January 26, 2023

Conceptions of White

What is Whiteness anyway? This is the question posed by the current exhibition at the Art Museum University of Toronto.

We enter the show through the pristine “Portal”, created by Robert Morris in 1964. “Portal” is pure minimalist sculpture, ostensibly stripped of meaning, so neutral as to be almost invisible. “What you see is what you see,” Frank Stella famously said, wrapping up minimalism.

Portal by Robert Morris

The piece encapsulates one of the ideas the show explores: how the concept of White, especially in the art world, is so natural and all-encompassing, it’s virtually unseen.

But wait. Hold on! Before we take that fateful stroll, we are invited to engage with the present — shut up, and check our privileges — through the augmented reality filters created by the “Famous New Media Artist” Jeremy Bailey.

Detail of “Whitesimple” by Jeremy Bailey
Detail of Whitesimple by Jeremy Bailey

In the handout that accompanies the exhibition the curators declare their biracial status and indicate they are seeking a clearer understanding of their own relationship to Whiteness. (Full disclosure: Through Ancestry.ca I traced one of my family branches all the way to Viking marauders sweeping down on the Orkney Islands to commit mayhem. They went on to settle in Manitoba. Some things you don’t want to know.)

On the other hand, I like the way this show acknowledges history at every turn. I agree that the story of the present can only be told by starting from the past.

The exhibition contains a graphic display locating the invention of Whiteness right around the time colonial adventurism, also known as The Age of Discovery, was ramping up. Since colonial logic maintained that a place did not exist unless White Europeans had seen it, it was important to distinguish White from everyone else.

Detail of graphic in Conceptions of White exhibition

Deanna Bowen‘s installation, called “White Man’s Burden” takes a dive into Whiteness and the history of the Canadian cultural elite. Her ambitious and engrossing piece is made up of numerous items from various Canadian archival sources, some hung upside down and/or printed in a negative versions.

Installation view of “White Man’s Burden” by Deanna Bowen

Detail of Deanna Bowen installation, featuring MacKenzie King, and other cultural elites.

According to his biographers MacKenzie King was cold and tactless. During his long political lilfe leading the Liberal Party, King had several close female friends, including Joan Patteson, a married woman with whom he spent some of his leisure time.

There are many fascinating images and documents in Deanna Bowen’s work: the cover of the T.C. Douglas master’s thesis, for instance, titled “The Problems of the Subnormal Family” in which Douglas recommended several eugenic policies, including the sterilization of “mental defectives and those incurably diseased;” or, a newspaper clipping describing the “objects and purposes” of the Kanadian Klu Klux Klan, including a membership pitch.

Detail from “White Man’s Burden” by Deanna Bowen

There is a wonderful complexity to this artwork. Deanna Bowen leaves it up to the viewer to solve the puzzle of images, covering hundreds of years of violence, vanity, greed and hubris.

Conversely, the vinyl wall installation by Ken Gonzales-Day is simple, direct and deeply horrifying.

“The Wonder Gaze” by Ken Gonzales-Day

The piece is from a series titled Erased Lynchings in which Ken Gonzales-Day reproduced souvenir lynching postcards — a thing in certain southern states — after digitally removing the victims.

The video piece by Howardena Pindell, free white and 21, in which the artist — speaking to the camera in a frank, casual, somewhat bemused style — relates numerous incidents of routine rascist behaviour which she has personally experienced. The video is all the more disturbing because of her blase delivery .

You can watch the whole thing here:

Link to Howardena Pindell video, “free whitge and 21”

Both Nell Painter and Fred Wilson examine the tropes of art history to shed some light on White.

Detail of “Ancient Hair” by Nell Painter

It is as if Nell Painter cut up a Survey of Western Art textbook, scrawled some trenchant questions onto 81/2 by 11 sheets of bond, and pinned the whole thing to the nearest wall. I like the ad hoc feel of this piece. The idea is to just get the ideas out as quickly as possible and to hell with all the niceties of framing and smoothing, tweaking and hanging.

