Blog 26…October 2013

I’m very happy to see the rising confidence and exciting visual presence of indigenous artists from here and around the world.  Earlier this year there was Beat Nation at the Power Plant, in the summer I discovered Sakahan at the National Gallery in Ottawa (Blog 23) and here in Toronto, Imaginative, the festival of indigenous film has just finished at the Lightbox. Now, the Ryerson Image Gallery in Toronto has Ghost Dance, activism, resistance and art, created mostly by Aboriginal artists, running until December 15.

The Image Gallery has a fascinating history…opened last year on the Ryerson campus, the collection originated in Berlin in the 1930’s with the Black Star photo agency.  Politics in Germany prompted a move to New York where the agency became the principal source of news photos for magazines and newspapers for the next 70 years, accumulating an archival history of most of the 20^th century.  As other media took over, the Black Star collection moved around for several years, finally being donated to Ryerson, who have created a superb venue to store and exhibit the images. The Gallery also serves as a showplace for Ryerson students and others, providing exposure for a variety of still and moving images.

 

The current show has a focus on injustices and oppression suffered by native people around the world. The pieces range from a series of small screens with phone receivers where we can listen to women incarcerated in a federal prison for native women in Alberta to visual messages from protests at Palm Island, Australia and from Wounded Knee in the US.

Sonny Assu is posed beside posters created from Department of Indian Affairs material encouraging “absorption as the happiest future”.  Although this is moving, it’s his piece called Leila’s Desk that touched my heart most deeply. Sonny’s grandmother was nervous and excited to be the first native person to attend her local high school. Many years later, as an old woman, she still felt the shame of her arrival the first morning to find a bar of Lifebuoy soap sitting on her desk. Sonny has built a replica of the kind of small pine desk used at the time and the offending bar of soap that shouted “dirty Indian”.  My breath caught in my throat when I saw this piece, and in case you get to see the show, which I hope you will, I’m not putting up an image of it so the impact will be as powerful for you as it was for me.

It’s great to see these shows and get to know our fellow Canadians through their art, I hope though that we’re on the way to recognizing and appreciating indigenous art more widely in mainstream galleries. We should be grateful to artists who connect us with the world around us and within us from their own unique viewpoint, whether they’re women, gay, Chinese, white guys…or Aboriginal. 

And, a final thought,  the community of native people, artists and others deserve a loud shout out from the rest of us for the heavy lifting they're doing in preserving our home, the earth.

BLOG  # 25…SEPTEMBER 2013

“By words one transmits thoughts to another, by means of art one transmits feelings”…if you don’t know who said this, you’ll have to read the rest of the blog and I’ll tell you at the end. Art also gives substance to our feelings and calls our attention to issues when words don’t do the job.

 In his current show at the AGO in Toronto, Ai Weiwei is making powerful statements about injustices and corruption in China. His horror at the deaths of over 5,000 children, killed when their badly constructed schools collapsed during the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan province, inspired several moving tributes. The snake which curls around the ceiling in the entrance to the exhibit is composed of schoolbags like the ones carried by the children as they walked to school and to their deaths.

His works are huge and often involve work by many artisans for many hours to execute his ideas.  Hundreds of strikingly realistic hand crafted porcelain crabs scattered across the floor evoke the millions of creatures (including humans!) displaced by the diversion of rivers to create the 3 Gorges Dam project.

Working on a smaller but equally important and far reaching stage Rebecca Difilippo is making powerful statements with and about her art in the videos that she’s recently mounted on Facebook.  Rebecca is the editor of Moods Magazine and has expanded her reach from the magazine into social media to explore the symptoms, emotions and behaviours associated with depression. Creating images was able to help her during the darkness of her own episodes with depression and she hopes that telling her story alongside her paintings can help other people with similar despair.   

“Broken is the title of this work and strongly reflects the way I felt as I struggled with depression. During the darkest time of my depression I felt so incapacitated, so broken that I just couldn't feel any hope of getting out of the black hole I was drowning in.”

