Blog # 65…January 2017

Well here we are, moving further away from the millennium - people born that year old enough to drive and have a generation named after them.

I’m not in that generation but somehow feel that we’re all in this together.  Many forces divide us - haves/have nots, old/young, black/white /brown/yellow, nationalities or religions pitted against each other, opposing ideas about how to live; competition rather than consensus all are the order of the day in some quarters anyway.  At ground level, in families, difficult situations which could be made more comfortable if people were able to reach out to comfort each other - the mature and intelligent thing to do. We can only write our own scripts, but that’s what’s important anyway.

And yet, there are so many inescapable life forces that unite us, the inevitability of birth and death touches us all. A number of artists who died this year gave us the gift of a gracious goodbye…Leonard Cohen spoke of “running late… the bar closing”. David Bowie sang with courage from his death bed. Gord Downie continues to muster his strength to bring native issues to our attention as well as showing us how to leave life with grace. The Edmonton Arts council is appointing its first Artist in Residence for cemeteries, with a warm and inviting studio space to welcome people while they mourn loved ones.

In its many forms, art makes us feel less alone.  For me, two of the most powerful words in our language are “Me too”.  How my heart warms when someone says that after I express how I’m feeling. Art in its various forms also helps articulate our feelings, writers give  us the words to express ourselves, make us more comfortable with the issues because we have a handle on how to engage in conversation  with people who share our  feelings…or don’t.

A very important book by Canadian physician Danielle Martin has just appeared – Better Now:  Six Big Ideas to Improve Health Care for all Canadians. She feels it’s important not to be defensive; our system is good but needs fixing and we shouldn’t be content with the status quo.  Very useful to arm yourself with this information for the next time you encounter a Yank (or anyone else) yelling about the wait times or how our system is a commie plot.

And at the risk of seeming tangential, I want to finish with a shout out to the Cubans and the Americans who share uncertain futures in the New Year.   So, “Y soy Fidel” to those brave and proud Cubans and to our next door neighbours … “You don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone.”

Blog # 64…December 2016

Sometimes life seems to be about nothing but losses and this year has been unrelenting … mourning the deaths of our own loved ones here at home and, far too many of our fellow citizens in the middle east. Now horrors in a Christmas market and an art gallery

We.ve had some pinpoints of light shine through though. Gord Downie touched us all when he pushed indigenous issues into the spotlight by honouring the memory of Chanie Wenjak, the young boy who died attempting to escape from a residential school in the sixties. Gord’s beautiful tribute album Secret Path was followed by Jeff Lemire’s graphic novel The Secret Path which then was turned into the animated film that aired on CBC in October. It’s still viewable at cbc.ca/secretpath. 

“This is about Canada. We are not the country we thought we were….aboriginal children need to know that history includes them, this is not an aboriginal problem, it’s a Canadian problem” words from Murray Sinclair, chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He and Gord Downie both have a place in my personal Hall of Heroes.

I’ve been blogging for five years now about how art in its various and wondrous forms can help us make sense of the world.  I still cling to that notion but its powers are being tested pretty sharply at the moment. Maybe like me, you need to take a break from worrying ocasionally… about how we’re losing respect for the value of work and of liberal democracy and most distressing - our environment. We need to avoid looking at the world outside sometimes, take a breath and relish what we have. A couple of new books may help you feel less "out to pasture"…Tom Friedman’s Thanks for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving and The Revenge of Analog : Real Things and why they Matter by David Sax.

So, enjoy the holidays, be happy and safe, hold close the ones you love.  We’ll pick up the worry beads again in the New Year and discover some art and artists to delight us all.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Blog # 63…November 2016

November, that cruelest of months, seemed to ramp up with vehemence last week in spite of sunny, eat-out- on- patios weather .  The election result – what will happen to the environment scares the crap out of me - while it’s far from the end of the story, mustn’t make us think this is the new normal.

We were still shocked and mourning Leonard Cohen’s death as we listened to his voice delivering In Flanders Fields on Remembrance Day. Then Sting performed at the Bataclan on the first anniversary of the murders there and elsewhere in Paris.

So many ways that art and artists bring us some consolation that we’re not alone either in individual or collective despair.  The current Syrian art at the Aga Khan Museum doesn’t make us forget the horrors of Aleppo but it does put us in communion with the culture and, I hope helps us and some of the newcomers  feel  less alone.

