Joshua Vettivelu's THIS LIGHT (Greater than the Sum of the Sun), 2025, is an installation work that poignantly addresses themes of placemaking, belonging, migration, and the social bonds that sustain communities through transitory stages. Through the poetic gestures—hands reaching, grasping, and interlocking—Vettivelu evokes the tender and fleeting moments experienced when individuals reunite with loved ones.

Accompanying the hand motifs are iterations of the phrase “this light takes time” translated in Anishinaabemowin and French. This statement reflects on how something as seemingly instant and all encompassing as sunlight still takes time to arrive. Activated by sunlight, this installation uses diffraction grating to split white light into its spectral components, drawing a metaphor between sunlight and empathy—both require energy to sustain, time to arrive, and possess the power to illuminate and nurture.

Presented at the passenger terminal at Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, this installation responds to the waterfront as a site shaped by histories and ongoing realities of human connection across space and time, forged through the act of travel. Previous editions of THIS LIGHT have been publicly installed at Sheridan College and Wellesley-St. James Town Health Centre.