“I painted this butterfly as a way to express my newfound freedom from depression, my ability to feel and become something beautiful and living again. I was held captive by my depression for so long that when I was finally able to feel again, to feel the wonderful beauty of the world around me, I felt alive, as though I had stepped into a new world,  as though I had been transformed. For a very long time, I was unable to feel and appreciate so many of the simple pleasures in life... things I had once taken for granted, things that had just suddenly vanished from my life when depression took hold of me.”

“Art is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings…indispensable for life and for progress toward the well being of individuals and society.”

That, and the quote at the top are from Leo Tolstoy who said many smart things about the value of art. 

BLOG 24…August 2013

I’m always on the lookout for art and artists popping up in unusual places and my ears perked up recently when I heard about Ronna Bloom, poet –in- residence at a large downtown Toronto hospital.  Seems a nice synchronicity to be celebrating two years of blogging by reminiscing about the sessions we had with writers, artists and dancers at TGH in the 80’s and 90’s, glad that the notion of arts having a place in treatment settings is alive and well.

Poetry is one of the offerings of the Employee Emotional Wellness Program that “support the wellness of your mind, body and spirit.” at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital. It’s a very sensible as well as sensitive approach to running a large institution entrusted with caring for people and where burnout is hard to avoid.

As well as the conventional writer-in-residence format of receiving individual work for coaching and offering writing workshops for groups (some titles include Addressing Compassion Fatigue in Note Form and Have You Seen the Patient?)  Ronna tailors her program to the setting. She has a monthly poetry booth in the basement staff lunchroom.where individuals sit with her, tell her what’s on their mind and she crafts a quick poem for them…”often either they start to cry or I do,” she says. In a high stress atmosphere like a hospital “it’s kind of therapeutic to stop, write and reflect, makes them better at their jobs when they go back” she adds.  Lindsay Drysdale, program coordinator echoes this feeling, “Personal well-being can play a major role in how you’re working.” 

One Friday morning last spring, several hundred people filled the lecture hall on the 18^th floor for Psychiatry Grand Rounds - not for the usual lecture on a new psychotropic or insight into depression, but POETRY.  Much to my surprise, near the end of the session, after describing her work, Ronna asked if anyone in the audience wanted to read their poem aloud for her comments. A bunch of people volunteered, doctors, nurses, technical staff, all seemed willing and comfortable sharing their creative work. She had set the stage for comfort with the theme of the session Who will care for me?

She also showed that poets and poems can be funny or sad, that poetry is enlivened by the broad range of experiences and feelings which are often accentuated in hospital settings for patients, their friends and family as well as for staff members.

So, a shout out to Mount Sinai’s Healthy Workplace Initiative, putting their money (along with some from the Ontario Arts Council) where their mouth is with poetry.

Blog 23… July 2013

Over a year ago, in Blog # 9 on native writers, I opened with the quote…”Every man is like every other man, like no other man and like some other men”  I like this quote and it popped into my thoughts in Ottawa recently, looking forward to seeing Sakahan, the current show at the National Gallery.

As we walked towards the Gallery, my first glimpse was of  Ilulaq, a gigantic iceberg sitting beside the Great Hall. Created by Greenland artist Inuk Sillis Hoegh, it’s in fact a canvas cover hiding the scaffolding in place while the windows are being repaired. It'll gradually melt away as the work on the windows is completed.... 

how cool is that!

This witty and creative approach emerged again and again in the five hours I spent with pieces by 80 indigenous artists from 16 countries on 6 continents, exploring contemporary issues -  some unique to the area where they originated, some particular to the region and some universal to both indigenous peoples and settlers (that’s the rest of us). Most of the art has been created in the past 10 years with a unique aesthetic brought to concerns about the environment, the relationship of the past to the present and the ongoing effects of colonialism and imperialism.

Sakahan means “the lighting of a fire” in the language of the Algonquin peoples, hosts of the show as the original inhabitants of Turtle Island where the Gallery is located. Draped along the top of the magnificent long, windowed colonnade leading to the galleries is Earth and Sky, a 50 meter long banner representing a collaborative drawing by Inuit Shuvinai Ashoona and Dutch born Canadian John Noestheden. 

