial resources between myself, my production company, and all the sponsors and vendors involved.

I have also sacrificed 18 years of my life to documenting and preserving Toronto’s hip-hop legacy through Project T-Dot.

My new exhibit is an unprecedented project, especially in Canada, where such exhibits are few and far between.

Hip-hop and Black culture are not celebrated nearly enough, considering what they have contributed to Canada culturally, economically, and so on.

Some of the exhibit’s sponsors and I firmly believed my new exhibit was worth celebrating soon after its installation.

The prospect of producing and hosting a celebratory event for my new exhibit at the airport was exciting for me and everyone involved.

DJ, Producer, Engineer, Event Planner, Entrepreneur: Ryan Horne Professionally Known As Lincoln Baio, Location: Project T-Dot, Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Year: 2024, Photographer: Brice Zhao

Still, given the complicated logistics involved in operating an airport and the fact that many passengers would be walking by the event as it took place, the event’s sponsors and I had much to consider, including that capacity was minimal.

We carefully considered many variables during the detailed preparations, including the entertainment and music.

If it had been entirely up to me, I would have ensured that at least a few hundred people, if not far more, showed up, but there was only room for far fewer guests.

In 2012, when I had far fewer skills and business acumen than I possess today, when my network was exponentially smaller, and when I had far less social capital, about two hundred people showed up to the opening of an art exhibit I had on Queen Street West in Toronto; this exhibit, which was based on abstract digital art I created, was quite poorly organized and curated (by me) compared to my current exhibit.

So, I can only imagine what would have happened if there had been a significantly larger cap on the number of people I could have invited to A Celebration of Project T-Dot. However, I still appreciate the event’s intimate nature.

DJ, Entrepreneur: Kelsey Williams Professionally Known As Killa Kels, Location: Project T-Dot, Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Year: 2024, Photographer: Brice Zhao

I am so grateful that I hired my good friend Ryan Horne, professionally known as Lincoln Baio and formerly known as DJ Docta, as the headlining DJ for the event; he oversaw the musical programming and supplied the DJ equipment, speakers, and so on.

Not only is he one of the most talented DJs I know, but he is also one of my first friends.

We became friends in the first grade, and I have witnessed his evolution as a person since I was five years old, when my parents and I moved back to Canada from Haiti (after two years in the poorest country in the Western hemisphere). I have also seen his phenomenal evolution as a DJ since I was 14.

The Proud 2 Be Eh Battle MC rap battle series at the El Mocambo in Toronto, which he invited me to in December 2006 and January 2007, inspired me to create Project T-Dot.

Furthermore, he is the official DJ for Project T-Dot and King of the Dot, Canada’s most well-known rap battle league and one of the world's most celebrated.

He is featured in my current Project T-Dot exhibit and was part of my first solo Project T-Dot art exhibit at Toronto City Hall and Nathan Phillips Square (in 2022), and I had and still have complete faith in him as a DJ.

Location: Project T-Dot, Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Year: 2024, Photographer: Brice Zhao

The music for the event was based on Toronto’s hip-hop legacy and was clean, given the location and context of the event.

Kelsey Williams, professionally known as DJ Killa Kels, opened for Lincoln Baio. Like Ryan, Killa Kels is a talented DJ with excellent music taste, great mixing skills, and strong ties to Toronto’s hip-hop community and the city in general.

Keisha Fanfair, professionally known as Keysha Freshh, is one of the most talented rappers from Toronto, and was one of the event’s performers.

It was a blessing to have Keysha perform live at the event months before her new album, Pretty Boys Break My Heart, and months before my documentation of her album release party for Project T-Dot.

Coincidentally, during soundcheck leading up to the event, she told me that she has a professional background in the aviation industry and was very familiar with Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, which made her performance all the more serendipitous; it had to be her.

The event started with opening remarks from PortsToronto’s CEO and President Roelof-Jan (RJ) Steenstra and Nieuport Aviation’s CEO and President Neil Pakey.

Recording Artist, Producer, Educator: Keisha Fanfair Professionally Known As Keysha Freshh, Location: Project T-Dot, Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Year: 2024, Photographer: Brice Zhao

They provided their perspectives on how Project T-Dot came to fruition at Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport and explained how the exhibit fits within the airport's artistic, cultural, and social ecosystem. It has been clear that PortsToronto and Nieuport Aviation care a lot about the airport, its surrounding communities, Toronto’s cultural diversity, and Toronto as a whole.