Installation view of “Ancient Hair” by Nell Painter
Detail of “Ancient Hair” by Nell Painter

Fred Wilson puts objects together, transforming their meaning through proximity. In this case, milk glass, white porcelain and china, copies of “classic statuary,”– some broken and toppled — and kitschy items like the white nubian goddess and the black “mammy” cookie jar are arrayed. Looking at this collection of items, each charged with social, cultural and historical meaning, we wonder, which objects belong and which don’t? And why?

Detail from “Love and Loss in the Milky Way” by Fred Wilson
Installation view of “Love and Loss in the Milky Way” by Fred Wilson

I spent some time watching the The White Album, a video piece by Arthur Jafa. Composed largely of found footage, with an original soundtrack that has a chilling, dirgelike quality, this artwork is mesmerizing as it drills deep into the contemporary psyche and unearths a rich and sometimes terrifying vein of emotions.

Excerpt from The White Album by Arthur Jafa

Like the show’s curators, now is apparently a time for me to seek a clearer understanding of Whiteness.

Earlier this month I happened to take a tour of the McLeod Plantation, on James Island, on the outskirts of Charleston, South Carolina. Unlike previous trips to the American South, where I heard alot about French antiques and hoop skirts, the tour at the McLeod plantation was an unflinching description of rape, torture, brutality and exploitation that endured into the 1990s.

Spanish moss on the 100 year old oaks at the McLeod Plantation, James Island, South Carolina

Homes of the enslaved, at the McLeod Plantation, James Island, South Carolina

Spanish moss wafted in the beautiful old trees, and the fields — where sea island cotton was once grown — were green in mid-January.

June 8, 2020

In Toronto and elsewhere, the lack of distracting activities like movies, concerts and sports is contributing to profound events. The real world is changing so fast, as people get focused and rise up. Meanwhile, in the cultural domain, time and place, and, openings and closings, don’t really matter. Many cultural products have become digital and are therefore on demand, untethered by time constraints. Time itself can be compressed to almost nothing or drawn out and made to last.

2020 Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival

Ho Tam at Paul Petro Contemporary Art

For example, the 2020 Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival, which normally takes place throughout the city in the month of May, was largely postponed, except for the bits and pieces of it which can still be seen, either online or, in a few instances, as outdoor public installations (in the real world.)

In a 25-year-old video by Ho Tam, which was exhibited at Paul Petro Contemporary Art as part of CONTACT, Godzilla is the opening act. The video, titled “The Yellow Pages”, has a lightness and playfulness that belies its serious content.

The Yellow Pages by Ho Tam

Silent and less than eight minutes long, Ho Tam’s video is an illustrated alphabet of racial cliches and assumptions. A is for “Asian Crimes,” B is “Butterfly”, C is “Chinatown,” D is “Dogmeat.” The artist has a very graceful way of layering one cliche upon another. E is for “Enter the Dragon” but instead of Bruce Lee we are treated to a clip of a painfully decrepit Mao Zedong meeting (possibly) Soviet dignitaries sometime in the early 70s. Everything feels so weighted with meaning. Maybe that’s why the piece is so delightful to watch. The cliches are off, and, therefore unsettling.

Uniformly bathed in sepia, the images diverge wildly: “Head Tax” is a ghastly heap of skulls documenting the reign of the Khmer Rouge, “Ninja Turtles” refers to a group of elderly Tai Chi practitioners, and the “Asian Crimes” section — the first letter — introduces the endearing yet ruinous antics of Godzilla. I’m not sure if Godzilla is punishing “Asian Crimes,” or maybe Godzilla himself is the crime, unleashed upon the world.

According to social theorists, since the first Japanese movie featuring Godzilla debuted in 1954, the giant lizard has effectively tapped into our fears and preoccupations. He embodies nuclear weapons, catastrophic bio-hazard, global environmental degradation, cross-species virus transmission and whatever comes next. That’s why we love him!

Toho Studio

Dawit L. Petros at Power Plant

On the CONTACT Festival website I was advised there was a public installation currently On View at The Power Plant. I rode my bike down to Queen’s Quay to have a look. The Power Plant was closed. But, I did get to see the giant, outdoor banner, art piece by Dawit L. Petros, erected as part of the 2020 CONTACT festival.

Installation view of Artwork by Dawit L. Petros titled “Untitled (Overlapping and intertwined territories that fall from view III)

Reading the accompanying text makes clear that this is a scene of current and historic misery. A man is holding a large photograph, which conceals his identity. The man is named Moktar. He is described as one of the millions of migrants who have embarked on dangerous journeys all over the world. Coming from Eritrea, Moktar traveled through Sudan, Egypt, Libya, and across the Mediterranean to a new life in Italy. He was photographed at an unspecified location.

Detail of installation view of Artwork by Dawit L. Petros titled “Untitled (Overlapping and intertwined territories that fall from view III)

The photograph Moktar is holding is “a reproduction of an etching by Georgina Smith, an eyewitness to the sinking of the transatlantic steamship SS Utopia. In a tragic accident on March 17, 1891, the SS Utopia—used frequently to transport European immigrants to the United States—collided with a battleship off the shores of Gibraltar and sank quickly, killing over 500 passengers, many of whom were poor southern Italians seeking better lives across the Atlantic Ocean.”

Detail view of installation by Dawit L. Petros titled “Untitled (Overlapping and intertwined territories that fall from view III)

Looking closely at the photograph of the etching, the detailed image of the terrible event can be seen.

The migrant experience, quickly forgotten by subsequent generations, is perilous today, as it was in 1891.

View of Lake Ontario from southern facade of the Power Plant.

The view southward from the art installation appears serene. Queen’s Quay, normally thronged with tourists during the summer months, is deserted. The lake is very calm in the sudden summer heat.

Museum of Contemporary Art

MOCA closed on March 14th, right in the middle of a exciting moment in the Museum’s brief history. Exhibits by four celebrated artists —Shelagh Keeley, Megan Rooney, Carlos Bunga and Sarah Sze — at various points in their respective career — made the building feel suddenly packed with bold endeavour. What a letdown when the pandemic wrapped things up way too soon!

Since that time, MOCA, like so many other cultural institutions, has tried to figure out ways to retain their audience and foster engagement.

Toronto’s Museum of Contemporary Art is located at 158 Sterling Road
Ben Rahn/A-Frame/A-Frame

During the lockdown, each week the Museum presents a new time-based work, frequently in collaboration with another local cultural organization. This week you can watch an experimental play, which is particularly relevant to the Black Lives Matter events of the moment. It is titled On Trial: The Long Doorway, by Deanna Bowen, and it can be seen on MOCA’s Shift Key platform.

Meanwhile, the real exhibits, which were scheduled to run to mid-May, languish in the silent halls of the Museum. Hesitancy and confusion about when shows start and end constitute more pandemic fallout. (So many changes in the world right now: I really like the fact that Grind Culture is taking a hit during this global episode! Slow the hell down!)

Guided virtual tours, by MOCA curators, are provided in connection to some of the works inside, including a tour of An Embodied Haptic Space which is the title of Shelagh Keeley’s exhibition of site specific wall drawings and photographs. Tarp paintings from 1986 and a fascinating video are also in the exhibition.

Installation view of drawings at MOCA by Shelagh Keeley

Watch a guided tour of the exhibition here.

Shelagh Keeley, “Fragments of the Factory / Unfinished Traces of Labour”, 2020. MOCA Toronto. Photo by Toni Hafkenscheid

The washed out greens and purples in the drawings multiply the feeling of decay and putrescence seen in the photographs, themselves part of the visual wall, which the artist took, when the site at 158 Sterling Road was still unrenovated.

The sense of intuitive confidence, so evident in the beautiful drawings, was also at work in the video part of the exhibition. The text accompanying the video, titled The Colonial Garden, explains that this place, now largely shuttered and in disrepair, was part of the 1940 Portuguese World Exhibition, where it functioned as a kind of human zoo, exhibiting native people from Portugal’s colonies. Shelagh Keeley’s video, creates a growing sense of the sinister, as it takes the viewer on a slow tour of the shambolic garden.

Still from The Colonial Garden by Shelagh Keeley