YumaTaru of Taiwan tells us “We weave our own dreams by hand and eventually achieve our own gaga (integrity, responsibility, courage and self identity) in the modern time.” The figures in her piece  represent a parade into the world of spirits.

When Canadian Brian Jungen couldn’t learn beading to render designs of the ancient flowers that are being destroyed near his home by oil and gas exploration, he drilled their patterns in gas cans to make his point.

The message on Australian Richard Bell’s mural tells of the need to be both modern and indigenous to survive in today’s world.

The images continue to touch and amaze me with their freshness, their messages sometimes subtle, sometimes angry, always moving with their juxtaposition of familiar material placed in totally original ways. The pages of Canada's Indian Act (last amended in 1985!} are beaded by 230 workers in white on red, a series of pieces conceived and designed by Natalie Myre: Kent Monkman, irreverent as always, takes us into a bordello teepee;  from Hawaii, Maika’i Tubbs sculpts plastic cutlery into a climbing wood rose vine, an invasive plant that takes over while we’re not looking. Theresa Margolis used traditional Guatemalan embroidery on a cloth stained with the blood of a murdered woman to tell the story of many women in her country.

I found myself lying on my back looking at 6 circular windows showing videos of human figures floating in water from the river that flooded their town.  By Maori artist Brett Graham from New Zealand, it could have been Alberta…or Toronto last week!

And a whole programme of short films…one of my favourites was Scratch an Aussie, a satirical poke at racial discrimination, complete with abo jokes.

One of the last pieces I saw was Fringe, an iconic image used on much of the Sakahan publicity material. BC artist Rebecca Belmore’s transparency in a light box seems to use scars to record both past damage and future healing.

I’ve barely scratched the surface of this hugely important show, one for us to be proud of…if a visit to Ottawa is possible for you before September 2, run, don’t walk to see it.  And if you miss it this time, watch for the next one in 5 years time…Canada steps into the ring of quinquenniale shows with Documenta in Kassel, Germany and the British Art Show.

BLOG # 22…JUNE 2013

I seem to have been in a huge mood for jazz lately and have found  a couple of interesting corners that took me back to being 14 years old discovering Stan Kenton and June Christie. My girlfriend’s older brother had a great collection and we would gather after school, listen to jazz and devour Downbeat, having just outgrown comics.

                                                                   

Skip ahead to a couple of weeks ago when I was introduced to the wonderful Toronto All Star Big Band…as you can see from the photo, they’re a young gang, not even close to being around in the days of Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman but they sure have a great grasp of their music. Catch them if you can.

But what struck me as something interesting to blog about was a performance that I caught a few days later by the enchanting young vocalist, Alex Pangman. Known as Canada’s Sweetheart of Swing, Alex performs music from the 20’s 30’s and 40’s, accompanied by the Alleycats… I’m not sure if it’s intentional but her dress and hairstyle perfectly evoke the period and deepen the mood of the music. She takes her enthusiasm for the classical melodic style of early jazz with her wherever she goes, playing around the province and the country. Her first two CD’s They Say and Can’t Stop Me From Dreaming were produced by the late and great Jeff Healey. 

 

Later this week, she’s opening for Willie Nelson, who’s headlining the Toronto Jazz Festival, in a concert at Massey Hall. Willie, that master of western swing and jazz is over 80 but can still handle On the Road Again and Georgia on my Mind like nobody else.   He and Alex both like to blend genres, moving effortlessly from western/swing to jazz in the blink of an eye.

                                                                              

Oh and btw, Alex had a double lung transplant in November 2008. Breath is particularly crucial for singers and every one Alex takes is a miracle…ironically if she had lived in her favourite time - the 30’s - she would have succumbed to her cystic fibrosis before reaching kindergarten. She’s an enthusiastic advocate for organ and tissue donations and has directed proceeds from her recent single Breathe In to the Lung Association.

BLOG # 21…May 2013

A couple of things I’ve seen lately have reminded me how lucky we are here in Canada to be able to speak our minds openly and fairly safely.

 

Steven Harper Hates Me is the title of a show by Gabrielle de Montmollin that’s up until May 18 at the red head gallery, a cooperative artists’ space at 401 Richmond St. in Toronto.  De Montmollin takes a number of images of our Prime Minister and renders them as Clown or Satan, using humour as a sharp tool to make her point… my favourite is Ignorant Man Despising What He Doesn’t Know Standing in My Studio. Writer Susan Swan has composed an essay to accompany the show in which she calls Gabrielle’s world “fantastic, fearless and furious” and defines the work as “the artist’s longing to stage a conversation with Harper.”  It’s a one sided conversation though, rather like the one Yann Martell tried to initiate in 2007 on the 50^th anniversary of the Canada Council by sending our Prime Minister a book every other week…so far no answer.

 

At the other end of the spectrum of expressive freedom is Pussy Riots, a film that played at HotDocs earlier this month.  Pussy Riots, a Russian feminist punk rock collective, shows the young performance artists protesting Vladimir Putin’s third term as president which puts him in charge until 2024.  They chose the recently rebuilt Church of our Saviour to protest both the erosion of the democracy which seemed so promising with the fall of the Soviet Union and the conflating of church and state.  It aroused immensely strong feelings resulting in arrests, trials and prison sentences for two of the young women.  The choice of venue was hugely inflammatory, Russians who’ve been deprived of religious expression for over 70 years, reacted emotionally to an extent that somewhat obscured the purpose and the result, alienating many liberal thinkers.  I was enormously moved by these young women, their passion and their courage…when was revolution ever easy - or unemotional?

And, anybody else see the irony in our Prime Minister referring to the attack ads directed at Justin Trudeau as “part of the democratic debate” Last time I checked democracy didn’t include bullying.

Blog # 20…April 2013

Creativity and social awareness often seem to go hand-in-hand…so many artists of all kinds are strongly connected to the sounds, sights, shapes and smells of the world around them, and to the state of the environment and its inhabitants, or maybe they’re artists because they are already attuned to their surroundings.

Whatever the sequence,  a lot of public figures are using their names and face recognition to call attention to issues and causes – Sarah Harmer defending the Niagara Escarpment, Matt Damon working to supply clean water to communities in Africa, and the members of PEN International  speaking out for the rights of writers imprisoned or exiled around  the world.

In his recent book, Celebrity Diplomacy, Andrew Cooper observes, “Celebrities bring optimism and ‘buzz’ to issues that seem deep and gloomy. Even if their lofty goals remain elusive, when celebrities speak, other actors in the global system listen.”

A week ago, I spent some time at a new initiative called the SPUR Festival. Launched in Toronto, SPUR has plans to be “Canada’s first national festival of politics, art and ideas.” Shyam Selvedurai spoke of his arrival in Canada as an immigrant from Sri Lanka; Guillermo Verdecchia, Michael Healey and Hannah Moscovich looked at how playwrights present stories that may move us to action or new ways of thinking and Hendrick Hertzberg, a regular contributor to The New Yorker, closed the day with a discussion about money and political influence.

I love this kind of cross pollination, getting us out of our narrow notions of what art is or where you’ll find it - Helen Walsh, the festival director and her colleagues at Diaspora Dialogues and The Literary Review of Canada are to be congratulated for getting it on, spurring the action so to speak..  Serious discussion and fun are two other mash ups that I like… earlier in the week, SPUR ran a session on political satire, makes me appreciate how lucky we are to live in a place where we can engage in it safely…more about that in my next post.

Do these efforts - watching Sean Penn get his hands dirty helping rebuild in Haiti or singing along with Bono at a Band Aid concert-   accomplish anything in the long run?  Does the fun scoop up some folks and make them think a bit more deeply about issues of equality, fairness and generosity?  The majority of people who attend events like this are probably pretty well endowed with those qualities already, but I’m optimistic.  Like the Chinese proverb about the man moving the mountain…little by little it will be moved... and, bit by bit, peoples’ ideas are moved too.

If you’re reading this in Winnipeg, you’ll have the SPUR festival in a couple of weeks - April 26-28… tell your friends.