We watched Hillary’s avatar Kate McKinnon singing Hallelujah on Saturday night with an eerie feeling of counterpoint and coincidence, ends and beginnings.  As she said at the end, “I’m not giving up and neither should you.”

I hope the brightness of last night’s Super Moon brings in some light…the crack seems pretty wide right now. 

Blog # 62…October, 2016

More anniversaries - 400 years of Shakespeare, 50 years of Star Trek and This Magazine, wonder what will survive from 2016 to remember in half a century or four???

Art and social justice were discussed recently at Massey Hall, by four Canadians whose lives and work reflect their commitment to speaking out in their medium about violence, cruelty and unfairness in our world.

 

Film maker Deepa Mehta’s newest film Anatomy of Violence   looks at the brutal rape of a young woman on a bus in Delhi in 2012. She takes the controversial approach of seeking to understand the young men involved and positioning them in the culture that produced them.  “It was too convenient for them just to be evil,” says Mehta, “we don’t become who we are in isolation.”

Buffy Ste Marie has dazzled us with her music and political activism since the 60’s when her voice joined many others (and how about Bob Dylan ‘s Nobel prize!) raised in protest about human rights, particularly speaking out for her aboriginal people.  Although her voice was silenced for many years, she continued to travel the world, finding songs in her head, “Life is precious and diverse and worth protecting.”   Back in full force, she won the Polaris Prize in 2015 for her moving composition Power in the Blood

Rebecca Belmore was the first aboriginal woman to represent Canada at the 2005 Venice biennale with her work Fountain.  The piece features water in its many forms as a symbol for one of the elements that gives us life and explores how women are involved in its provision. In this, as in installations that have followed, Belmore brings forward the complex association of people, places and things with a sensitivity to history and place and the way aboriginal people (women in particular) are treated as “other”. 

Andre Alexi won the Giller Prize for fiction in 2015 for Fifteen Dogs.   In this look at time, consciousness, belonging, mortality, art and love, he uses the device of imagining a wager between the gods Hermes and Apollo about whether dogs if they were given language would be happier that humans.  Hmmmm, I like the notion of running across a field, not to mention curling up for a nap in the sun, maybe dogs are happier even without talking.

Four Canadian artists to make us proud, revealing through film, music, visual art and fiction some of the deeper, sometimes darker, sides of life.

Then there’s the irrepressible Ai Weiwei who both tickles us and makes us think. His current installation at the Palazzo Strozzi  in Florence is a collection of red rubber dinghies, representing the thousands of refugees arriving in Europe from Africa and the middle east…. both a political statement and a brilliant contemporary contrast to what usually appears in this beautiful renaissance gallery.      

Speaking of refugees, we’re still waiting for our Iraqi family to complete their jump through the hoops of immigration                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

Blog # 61…September 2016

How great to hear that the Paralympics are getting such attention in Rio. I loved the opening ceremonies, especially the piece by Brazilian artist Vik Muniz.that was assembled at the end of the athlete’s parade - 500 plates shaped like jig saw pieces were carried in by the different delegations and placed to form a giant mosaic in the centre of Maracana Stadium.

Muniz first caught my attention with the 2010 film Wasteland. He visited Jardim Gramacho, the world’s largest landfill just outside Rio de Janiero where he spent time getting to know the catadores - the men and women who pick through the refuse.  They spend their days sorting it to be sold for recycling.  Muniz took individual photos and guided them in creating portraits of themselves out of recycled materials. The result was a series of pieces that were exhibited in a Rio gallery with the catadores proudly in attendance.

He spoke movingly in the film about how carefully he’d considered the experience of being subjects of an art piece and how it would affect the participants, conscious that the attention could set unrealistic expectations. Changes in their lives were generally positive, especially for one woman who chose to return to the dump to cook for the gang, realizing that she had some choices but it was important to be with her friends. Vik’s sensibility was a perfect match for the spirit of the Paralympics…as was Priscila Uppal’s when she was named Canadian poet laureate of the Games in BC and in London.  See Blog # 7.

The Paralympics themselves are incredible. I first heard about sports for people with disabilities in England when a colleague told me about the Stoke Mandeville Games (a UK centre for the treatment of spinal cord injuries) which were held first in1948 at the Olympics in London. The athletes participating were16 injured service men and women in wheelchairs competing in archery. The movement grew to the international event we recognize today...

Blog # 60…August, 2016

It seems to be time to think about marking anniversaries - 50 years since we first heard The Beach Boys, ABBA and The Monkees and visited the McMichael Gallery.  Next year, 50 years since EXPO 67 and 150 years since Canada’s confederation.  Many celebrations are in order, small and intimate, large and lavish, at home and abroad.

Getting in ahead of the curve, the Canada Council for the Arts has mounted Punctured Landscape, “a meditation on the Canadian social landscape of living memory”, a series of artworks from their ArtBank. that present an abridged history lesson.

Collectively, the seventeen works ask – How do we learn?  Who decides what merits remembrance?  What role does trauma play in Canada’s history?  They also suggest that we need more ways to interpret our past, more voices in discussion and more art.

The pieces are highly symbolic and thought provoking rather than directly representational, getting the viewer (well, me anyway) to work a bit to get it.

Shane (Mini) Davis’ piece shows a simple house with no windows, wondering - When does a house stop being a home and become a signal of confinement? – evoking the internment of Japanese citizens between 1941 and 1949.

Trevor Gould uses images of shoes to remind us of the horrendous treatment by the City of Halifax of the residents of Africville – representing the journey taken a century earlier by thousands of individuals (mostly on foot) to Nova Scotia to escape slavery in the southern US.

One of the treats of this show was that most of the artists were new discoveries for me…not so Rececca Belmore, who I saw first at the National Art Centre as part of Sakahan and who has become a favourite.  In this show, her piece (she always works large which suits her substantial themes) To Rest and To Dream,  references murdered and disappeared aboriginal women and girls.  A woman rests in bed covered in satin and fur, dreaming and expressing hope for a peaceful outcome to a dreadful situation that’s been ignored for far too long… but it is a restless dream.

The celebration of Canada’s sesquicentennial will no doubt bring its share of self congratulation, joy and expressions of gratitude for the luck we share in calling this country home. Punctured Landscape,  rather than raining on the parade, reminds us of the inequalities and injustices both past and present, balancing the picture  and subtly encouraging us to try and do a bit better in the future.

And coming up early in September, it’ll be 80 years since I was born (and Edward VIII was getting ready to abdicate).  I know, I know, how could that be… well, Elizabeth II is doing well so far - me too.

Blog # 59...July 2016

We're all increasingly aware of people being displaced from their homes by war. We've welcomed a great number here and I'm particularly interested in discovering the different ways that we're attempting to make them feel at home. It's challenging to get them housed, fed and working but beyond those instrumental tasks, helping them make cultural adjustments is trickier. We're familiar with our own ways of thinking, believing and doing things, based on our surroundings, background and experience.  And maybe subconsciously we think it's the best way and we should encourage the newcomers to learn and adjust to us, after all they've chosen to join us...haven't they?

Balancing fitting in and getting along, with keeping in touch with their customs and culture is a delicate equipoise, for them to achieve and for us to witness.

 For my money, cooking is one of the greatest art forms and things we have in common.  I love the way a west end restaurant called Depanneur uses noon hour, when it’s usually closed, to welcome immigrant women from the neighbourhood in to cook.  The owner  supplies space, utensils and some ingredients that are available here...many women have brought spices in their luggage (shows how important those familiar tastes are). The lunches have become popular with local residents as well, possibly giving some of the women a direction for future employment, or at least a connection with their environment.

 The Gardiner Museum, although devoted primarily to displaying ceramics, has branched out in its Community Art Space with a recent program.   Muslim women in the South Riverdale Community Centre have been invited there to decorate their distinctive clothing -  head scarves, hijabs or burkas. Sharing their stories while they work helps them transform their individual experiences into forms of artistic expressions. Their pieces were displayed in the public gallery from July 19 to 24 (I missed it) as a means of sparking dialogue and promoting acceptance within the broader community.

The Aga Khan Museum, as well as introducing us to an amazing collection of art works, is a subtle but important exercise in human relations. Their recent installation by Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami (missed this too) Doors Without Keys is a series of still photos showing doors, all closed, many padlocked, chained or bolted. These old. mostly wooden doors are attached to uninhabited homes in his country and others in the region. 
He also composed haikus to accompany the photos:  

“The key falls

 silently

 from her neck in the rice field.

 In the kitchen

 The boiling kettle on the stove.”

Abbas Kiarostami died on July 4th at 76. leaving. us a cinematic treasure chest

Lots of material here to deepen our understanding and get a feeling for the complex and layered lives these people are bringing here to share with us.  We’re still waiting for our family of Iraqis.