Joe Sellors provided additional opening remarks. He has been one of my greatest supporters and my primary contact at the City of Toronto for my first and current Project T-Dot art exhibits; he is currently Manager, Governance and Partner Relations—FIFA WC2026, Toronto Secretariat at the City of Toronto.

Joe explained how creating my new exhibit has been incredibly educational and fulfilling for me, and his mentorship and support have been invaluable.

He echoed the City of Toronto’s support of my work, especially within the context of Project T-Dot.

Toronto City Councillor Chris Moise also provided some opening remarks, reiterating Joe’s words on the importance of Project T-Dot at Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport to Toronto and many marginalized communities.

A Celebration of Project T-Dot also featured Marcelino DaCosta, professionally known as Frostflow and several members of his breakdancing crew, Ground Illusionz, as performers.

Director, Producer, Social Activist, Entrepreneur: Neil Donaldson, Also Known As Logik, Photographer, Director, Producer, Mental Health Advocate, Canon Canada Ambassador: Ajani Charles, Location: Project T-Dot, Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Year: 2024, Photographer: Brice Zhao

More specifically, Marcelino was joined by Jerome “Fresh FX” Villa, Anthony “illz” Put, and Louie “Cable” Pham, and Ground Illusionz is a veteran hip-hop collective based in the Greater Toronto Area with membership and affiliation spanning worldwide to the U.S.A, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan, so some of the most talented breakdancers in Canada entertained everyone involved; the crowd loved their performance, and we undoubtedly maximized a limited physical space.

My longtime friend and colleague Neil Donaldson, also known as Logik of Stolen From Africa, was the event’s co-host and facilitated a live interview with me about Toronto’s hip-hop legacy, Project T-Dot, my new exhibit, my career, my various skills, and more. He asked many profound questions and was the ideal person to interview me.

Some of the esteemed guests in attendance included Andrea Bolley, also known as 6ix Mom; Del Cowie; Cazhhmere Downey, professionally known as Cazhhmere; Geoff Gohm, professionally known as Kid Artik; Adrienne Kakoullis; Ron Nelson, also known as DJ Ron Nelson; Yasmine Perez-Achig of Canon Canada; Randy Phipps, my publicist; Sadé Powell of MuchMusic; Matthew Romeo, also known as DJ Romeo of My Dope Tee; Carey Riley of Sony Music Entertainment Canada; Eugene Tam of Play De Record; Stephanie Todorovski, professionally known as deejay t-jr.; Kat Torres, also known as getatKAT; and most of the Justice Fund team.

The event was so entertaining that even though the run of the show had closing remarks scheduled, there were none, as everyone in attendance was strongly engaged by the conversations, music, atmosphere, and interaction with the exhibit.

It was unnecessary to close the event formally as most of the guests organically left about half an hour after it was scheduled to end, and in some cases, slightly later than that. Overall, the celebration of Project T-Dot at Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport was and still is one of the highlights of my career and one of the most fun and fulfilling evenings I have experienced this year.

The exhibit's impact on the event’s attendees and Toronto’s hip-hop community has been profound.

Many of the event’s attendees, performers, and vendors are also subjects of my new exhibit, and they felt validated in a way that they have not been through other works of public art in Toronto and, in many cases, by the Greater Toronto Area in general.

Furthermore, many attendees learned new things about Toronto’s hip-hop culture, community, and history that they would not have discovered otherwise.

For example, Eugene Tam, a Toronto hip-hop icon and the subject of the documentary Drop The Needle, told Nieuport Aviation’s CEO and President Neil Pakey that The Weeknd, who began his career path as a rapper and is now one of the most recognizable and commercially successful recording artists and singers in the world used to sleep in his store, Play De Record, when he was homeless and had nowhere else to sleep.

I am deeply grateful to all the sponsors, guests, and vendors who made A Celebration of Project T-Dot possible and one of the highlights of my career, including but not limited to Nieuport Aviation, PortsToronto, the City of Toronto, Canon Canada, Balzac’s Coffee, My Dope Tee, Tlisa Ghany, Brice Zhao, Keegan Tam, Lincoln Baio, Killa Kels, Keysha Freshh, Logik, Frostlow and the talented members of Ground Illusionz, Joe Sellors, and Councillor Chris Moise.

Their generous support and enthusiasm were instrumental in bringing this vision to life as part of a memorable evening, celebrating Toronto's vibrant hip-hop culture and community in an iconic venue.

Celebrating Project T-Dot At Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport

Mayor Olivia Chow's Visit To Project T-Dot At Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport