Canvas Journal XVII - Spring 2018 by Canvas Journal

CANVAS McGill’s Journal of Art History and Communication Studies

Volume XVII

Spring 2018

Editors-in-Chief Aimée Tian and Muhan Zhang Editorial Board Tara Allen-Flanagan Lucia Bell-Epstein Miray Eroglu Gabby Marcuzzi Herie Lily-Cannelle Mathieu Émilie Perring Greta Rainbow Mallory Rappaport Josephine Spalla Layout Design Josephine Spalla Cover Image Lucia Bell-Epstein

Canvas is the Art History and Communication Studies Undergraduate Journal of McGill University. In an effort to showcase the exemplary research and writing conducted at the undergraduate level, we publish academic essays written by students in this department and field both in an annual print journal and online at canvasmcgill.ca. We additionally host the annual Canvas Undergraduate Colloquium every spring.

Cover image by Lucia Bell, featuring Levitated Mass by Michael Heizer at LACMA, Los Angeles, photographed in 2016. Funding for this journal has been generously provided by the Art History and Communication Studies Student Association, the AUS Journal Fund, the Dean of Arts Development Fund.

ISSN 2369-839X

CONTENTS A note to the reader

Looking for an Audience: Princess Nokia, Afropunk Festival, and the Cultural Politics of Sound Alexa van Abbema

Composing a Room of One’s Own: Feminine and Erotic Space in the Work of Vanessa Bell Thomas Macdonald

Minimalism and Meaning-Making: The Self-Referentialism of Frank Stella’s Black Paintings Erin Havens

The Christian Iconography of Robert Mapplethorpe’s Sadomasochistic Photography Luke Sarabia

Horror on the Margins: Embodying Otherness in Craft Media Erika Kindsfather

Public Art and the Global in Montreal: A Case Study of Jaume Plensa’s Source Laurence Charlebois

Divergence & Fragmentation: Contemporary Indigenous Art in the Mapped “Global” World Hannah Deskin

Doing Differently Now: Lubaina Himid and the Future of Britain’s Memorial Landscape Jacqueline Hampshire

Authors

110

Editors

112

A note to the reader In many ways, the 2017-2018 school year has seen great change, in both our department at McGill and society at large. In the Fall and Winter semesters, the department of Art History and Communication Studies created new positions for professors of Global Contemporary Art and Indigenous Art & Media respectively. Meanwhile, in the world of communications, social media continues to be a conduit to sweeping socio-cultural moments - the headlining movement of recent months being the feminist-minded #MeToo movement. The essays of this seventeenth edition of Canvas, McGillâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Undergraduate Journal of Art History and Communication Studies is a reflection of the growing awareness in areas of globality, Indigenous culture and activism, and intersectional feminism. We kick off with an analysis of hip-hop artist Princess Nokia and the cultural politics of sound, then rewind to reconsider the subtle femininity and eroticism of twentieth century British painter Vanessa Bell, followed by a deconstruction of the marginalization of craft in the Western canon. The last three essays each tackle the notion of the global contemporary, from public art in Montreal to works of Indigenous re-imaginings of the mapped world to fictional monuments by 2017 Turner prize winner, Lubaina Himid. The dedicated efforts of many have gone into Canvas this year. At the heart of Canvas is the extraordinary editorial board, who have collectively reviewed thousands of pages of writing; edited and published seventeen essays on our online platform and eight in this printed volume; and organized our second annual Canvas Undergraduate Colloquium and journal launch. Special thanks to Gabby Marcuzzi-Herie and Lucia Epstein-Bell for their help in event-planning, Lucia once more for providing our cover image, and last but most definitely not least, the illustrious Josie Spalla for her incredible design work on this journal and all of our marketing materials. To our phenomenal authors, online and in print, we are honoured to be able to share your insightful, witty, occasionally irreverent, and unfailingly verbose research projects with the world. Thank you to our friends in the Art History and Communication Studies Student Association for your continued support, and to the AUS Journal Fund, Dean of Arts Development Fund, and AUS Special Projects Fund for their generosity in funding Canvas. Finally, we offer our sincere gratitude to the professors and lecturers of this department, who continue to inspire and guide us both in and outside the poorly lit lecture hall of ARTS W-215. AimĂŠe Tian and Muhan Zhang Editors-in-Chief

LOOKING FOR AN AUDIENCE: PRINCESS NOKIA, AFROPUNK FESTIVAL, AND THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF SOUND WRITTEN BY ALEXA VAN ABBEMA EDITED BY AIMÃ&#x2030;E TIAN

Looking for an Audience: Princess Nokia, Afropunk Festival, and the Cultural Politics of Sound The amplification of the human voice, particularly in the context of a music festival, illustrates how speaking and listening are political phenomena signifying gendered, racialized, and classed subjectivities. The Afropunk Festival in particular reimagines this; Afropunk is one of the most frequented spaces for black and Indigenous artists to explore how their myriad sonic practices present different possibilities across racial and class-based lines.1 Located in Brooklyn, Afropunk is a festival dedicated to celebrating black punk alternative culture and activism.2 Demonstrating a proliferation of black musical expressions, the festival’s 2014 lineup featured the self-identified “Afro-Nuyorican” (African-New Yorker-Puerto Rican)3 alternative hip-hop artist Destiny Frasqueri. Popularly known by her stage name, ‘Princess Nokia’, the 25-year-old rapper grew up in Spanish Harlem and the Lower East Side.4 Embodying what she describes as a type of “urban realism”5 - evident in her music video Tomboy - Frasqueri’s experienced great tribulations in childhood. After her mother passed when she was nine, Frasqueri proceeded to experience abusive foster care in various homes across low-income neighborhoods in New York.6 Speaking to a collective trauma and memory, Frasqueri’s experiences turn towards the self-preservation, pain, and pleasures of Afro-Indigenous communities in the past, present, and future. For the purpose of this essay, I use the term Afro-Indigenous as described by Frasqueri to refer to one of various ways of identifying with mixed raced Caribbean, Yoruba, Taino, and Puerto Rican cultural heritage, ancestry, and communities.7 As an Afro-Indigenous woman, Frasqueri negotiates different modes of listening through her performance, carving out an apt relationship between sound, body, and subversive pleasure. Simultaneously, her track, Bikini Weather/Corazon en Afrika,8 merges Yoruba musical traditions and popular forms of hip-hop to transform conventions of performance in the sonic environment of a mainstream music festival.9 I base this argument on the premise that the auditory terrain is one of 8

cultural resistance and self-imagination. Forged out of the legacies, sounds, and movements of black and Indigenous voices, Afropunk Festival thus preserves hip-hop traditions of activism and alternative media production. On Sunday, August 24th, 2014, Princess Nokia performed at Afropunk Festival using technologies to re-mix Yoruba sounds and assert her West African cultural heritage. As Frasqueri describes, the term Yoruba refers to the tonal language of culturally related peoples occupying the southwestern corner of Nigeria.10 Notably, Afropunk Festival amplifies the voices and desires of these distinct sonic and material histories.11 Emerging out of the inner-cities of New York in the 1970â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, rap music and hip-hop became a form of cultural resistance that responded to and challenged systems of marginalization and misrepresentation.12 In other words te rap and hip-hop genre recuperated the images and sounds of black bodies from mass media to â&#x20AC;&#x153;speakâ&#x20AC;? their experiences.13 However, the visual realm persists as a privileged site of cultural and political analysis, and the auditory terrain has deep historical roots with regards to race and cultural resistance.14 Not unlike the

Figure 1. Milah Libin, Tomboy, 2016. Screenshot. YouTube.

context in which hip-hop first emerged, Afropunk catalyzes the continuing formation of hip-hop, using the auditory terrain to create space for black, Afro-Indigenous, and inner-city youth. Afropunk Festival rouses public attention surrounding the intersections of gendered violence, racial discrimination, and state-sanctioned violence. In particular, Princess Nokia’s performance of Bikini Weather/Corazon en Afrika addresses the cultural implications of listening for her own Yoruba-speaking communities and contemporary American audiences. Such performance is a form of antiracist practice with powerful implications. Princess Nokia’s live performance uses Yoruba rhythms, techno beats, and the Nigerian flute (Oja). While Nokia performs with two female dancers, there is a white DJ playing her backing tracks, standing behind a Red Bull-branded speaker. Given the growing consumer profile of Afropunk festival as black-subcultural practices are commodified in mainstream culture, Nokia’s performance re-appropriates Afro-Indigenous and Yoruba musical gestures to articulate her own political subjectivity through sound. In doing so, she presents the possibilities for an alternative mode of listening on her terms. Princess Nokia adopts popularized forms of hip-hop as a tool of cultural resistance, particularly challenging gendered and sexual violence along racial and class-based lines. That is, Nokia’s affective desires are located in longer genealogies of articulation, recuperating controlling images of the “loud” black women as the root of pathology15 in terms that are antiracist and queer. As Murray R. Schafer concedes, a sonic environment or “soundscape” refers to any acoustic field of study which is applied to environments.16 This is particularly apt for understanding Nokia’s performance at Afropunk festival. Through the soundscape of Afropunk, Nokia re-mixes Yoruba rhythms during her rap performance to assert her “Afro-Nuyorican” identity. Her affective musical gestures circulate to produce a sonic space. Subsequently, Nokia reclaims her Afro-Indigenous identity by controlling images used as justification for the subordination of Afro-Indigenous women and imagining herself in ways that are oppositional.17 In her performance of Bikini Weather, Nokia deploys dubstep, hiphop style-rapping, the Oja flute, and Yoruba chants to denote 10

ways of being in and producing public space as an Indigenous, queer, and Yoruba woman at a music festival. Simultaneously, her backing track in Yoruba translates to, “She is the Earth”, encoding Indigenous epistemologies of the Earth as a sacred element of Afro-Indigenous life and sovereignty.18 Notably, the backing track is structured around the repetition of “She is the Earth” throughout the performance. Hence, Nokia negotiates social meanings from an Afro-Indigenous worldview, exposing the cultural politics of water and earth to decolonize ways of listening and being in the world.19 Her tonal and musical expressions interweave Afro-Indigenous ways of knowing with hip-hop’s anti-racist agenda to shift how she is heard in everyday life. Thus, sound for Nokia circulates between different cultural histories and temporalities of resistance. Nokia’s performance encodes black cultural aesthetics of play to create cross-racial participation for Yoruba and non-Yoruba speaking audience members. This is accomplished through the aural and corporeal communication of black and Indigenous self-determination. Sociologist Tricia Rose stresses the significance of social dances in African American culture and how they are tied to the construction of personal identity, by dancers and audiences that observe them.20 Namely, in a social dance, the female black body achieves a freedom from arenas of representation that govern legitimate corporeality: both visual and sonic. Similarly, Nokia and her dancers’ bodily gestures, performance of melodies sung like speech, nuances of vowels, and digitized Yoruba rhythms in Corazon en Afrika incorporates African American girls’ social dances similar to double-dutch. Whereby shaking their hips allows for pleasure, subversion, and protest. Subsequently, Frasqueri and her dancers imagine the capacity to see themselves in ways that are liberatory through the subversive pleasures of play. In this way, Nokia’s performance incorporates a phenomenological approach to understanding how the body is intrinsic to understanding and experiencing the world around her.21 Further, their gestures circulate affectively between audience members initiated into black social dance styles.22 Particularly, during the performance, she also asks members to raise their fists – a symbol in cultural history of solidarity and support. It is notable that members who are not initiated into cultures 11

Figure 2. Roger Kisby, Princess Nokia at Afropunk, 2014.

of black social dances may misread Nokia’s bodily gestures as a simply sensational. However, her palpable physical pleasure bound up with a racialized cultural history at Afropunk Festival forms an entry site to understanding the materiality of black embodiment at the crossroads of performance. Thus, Nokia’s adoption of African American social dances, Yoruba drumbeats, and rap-orality at the Afropunk Festival transforms implications of hip-hop performance to publicly reclaim and revalorize her Afro-Indigenous, queer identity. Nokia performs in Spanish and Yoruba to communicate Indigenous epistemologies of spirituality and sovereignty in relation to mainstream festival’s cultural appropriation and monoculturalism. Yoruba and Spanish-speaking audience members understand Nokia’s performance as another transmission: as processes of acoustemology. Through ways of knowing and being through sound,23 Nokia negotiates the politics of the everyday by using the auditory terrain itself as a way of engaging with the world. Moreover, Nokia’s voice is an affective and geographical expression; through her performance, she produces public and political sites and temporalities of articulation and struggle. Nokia’s lyrics in Spanish translate to, “They grab the spirit, and speak of the Saint, People who call me, Magic resonating, My heart in Afrika”. Using hip-hop 12

melodic sung-like-speech, Nokia’s addressees are the marginalized Yoruba, Indigenous, and Spanish speaking members of the audience. Notably, Nokia asserts an Indigenous and Brujera self-sovereignty of the Yoruba community through performative utterance. She names a form of cultural-imperialism exerted onto Indigenous communities through religious conversion. Hence, her vocal utterances preserve her West African cultural heritage and is an act resistance to the erasure of Indigenous spirituality in America’s dominant soundscape. Nokia finds new ways to remember the past, while imagining the future through sound. Moreover, in the present context of Afropunk as a mainstream festival and a site of cultural appropriation, she sustains a public dialogue of racial difference by asserting her Afro-Indigenous spirituality. This is particularly important given the interwoven histories of oral traditions and storytelling as a language of place in various Indigenous cultures.24 Thus, by adopting hip-hop orality, Nokia’s culturally encodes her voice in a historiography of imperialist-erasure. In this way, Nokia’s performance is a terrain of ideological struggle - she allows for a nuanced exploration of the intimate relationship between embodiment, spectacle, and new emancipatory possibilities through popular music in and be-

Figure 3. Todd Owyoung, Red Bull Content Pool, Princess Nokia at Afropunk, 2014. Courtesy of Red Bull.

Figure 4. Roger Kisby, Princess Nokia at Afropunk, 2014.

yond the United States. Princess Nokia extends the process of listening to consider the possibilities of a non-repressive future. Her performance turns to her communities â&#x20AC;&#x201C; past and present â&#x20AC;&#x201C; in order to formulate a paradigm for antiracist and queer survival. Perhaps now it is more urgent than ever to think through the premises of emancipation and freedom in the context of sound practices. Ultimately, Nokia, like those before her, builds on the articulation of the significance of orality a radical alternative to visual pragmatism. Yet it is more about the ways we must 14

acknowledge the central role that sound plays in our coming to grips with how alleged public spaces are manipulated. If Afro-Indigenous and queer communities continue to be silenced and their stories ignored, we are doomed to have but a limited grasp on the full range of problems we currently face. Fundamentally then, Princess Nokia suggests that power is never completely successful.

Notes

1 William Futon, “The Performer as Historian: Black Messiah, To Pimp a Butterfly, and the Matter of Albums,” American Music Review, Spring 2015, accessed January 12, 2018, http://www.brooklyn.cuny.edu/web/aca_centers_hitchcock/AMR_44-2_Fulton.pdf. 2 Afropunk Music Festival, “The Movement,” AFROPUNK, August 24, 2017, accessed January 12, 2018, http://www.afropunk.com/page/the-movement 3 vie Ani, “Princess Nokia is Ready to Reign,” in Mixed Race Studies, March 29, 2017, accessed January 12, 2018, http://www.mixedracestudies. org/?p=54334. 4 Afropunk Music Festival, “The Movement.” 5 Afropunk Music Festival, “The Movement.” 6 Afropunk Music Festival, “The Movement.” 7 Afropunk Music Festival, “The Movement.” 8 YouTube, “Nokia - Bikini Weather / Corazon en Afrika (Live at AFROPUNK 2014),” online video clip, 4 minutes and 50 seconds, last modified June 21, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ngg0eBEyV0I. 9 Murray R. Schafer, “Introduction,” “Listening,” and “The Acoustic Community,” In the Soundscape, Our Sonic Environment and the Turning of the World 3, no. 12 (Rochester: Destiny Books, 1994), 2. 10 Destiny Frasqueri, “Divine Power: How Five Women Use Traditional Religious Practices to Navigate their Modern Lives,” The Fader, December 12, 2018, accessed January 13, 2018, http://www.thefader.com/2016/12/08/ women-religion-fashion-faith. 11 Afropunk Music Festival, “The Movement,” AFROPUNK. 12 Murray Forman, The ‘Hood’ Comes First: Race, Space, and Place in Rap and Hip-hop, (Middletown: Wesleyan UP, 2002), 22. 13 bell hooks, Black Looks: Race and Representation (Boston: South End Press, 1992) 24. 14 Jennifer Lynn Stoever, The Sonic Colour Line: Race and the Cultural Politics of Listening (New York, NYU Press, 2016), 50. 15 Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness,

and the Politics of Empowerment (New York: Routledge, 2000), 25. 16 Schafer, “Introduction,” “Listening,” and “The Acoustic Community, 4. 17 Collins, Black Feminist Thought, 30. 18 Melanie Yazzie, “Indigenous Peoples and the Politics of Water” Decolonization, February 3, 2016, accessed January 13, 2018, https://decolonization.wordpress.com/2016/02/03/special-issue-the-politics-of-water/. 19 Stoever, The Sonic Colour Line, 80. 20 Rose, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (Hanover: U of New England, 1994) 250. 21 Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology: Orientation, Objects, Others (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 23. 22 Tricia Rose, Black Noise, 254. 23 Steven Feld, “Acoustemology,” in Keywords in Sounds (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015), 17. 24 Yazzie, “Indigenous Peoples and the Politics of Water.”

COMPOSING A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN: FEMININE AND EROTIC SPACE IN THE WORK OF VANESSA BELL WRITTEN BY THOMAS MACDONALD EDITED BY ÉMILIE PERRING

Composing a Room of One’s Own: Feminine and Erotic Space in the Work of Vanessa Bell Active between 1906 and 1961, Vanessa Bell was a prolific painter, interior designer, and one of the most consequential members of the Bloomsbury Group of artists, which included her sister Virginia Woolf, her husband Clive Bell, Duncan Grant, Roger Fry, and Dora Carrington. Despite her influence, critical attention to her work has long been inadequate and negatively gendered. In 1922, an art critic responding positively to Bell’s work posited that “when a woman has the misfortune to have art in her, it tends to be her whole existence.” He continues: “[Bell] has given has given to her modern woman carousing…a flower-like charm, with an afterthought of the barnacle.”1 Such clunky, gendered, and disparaging critiques of Bell are common throughout the twentieth century. Critics and scholars have conflated her femininity with superficiality to justify their lack of critical attention to her work. In discussions of the Bloomsbury Group as a whole, scholars reduce Bell to the role of neurotic “maternal” figurehead and “moral center,” informing and nurturing the work of her male colleagues, but herself boring, “maddeningly simple,” and lacking “imaginative conception.”2 The relegation to figurative Bloomsbury mother is a discursive fabrication. Bell certainly never styled herself as such, only thrice commenting on the dynamics of the Group, and never on her position among them.3 The scholarly tendency to examine Bell’s compositions according to her biography, relations and affairs with her colleagues trivializes her Figure 1. Vanessa Bell, Abstract Painting, 1914, oil on art and assigns credit canvas. Tate Modern, London. for her work to her male 18

counterparts.4 This paper aims to correct the deficiency of critical study on her work by taking it for itself. I argue that through formal and color arrangement and consistent subject material, Bell defines a space in her paintings that is subversive, feminine, and erotic. I trace this project in a selection of her abstract paintings, still-lives, landscapes, and decorative furniture. Finally, I will examine her portraits of women, by way of her Self-Portrait (1915), for implications of this latent erotic femininity. Hardly the foil by which her male colleagues measured and defined their art, Bell actively rebukes male conceptions of femininity. In her abstract paintings, Bell betrays a concern for formal arrangement, expression, and interaction that informs her compositions in depictions of other spaces. Her Abstract Painting of 1914 (Fig. 1) in particular plays with the dynamics of color and organized space. Its colorful rectangular figures announce the deliberateness of their positions. They are in dancerly conversation with each other. The petite red figure stands coyly just off the center of the composition. The large pink square retreats, with shades of blue, to the top right. Congruous with, and in proximity to, the edge of the compositional frame, it seems suspended in a heightened state of erotic longing for the complement that the frame offers, especially in contrast to the touching forms at the opposite corner of the canvas. The shapesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; distinct right angles proclaim both the self-containment of their distinct and expressive colors,

Figure 2. Vanessa Bell, Nude with Poppies, 1916, oil on canvas. Swindon Museum and Gallery, Swindon.

as well as their congruity with each other and the compositional frame. They seem poised for movement in the charged, yellow field, daring for rearrangement and comparison with each other. The pungent yellow background, or rather, between-ground, is not simply negative space, but shapely in itself; painted in rectangular patterns of brushwork, it reverberates with the Figure 3. Vanessa Bell, Painted Omega Screen (Tents and shapes and vibrations Figures), 1913, oil on canvas. Victoria and Albert Museum, London. of its inhabitants. The arrangement of form and color in the Abstract Painting, as Richard Morphet writes, â&#x20AC;&#x153;insists on its character as a pictorial structureâ&#x20AC;? and demonstrates the artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s interest in charged pictorial spaces.5 Bell develops this use of space in Nude with Poppies of 1916 (Fig. 2). The work is semi-abstract but almost identical in color pallet to the 1914 Abstract Painting. The relations of those abstract seem to imbue Nude with Poppies. Organized around the female body, the composition of the painting is decidedly feminine: her body determines both its height and width. She actively composes the pictorial field. Her exaggerated neck, torso, and legs point not to her constraint, but to her slinky ease at filling and stretching the pictorial space. The tenuous brown and black frame at the top and bottom edge of the composition both refers to the pictorial plane as a site of an artistic spatial composition and calls attention to her act of expanding it. The visible brushstrokes and canvas similarly point to this act of creation organized by the female figure and artist. The female figure also generates pictorial depth. Her repose is the only suggestion that she exists upon a surface and within a three-dimensional space. Her body 20

functions as a line of horizon that structurally and visually separates the surface of her ground with the atmosphere or vertical plane behind her. The dimensionality of the pictorial space derives from the female nude. Emanating from her in rippling brushstrokes, the atmosphere behind her also takes form according to her body. The titular poppies finally prove her body’s consequences for the composition. They simultaneously mimic and respond to her figure, turning and expanding with natural ease, just as she expands the pictorial space. The flowers point to her head, breasts, stomach, and groin to accentuate her body, its curves, and her femininity. She defines the space she inhabits. Bell’s abstracts offer a schematic for her conception of erotic and feminine compositions. Her Painted Omega Screen (Tents and Figures) of 1913 (Fig. 3) furthers the excavation of erotic feminine space by countering a vision of femininity offered by Cézanne in his Grandes Baigneuses of 1906 (Fig. 4). Cézanne’s influence on Bell’s style is well documented, but her depictions of mythic, leisurely women specifically recall Cézanne’s Bathers series.6 The grand, triangular forms of the Painted Omega Screen and the abstract women that sit among them, in particular, evoke Les Grandes Baigneuses. But while Cézanne’s baigneuses mimic in form the natural scene behind and among them, Bell has displaced the female nudes into a landscape of basic form and color: white, pale blue, burgundy, gold, and verdigris triangles and curves. The landscape seems less to instruct the position of the figures, as in Cézanne, than it does echo and complement their forms. The muted green Figure 4. Paul Cezanne, Les Grandes Baigneuses, 1906, oil on triangular shape on canvas. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia. the bottom right of 21

the composition rises to meet the legs of the figure sitting before it, the large tent twists simperingly with the head of the figure sitting below it at center. In their resemblance to the female figures and their movements, the basic forms that compose the pictorial space become feminine in themselves. Yet Figure 5. Vanessa Bell, The Tub, 1917, oil on canvas. Tate, London. Bell denies the visual satisfaction that Cézanne locates in the unity of female body and landscape. Her women are grotesque and rigid. They do not perform for the voyeur as Cézanne’s figures do. The triangular form of trees and women at the center of his composition becomes the humble tent in Bell’s screen. Tamar Garb notes in Cézanne’s vulvic triangular frame the construction of femininity as “a lack, a gap, a whole, a wound…and absence.”7 Bell’s tent reconfigures that femininity and female anatomy as a habitable site of shelter. The tent constructs a space in the composition that is definitively feminine and erotic. The screen itself, as an instrument that functions to divide physical space, underlines the creation of feminized and erotic space in the pictorial field. In The Tub of 1917 (Fig. 5), Bell furthers the association between space, viewing, and the female body. The composition is stark in its minimalism. But, as Lisa Tickner writes of Studland Beach (1912), that artist’s tangible “impulse to strengthen the sense of structure and design by tightening [her] forms exerts an influence in shaping meaning.”8 In The Tub, the expansive floor and simple walls that frame the scene on three sides 22

call attention to its voluminous space. The nude female figure stands timidly in a self-contained posture on the right. Yet the room formally reflects her body and psychology. The two walls on the top right and left mirror her long, sturdy legs; the line between floor and posterior wall intersect and visually bisect her at the hip. This fragmentation estranges her from the lower half of her body and demonstrates her diffidence. The flowers in the mural on the back-wall droop from their tenuous stems that sprout from their bulbous vase. Against a blank blue expanse, they endow the scene with a precariousness and “gravity” that pervades the voluminous space of the scene.9 The titular tub and the space it occupies within the parameters of its walls emphasize the grave atmosphere of the depicted scene. Tilted and almost level with the pictorial plane, it calls attention to the act of viewing this space. “Itself a distillation of silence and reflection,” it symbolically offers the psychological state of the female figure and the potential for its “fullness and stability.”10 The space it holds is synonymous with her body, position, and introspection. Straddling the center of the composition, the tub and the figure do not merely stand as passive reflections of each other. Rather, they engage in conversation. Their juxtaposition in the composition looks forward to their interaction. The female figure’s relation to the tub and space around her is anticipatory. The formal arrangement of the scene and the visual space it creates are latent with the femininity and psychology of the female figure. The artist constructs a visual architecture that houses and reflects femininity. Bell’s landscapes, by contrast, display masculine architectonics that obstruct and restrict. The Haystacks in Italy of 1912 is the most phallic of her landscapes. In contrast to the space of The Tub, compositional constriction here is suffocating. Phallic stacks and towers crowd the pictorial space and make visual penetration into the scene impossible. The narrow section of sky between towers suggests the depth that the phallic forms deny. Built structures conceal the horizon line, thus refusing a logical, visual organization of space. The Haystack, Asheham (1912) (Fig. 6) features a similarly phallic structure. At the center of the composition, it is the object of undivided attention and renders the space around it visually unnaviga23

ble. The enclosure on the left of the haystack prevents visual passage. The path in the center foreground, which echoes the fence on the left in color, structures a visual entrapment. Turning around the haystack and off the composition, the path fails to bypass it. Outlined in black and obstructing the house in the background, the stack seems to impose itself on the landscape. The potency of other vertical forms, the chimneys and trees in the background, the spokes along the path in the foreground, heighten the haystackâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s menace. The irony of that position points to the insecurity of the masculinity that Bell imbues in her landscape. Masculine constructions of space, according to her, obstruct vision and deny knowledge. But Bellâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s still lives feature her most erotic compositions. Her Oranges and Lemons (1914) exudes colorful desire. The massive vase, coyly just off the center of the composition, explodes in a playful mess of fruit and leaves. The open bottle in the background mimics both this vertical shoot of energy and the act of consumption that the hanging fruit also anticipate. Their droopy, bulbous forms complement the erect vase outlined in black. The still life exercises the pictorial space in its contrasting forms. The Still Life on Corner of Mantelpiece (1914) (Fig. 7) further reduces its components to their formal

Above: Figure 6. Vanessa Bell, Haystack, Asheham, 1912, oil on canvas. Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton. Right: Figure 7. Vanessa Bell, Still Life on Corner of Mantelpiece, 1914, oil on canvas. Tate, London.

attributes. The mantelpieces, stacks of boxes, and flowers are but additive geometric forms that thrust out and upwards in a display of formal eroticism. The oblique view of the mantel from a lowered position below heightens this eroticism. The background fades away into illegible forms as the boxes rise to nearly meet the flower above them. The structure is suggestive, especially if the flower has Figure 8. Vanessa Bell. Apples, 46 Gordon Square, 1910. The Charles- the same impliton Trust, Charleston. cations of femininity and the female body as in Nude with Poppies and The Tub. The near contact of flower and boxes suspends the composition in a state of erotic anticipation. The yellow flowers that trail the pink flower in the composition reverberate this anticipation by echoing the upward thrust of the boxes. In her still lives, Bell proves the capacity of form and composition to contain latent desire. But scholars are reluctant to attribute this eroticism to Bell. Mary Ann Caws’ circumlocutory description of the composition as “odd” and “peculiar” but “exciting,” for example, demonstrates the problem with scholarship on Bell’s work.11 By avoiding the sexuality inherent in her compositions, scholars inadvertently compound the myth of Bell’s artistic reserve and 25

ignore her efforts to construct a feminine visual poetics. In the artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s interior scenes, she equates femininity with the act of viewing. The viewing experiences she constructs are transgressive and suggestive. The formal arrangements of these scenes directly recall the feminine and erotic spaces of The Tub, the Painted Omega Screen, Nude with Poppies, and even the Abstract Painting. In Apples, 46 Gordon Square (1910) (Fig. 8), the central focus is not the titular fruit, but the space and narrow view outside. The walls on either side of the composition echo similar framing devices in The Tub and Nude with Poppies, where Bell employs structural devices to define a distinctly feminine space. She uses architecture to call attention to space and visual transgression through it. The double line of fences in Apples heightens that transgression: the tantalizing glimpse through the open balcony door passes through two barriers before reaching the street below. But the apples in the foreground seem a metaphor for visual appetite and consumption. They dare that transgression. The oblique view of the balcony further intensifies it. The triangular shape of the balcony corner recalls the feminine shape of the tent in the Painted Omega Screen. If, as in the Painted Screen, the vulvic space is not a space of lack, but of habitation and viewing (indeed, the balcony is a structure that functions specifically as a viewing platform), then the transgressive act of visual penetration in Apples also becomes erotic. The framing walls in the composition of the scene and the space between them become suggestive of the female anatomy. The space and view that the artist constructs in Apples is necessarily feminine and erotic. Bell continues the conflation of interior scenes and femiFigure 9. Vanessa Bell. The Open Door, 1926, oil on ninity in Interior with a Table, board. Bolton Museum, Boston. 26

St. Tropez (1921) and The Open Door (1926) (Fig. 9), where metaphor and metonymy charge the space with the suggestion of the female body. Both scenes also structure the visual transgression of a threshold into an exterior space. This transgression through a boundary calls attention to the act of viewing itself. While this visual penetration is erotic, it also equates femininity with active viewing from within the confines of an enclosed architectural space out into the world. Interior space here stands in for the female body and mind. Both compositions also make use of structural framing, curtains in Interior, and walls in The Open Door, and slightly oblique views to heighten their feminine eroticism. Flowers in both paintings, as in Nude with Poppies and The Tub, cue the female body. But most stark in each painting is that which is withheld. Chairs, like the tub of The Tub, refer metonymically to the bodies that would occupy them; the empty seats charge the space they hold and the area around them with the implication of the female body. In Interior, the partial view of a chair in the bottom left teasingly implies but withholds the body. This restraint not only associates the pictorial space with the body of the woman, but also demonstrates her mastery of it. Discussing Bell’s Studland Beach, Caws identifies in her work “celebrations of a certain mystery, of uninterpretable and inexpressible acts and presentations, set at a distance from the observer which stresses all the more the gap between understanding and seeing.”12 This is also true of Bell’s interior scenes, where references to bodies in and around the pictorial space simultaneously deny view and knowledge of the implied female subject in an erotic act of suppression, and empower her. Bell’s conception of erotic and feminine space informs her portraits of women. Her Self-Portrait of 1915 (Fig. 10) is typical of her depictions of women given the sheer size of the subject and her averted gaze.13 She makes the pictorial space her own, occupying both its length and its width. She also claims pictorial depth: her slight turn of the head brings into focus the sculptural features of her face and create visual depth that derives from her body. In her occupation of the pictorial space, Bell inhabits the erotic and feminine space that she defines in her other works. The flatness of the composition 27

Figure 10. Vanessa Bell. Self-Portrait, 1915, oil on canvas. Yale Center for British Art, New Haven.

completes this domination. The formal arrangement of colors in the background is a construction that is entirely her own. Her gaze outward takes daring control of the feminine viewing experience that she constructs in other paintings. Writing on Bell’s photography, Maggie Humm notes “an implied exchange of looks, preventing the closure of the photograph on itself.”14 The description is apt also for this self-portrait, where Bell’s gaze draws the composition into an exchange between subject and beholder. But with the aversion of her eyes, she denies a visual grasp of her figure and thought. Thus, both a presentation and a refusal, her self-portrait exploits and complicates her conception of pictorial space.

As the self-portrait indicates, Bell’s scenes are necessarily relational. Latent with the potential for habitation, her spaces are dually accessible and retrained. They refer to both the female body that would inhabit them, and, as the self-portrait shows, the voyeur that they spurn. In this complexity, we may also imagine Bell responding to the role that critics and scholars have assigned her within the Bloomsbury Group. By staging femininity, she creates an artistic expression that is distinct from the production of her male colleagues by which scholars indefatigably measure her work. By imagining female sexuality as a structured and exclusive pictorial space, she reclaims it from the men whose own sexualities have come to dominate popular histories of her life. Hardly the sexless “moral” mother of the Bloomsbury Group, Vanessa Bell excavates a feminine and erotic artistic rhetoric that actively defies association. Notes

1 Walter Sickert, “Vanessa Bell,” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 41, 232 (1922): 33-34. 2 S.P. Rosenbaum writes: “as the eldest child of Leslie and Julia Stephen and as the first to have children, she was certainly the most maternal figure at the center of Bloomsbury. The fact that she painted rather than wrote may have added to the slightly mysterious aura that apparently surrounded her.” The Bloomsbury Group: A Collection of Memoirs and Commentary (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), 102. Considering “the nurturing love of family manifested in her work,” Richard Morphet writes, “it is easy to see how she represents, in a sense, a moral center in Bloomsbury Art.” “Image and Theme in Bloomsbury Art” in The Art of Bloomsbury: Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, ed. Richard Shone (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1999), 36. Richard Shone. Bloomsbury Portraits: Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, and Their Circle (Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1976), 15-17. Bell certainly performs the role of restrictive mother in the eyes of Morphet, who writes of Bloomsbury artist Duncan Grant’ late work: “This surprising phase is explained not only, perhaps, by the loss of constraint so often associated with extreme age but also by the greater ease of travel and the renewed contact with the avant-garde that were made possible for Grant by Vanessa Bell’s death.” “Image and Theme in Bloomsbury Art,” 35. 3 Rosenbaum, The Bloomsbury Group, 102, 113.

4 See, for example, work on the Bloomsbury Group by Bell’s own son: Quentin Bell, Bloomsbury Recalled (New York: Columbia UP, 1995). 5 Morphet, “Image and Theme,” 23. 6 Mary Ann Caws, Women of Bloomsbury: Virginia, Vanessa, and Carrington (New York: Routledge, 1990), 108. See also, for example, Bell’s Design for a Screen (Figures by a Lake) (1912) and Summer Camp (1913). 7 Tamar Garb, “Visuality and sexuality in Cézanne’s late Bathers,” Oxford Art Journal 19, 2 (1996): 56. 8 Lisa Tickner, Modern Life and Modern Subjects (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 121-122. 9 Morphet, “Image and Theme,” 36. 10 Richard Shone, “Modern English Paintings in London,” The Burlington Magazine 117, 873 (1975): 823. Frances Spalding, Vanessa Bell (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1983), 171. Quoted in Gillian Elinor, “Vanessa Bell and Dora Carrington: Bloomsbury Painters,” Woman’s Art Journal 5,1 (1984): 32. 11 Caws, Women of Bloomsbury, 112. 12 Caws, Women of Bloomsbury, 110. 13 See also, for example, Bell’s portraits of Iris Tree (1915), Mrs. St. John Hutchinson (1915), and Dr. Marie Moralt (1919). 14 Maggie Humm, Modernist Women and Visual Cultures (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003), 113.

MINIMALISM AND MEANING-MAKING: THE SELF-REFERENTIALISM OF FRANK STELLAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S BLACK PAINTINGS WRITTEN BY ERIN HAVENS EDITED BY GABBY MARCUZZIE HERIE

Minimalism and Meaning-Making: The Self-Referentialism of Frank Stella’s Black Paintings “No artist understood the far-reaching implications of abstraction better than Frank Stella. For Stella, Greenberg’s claims about self-referentiality and flatness of the painted surface as a circumscribed plane posed a problem to be systematically solved.” - Marc C. Taylor “We believe that we can find the end, and that a painting can be finished. The Abstract Expressionists always felt the painting’s being finished was very problematical. We’d more readily say that our paintings were finished and say, well, it’s either a failure or it’s not, instead of saying, well, maybe it’s not really finished.” - Frank Stella

In 1959, Frank Stella unveiled his Black Paintings series at the Museum of Modern Art. Rejecting the tendencies du jour of Abstract Expressionism, Stella shocked and bewildered both critics and viewers with the bleak, repetitive systems of his Black Paintings. Catapulting him to notoriety, Stella’s Black Paintings effectively primed the stage for the Minimalist movement to emerge in the 1960s, and Stella’s influence would subsequently extend to the generation of postmodern painters in the decades following his early career. Trading spontaneous expression for a mechanical affair, Stella’s calculated Black Paintings effectively derailed every heave, smack, and shove of Abstract Expressionism and redirected art practice toward intellectualism and the sublime.3 While the Abstract Expressionists, influenced by the Surrealists, sought to represent notions of the human experience — “not just dreams, or immediate perceptions, but also… anguish, hope, alienation, physical sensations, suffering, unconscious imagery, passion”4 — Stella sought to create a work that was completely detached from human experience and emotion. Clearly, Stella was directly at odds with the dominant and popular assertion of the Abstract Expressionists, who stressed that genuine art was an emotional and immediate product of expression from the creative individual.5 32

It is unsurprising, then, how the Black Paintings were met in 1959 with bewilderment from viewers and scorn from art critics.6 Robert Rosenblum, for example, suggested that the paintings were borne of an emptiness now devoid of “emotional fervor and visual complexity” containing only “impersonality, regularity, and evenness.”7 Another art critic, Deborah Solomon, even described the works as “anti-van Goghs” — clearly, visual references to bowls of fruit or “sun-dappled” harbors are nowhere to be found.8 Indeed, Stella’s creations are a notable departure from the free strokes of Abstract Expressionism, with the artist’s mechanical and repetitive systems comprised of straightforward and severe black stripes on each respective canvas. Where the Abstract Expressionist painters sought to draw and express with paint, Stella and the emergent Minimalists, in the words of Caroline Jones, “merely transfer the paint from container to surface, with as minimal interference as possible.”9 Each of the Black Paintings consists of a right-angled, geometric series of white lines, reacting against a black canvas and always composing a rectangle. Unvarying and lacking in gesture, the two-inch-wide black sections were derived from the width of their stretchers.10 The slivers of canvas left between the bands were also created out of structural necessity, and as David Hopkins describes, echo “the framing structures of the supports and [form] centrifugal or centripetal ‘ripples’.”11 Each painting, therefore, is a reflection of the canvas and as Stella insists, nothing more; the viewer is taunted with his now-famous maxim, “what you see is what you see.”12 In fact, one would be hard-pressed to find any ambiguity in the artist’s intentions, as Stella frequently offered clarifications of his work. His first volume of writings was already in print at the time of the Black Paintings’ unveiling,13 and a series of interviews was on the way. Stella was unabashed about his cerebral intentions for the Black Paintings, which were meant to reconsider and question the nature of art as the immediate and individual creative expression of the artist. Ultimately, within the hypnotic, repetitive tabula rasa of his Black Paintings, Stella expresses an internal logic which is deduced, ironically, from the very nature of the artworks themselves as objects. As he famously declared: “My painting is based on 33

the fact that only what can be seen there is there. It really is an object. . . All I want anyone to get out of my paintings, and all I ever get out of them, is the fact that you can see the whole idea without any confusion… What you see is what you see.”14 Surely, the artist is racing toward his goal of presenting his Black Paintings, such as The Marriage of Reason and Squalor, II (1959, fig. 1) and Die Fahne hoch! (1959, fig. 3), as self-contained, autonomous objects. However, it is impossible to reduce Stella’s work to a simplistic denial of meaning. Stella’s Black Paintings reacted to Clement Greenberg’s Modernist theories about the self-referentiality of the painting’s surface and its nature “as a circumscribed” plane.15 It can be argued that Stella’s black paintings intended to bring the critic’s ideology of formal self-containment to its ultimate “deadpan” conclusion.16 Rather than a simplistic denial of meaning, Stella’s work should be considered a displacement of it. To draw on semiotics, with Stella’s Black Paintings, one finds

Figure 1. Frank Stella, The Marriage of Reason and Squalor, II, Enamel on canvas, 308.9 × 184.9 cm, 1959. The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Figure 2. Hollis Frampton, The Secret World of Frank Stella, 1958–1962, gelatin silver print. Addison Gallery of Art, Massachusetts.

a destabilization of the signifier or sign-vehicle, defined by Charles Sanders Pierce as “a mark, a token… [that] refer[s] to an object.”17 There is also a destabilization of the entire sign, conceived by Saussure as the composite of the signified or interpretant, defined as the “thought… to which the sign gives rise”, and the signifier or sign-vehicle. The entire sign is likewise destabilized in these paintings: the sign was conceived by Saussure as the composite of the signified or interpretant, which in turn is defined as the “thought… to which the sign gives rise.”18 Here, my claim is similar to that of poststructuralist Jean Baudrillard. The self-referencing nature of Stella’s work parallels Baudrillard’s theory of a devolution in which a circular relationship between sign and sign-vehicle becomes increasingly empty of meaning until the signifier ultimately becomes its own simulacrum, a “means of concealing the absence of reality.” 19, 20 An important distinction, however, is Stella’s insistence that meaning is not denied, but rather transferred to the surface of the object: what you see is what you see.

To explain this effect, I draw on French poststructuralist Louis Marin’s description of painting as an “open system of reading”21 where, at its most basic level, “the trajectory of the viewer’s gaze” will detect new differences in pictorial articulation (or its visual composition as opposed to its verbal articulation) in each successive reading.22 Marin’s system proposes that meaning is derived through a series of layers in which the viewer continually makes associations. According to Marin, a new dimension of painting is opened up at a secondary level of reading, on the basis of the primary, where pictorial elements become “associated with an unlimited potential of figures ‘in absentia’”23 which allows the viewer to enter a third dimension of pictorial codes or cultural space. However, the self-referentialism and autonomy of Stella’s work reject any association with figures “in absentia” and therefore, in reading the painting, the viewer finds a fracturing of Marin’s system beyond the second dimension of pictorial space. In other words, through the hypnotic lines of Stella’s Black Paintings, which meet in the center of every work, Stella inverts the semiotic process itself. The signifier is thus firmly attached to its meaning and to the signified as they collapse and become identical. This quality anticipated and later characterized Minimalism, a movement which has been traced to this very series of paintings. Yet, following the works of linguist Louis Hjelmslev, Marin asserts that the meaning of a painting hinges upon the apparent gulf between painting-object and its verbal articulation. 24 More simply, he believed that “the world of signifieds is nothing but the one of language” and that painting itself was not a language, but a makeup of pictorial codes. Meaning is bridged by “the indissociability of the visible and the namable as a source of meaning;”25 in other words, meaning lies in the inseparability of what can be seen of the artwork and its verbal translation. Meaning, therefore, is constituted by an interpretative dimension within the contextual reality. Here, articulation is permitted, and the painting becomes a signifying whole. So, despite Stella’s insistence, the viewer may step outside the painting-object’s inverted autonomy and then place it within a contextual (cultural) system, where it will hold meaning outside of the physical object itself. The meaning 36

Figure 3. Frank Stella, Die Fahne hoch!, 1959, enamel on canvas, 308.9 Ã&#x2014; 184.9 cm. The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

remains dependent on the fundamental nature of the object, which is based on its self-referentialism. Despite further insistence from Stella, contextual meaning is especially unavoidable given his paradoxical, cryptic titles. In the case of Die Fahne hoch!, for example, the title, which translates to “Hoist the Flag!,” is the opening line of Horst Wessel Lied, the marching anthem of the Nazi Party and which also doubles as a nod to Jasper Johns’ 1955 work, Flag.26 Indeed, the dark, utilitarian, and commanding nature of this painting and its title, coupled with the similar content and title of the entire Black Paintings series gives reason to argue that his paintings “encoded a fascination with fascistic forms of domination.”27 However, given Stella’s residency in New York City and some very probable references within the titles to local jazz hangouts and a trans club in Harlem, his work is generally read as referencing mid-century New York’s so-called “seamier side.”28 As art historian Brenda Richardson notes, “Stella loved jazz and went to nightclubs and bars for both music and socializing; the artist says the atmosphere of some of these clubs reminded him of the pre-Nazi, German cabaret scene with its particularly bizarre mentality.” Given these contextual realities, one finds reason to question Stella’s level of emotional investment in his pieces, which would be at odds with their stated purpose – that what you see is what you see. In fact, as art historians such as Richardson, David Hopkins, and Robert Hobbs have each pointed out, the titles of each of the twenty-three paintings in Stella’s Black Paintings series can be interpreted as referencing the series’ namesake color. Richardson, for example, argued that “for Stella to call the titles ‘downbeat’ is clearly an understatement,” going on to note: “Death and especially suicide are prevalent references in the titles [of the Black Paintings]. The names of three paintings incorporate Nazi references. Four titles derive from major disasters. Several names come from song titles with unusually depressing subject matter. Several others are named for “black and deviate” nightclubs (in (William) Rubin’s words).”29 Clearly, Stella’s titles aren’t arbitrary, and their references 38

Figure 4. Hollis Frampton, The Secret World of Frank Stella, 1958–1962, printed 1984, blackand-white photograph. Walker Art Center, © Estate of Hollis Frampton.

contrast his conceptual intentions. Hobbs, in acknowledging the effect of titles in the series as, more often than not, sources of misinterpretation, at least suggests Stella’s logic for doing so. Unlike the Abstract Expressionists, Stella rejected “nonobjective titles as ‘untitled’ together with numbers,” instead favouring “clearly distinct labels and names… for distinguishing individual works.”30 Hobbs goes on to mention how “[Stella] was not consistent in the choice of titles for his first group of works, since he named them for buildings as well as places in New York City with personal associations for him.31 Ultimately, Stella’s works are not neutral or transparent, but can rather be constitutive of something — however ambiguously — as they are placed within a viewer’s interpretation and its relative contextual reality of representation. A bleak desperation is embedded throughout the Black Paintings: in their blackness, their titles, their attempted self-sufficiency, and the artist’s need to repeatedly, even desperately, insist upon the intended meaning of his works through in39

terviews and published texts. Tension exists because, though the work is meant to be simple and flat, it will never reach the level of idealized transparency and autonomy that was envisioned as its ultimate intention. Perhaps non-intuitively, Stella’s Black Paintings depart from this goal as his work becomes increasingly desperate to achieve it, even regardless of how much Stella insists upon his own works’ autonomy and object-hood. We can relate Stella’s Black Paintings to Immanuel Kant’s familiar notion of “art for art’s sake:” in insisting upon the work’s self-referentiality, focus is transferred from the artwork, referring beyond itself, to the concept of itself. If true art is truly just about art, Stella’s self-referential Black Paintings are the ideal. Indeed, to understand the Black Paintings, it is necessary to interrogate the process of meaning-making in relation to paintings as objects in their complexity, in their self-reflexivity, and with their underpinning desire — “what you see is what you see.”

Notes 1 Mark C. Taylor, “Paper Trails,” in Confidence Games: Money and Markets in a World Without Redemption (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 41. 2 Frank Stella as quoted by David Galenson, “New York from Marin to Minimalism,” in Painting Outside the Lines: Patterns of Creativity in Modern Art (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 135. 3 Deborah Solomon, “Frank Stella’s Expressionist Phase,” in The New York Times Magazine, 2003, sec. 2.; Robert Hobbs, “Frank Stella, Then and Now,” in Frank Stella: Recent Work, (Singapore: Singapore Tyler Print Institute, 2002), 26. 4 David W. Galenson, “New York from Marin to Minimalism,” in Painting Outside the Lines: Patterns of Creativity in Modern Art (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 119. 5 Taylor, “Paper Trails,” 41. 6 Adam Weinberg, “Audio Guide Stop for Frank Stella, Die Fahne Hoch!, 1959,” The Whitney Museum of American Art, http://whitney.org/WatchAndListen/Artists?play_id=488.; Jenna C. Moss, “Frank Stella: The Metallic Gallery,”CUREJ College Undergraduate Research Electronic Journal (2017): 11. http://repository. upenn.edu/curej/51/. 7 Moss, “Frank Stella: The Metallic Gallery,” 11. 8 Solomon, “Frank Stella’s Expressionist Phase,” sec. 2.

9 Caroline Jones, quoted in Moss, “Frank Stella: The Metallic Gallery,” 8. 10 David Hopkins, “Modernism in Retreat: Minimalist Aesthetics and Beyond,” in After Modern Art 1945-2000. Oxford History of Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 133. 11 Hopkins, “Modernism in Retreat,” 133. 12 For example, in Die Fahne’s hoch!’s object label, The Whitney Museum of American Art. 13 Moss, “Frank Stella: The Metallic Gallery,” 11. 14 Bruce Glaser, “Questions to Stella and Judd,” interview by Bruce Glaser,” in Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology, ed. Gregory Battcock, (University of California Press, 1966), <http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/stellaandjudd. pdf >, 6. 15 Taylor, “Paper Trails,” 41. 16 Glaser, “Questions to Stella and Judd,” 6. 17 James Hoopes, ed, Peirce on Signs: Writings on Semiotic by Charles Sanders Peirce (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 239. 18 Hoopes, Peirce on Signs, 12. 19 Jean Baudrillard, “The Precession of Simulacra,” in Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representations, Vol. 1 (New York: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1983). 20 According to Baudrillard, it is a system in which (in Saussurean terms) the signifier is a reflection of basic reality > the signifier is a masker and perverter of basic reality > the signifier is a masker of the absence of a basic reality > and finally, the signifier becomes its own pure simulacrum, with no relation to any reality. 21 Louis Marin, quoted in Winfried Nöth, “Painting” in The Handbook of Semiotics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), sec 3.2. 22 Winfried Noth, “Aesthetics,” in the Handbook of Semiotics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990, sec. 3.2. 23 Louis Marin, quoted in Noth, “Painting,” sec. 3.2 5. 24 Noth, “Painting,” sec. 3.2. 25 Louis Marin, quoted in Noth, “Painting,” sec. 3.2. 26 Hopkins, “Modernism in Retreat,” 135. 27 Hopkins, “Modernism in Retreat,” 135. 28 Hopkins, “Modernism in Retreat,” 135. 29 Brenda Richardson, quoted in Robert Hobbs, “Frank Stella, Then and Now,” in Frank Stella: Recent Work (Singapore: Singapore Tyler Print Institute, 2002), 17. 30 Hobbs, “Frank Stella, Then and Now,” 17. 31 Hobbs, “Frank Stella, Then and Now,” 17.

A CHRISTIAN ICONOGRAPHY OF ROBERT MAPPLETHORPEâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S SADOMASOCHISTIC PHOTOGRAPHY WRITTEN BY LUKE SARABIA EDITED BY JOSEPHINE SPALLA

A Christian Iconography of Robert Mapplethorpe’s Sadomasochistic Photography Robert Mapplethorpe is often listed among the most ground-breaking, if not at least the most recognizable names in queer art and photography of the past half century. He is often associated with his controversial photos which openly demonstrate scenes of sadomasochistic homosexual acts during a period in which American LBGTQ communities faced significant ostracism and discrimination. Mapplethorpe reached the height of his fame two years after his death due to a national American debate surrounding The Perfect Moment, a touring exhibition which demonstrated a number of these photographs. American Senator Jesse Helms, who vigorously opposed the public funding of such art, described the photos in question as “sickening obscenity.”1 This sort of vigorous opposition to Mapplethorpe’s art was reflective of the homophobia which was widespread in the late 1980’s, a period when homosexual activity was widely misbelieved to be a root of the American HIV/AIDS crisis. This led not only to the vilification of homosexual activity, but to a lack of effective action on said crisis by the Reagan administration, a lapse which cost LGBTQ communities countless lives. However, Mapplethorpe’s photographs represent a type of unapologetic sexuality that counters the narrative that the LGBTQ community must be hidden or docile. Mapplethorpe’s supposedly obscene art rejects the notion of decency which public officials such as Helms sought to perpetuate. His photographs form a dialogue with dominant public morality regarding which sort of subjects are considered worthy of depiction in the realm of “high art”. This contention is one addressed in many of his own photographs, of subjects both seemingly innocuous and explicitly pornographic. Mapplethorpe uses BDSM imagery alongside Christian iconography in order to assert that homosexual as well as sadomasochistic desire and gratification is a complex expression of beauty, and thus is worthy of exploration in high art. This formal affirmation of value may be demonstrated through iconographic analyses of Mapplethorpe’s Dominick and Elliot (1979) and Self Portrait (1983). 44

In order to explore how Mapplethorpe uses iconography to assert the artistic validity of homosexual and sadomasochistic desire, the nature of the iconographic method in use must be elaborated upon. Iconography is an art historical method pioneered by Erwin Panofsky which examines the relationship of the formal properties of an artwork to the perceived thematic intentions of its author. Hatt and Klonk write that through iconography, Panofsky “hoped to give interpretations of works of art that would show them to be symbolic expressions of the cultures within which they were created.”2 Panofsky’s methodology details three levels of interpretation which are fundamental to understanding said symbolic expressions in any given work. First, one must understand what Panofsky calls a work’s pre-iconographical description, or its primary subject matter or image as depicted through its form, including employment of line, colour, and composition. Following this is a work’s perceived iconographical description, meaning the way which formal objects or events work as motifs to demonstrate specific themes or concepts as they would have been understood during the period a piece was produced in. Last to be considered is a work’s iconological interpretation, understood by decoding any interacting symbols in order to arrive at a work’s intrinsic meaning relative to the culture in which it was produced. This method is especially effective in discussing both Dominick and Elliot and Self Portrait, as both photos make extensive use of symbolism in order to enter into a dialogue with the artistic and cultural age in which they were produced. This analysis will be structured upon these three levels of interpretation as such, alternating between both works. Pre-Iconographical Descriptions: Form and Meaning In interpreting Mapplethorpe’s assertions of the artistic merit of BDSM and homosexuality in Dominick and Elliot (fig. 1) and Self Portrait, it is useful to begin with pre-iconographic descriptions of the photos’ main subjects and forms. Dominick and Elliot presents two men, Dominick and Elliot (left and right, respectively), posing at some point before, after, or during a sadomasochistic sex act. Dominick is shirtless and wears dark pants with one waist button undone as well as black boots, with one mounted on a raised platform and the other on the 45

Figure 1. Robert Mapplethorpe, Dominick and Elliot, 1979. Photograph, silver gelatin print on paper. Gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

ground behind his partner. He holds a lit cigarette between two fingers in his right hand over his crotch. His other hand is between his partner’s legs, grasping at his testicles. Dominick has his hair cut in a buzz and wears a short beard, with a hairy chest to match. He engages directly with the camera with a stern, intimidating glare. The man on the right, Elliot, is suspended upside down in the air by his feet, which are chained together to a contraption at the top of the frame from which a rope descends between Elliot’s legs. He is fully nude, except for the straps which bind his ankles, thighs, and wrists together. There is a tight chain around his neck which also ascends to his penis, presumably holding it as well. Only the tip of his penis is visible under Dominick’s grasp. Elliot too has a buzz cut and a beard, and stares at the camera without expression. His body forms a white upside-down cross which is emphasized against the completely black background of the photo. The body hangs midway between two vertical black poles along the back wall of the set. Elliot hangs directly through the centre of the frame, and Dominick stands just towards its left. Self Portrait (fig. 2), as the title suggests, portrays Mapplethorpe as his own subject, however unconventional a portrayal it is. Mapplethorpe stands in the middle of the frame, with his head almost perfectly at the centre of the photograph. He wears a white formal dress shirt with its collar up, and a white bowtie. He also wears a large leather jacket tied at the waist with its collar also popped, and leather gloves to match. No skin is visible below his neck; it is all covered in black and white. He stares directly at the camera with a defiant, almost challenging gaze. The most shocking formal feature of this photograph is the large black submachine gun that Mapplethorpe holds with both gloved hands. He aims it at the frame’s right, and although his finger is on its trigger, the photo’s clearly posed nature suggests its presence as more ceremonial than threatening. Hung upon the white background in front of which Mapplethorpe stands is a black inverted pentagram. It too is centered to the frame; Mapplethorpe’s head is situated in front of the pentagon at the symbol’s heart. Its top two visible points stem out from either side of the top of his head, and the bottom two point straight towards each side of the frame. The bottom point is perfectly obscured 47

Figure 2. Robert Mapplethorpe, Self Portrait, 1983. Photograph, gelatin silver print on paper. Tate, National Galleries of Scotland.

by Mapplethorpe’s position; each of his shoulders mark the corner where the line should begin. As in Dominick and Elliot, this photograph is marked with a contrast between light and dark background and foreground. However, in this photo, the background is almost completely white, and the subject in the foreground almost completely dark, thus reversing the scheme of Dominick and Elliot to the same effect. Each work’s primary subject matter and form shape the basis of Mapplethorpe’s thematic and artistic concerns. Iconographical Descriptions: Religious and Sexual Symbolism The formal outlines of the photos reveal several key thematic motifs which inform iconographical descriptions of each work, most notable of which are the interactions of religious and 48

sexual symbolism. In Dominick and Elliot, the first of such motifs is the most superficially obvious aspect of the photo, its graphic depiction of a sadomasochistic sex act. As previously noted, Mapplethorpe became notorious in the 1980s for his explicit photographs of LGBTQ BDSM sex and culture in New York City, of which he himself was an Figure 3. Patty Hearst (Unknown).

avid participant.3 The sexual aspect of this image is clear in Elliot’s nudity and Dominick’s grasp of his genitals, as well as through the extreme bondage restraining Elliot. It is also suggested in subtler ways. Mike Weaver, in describing Milton Moore, another Mapplethorpe portrait, suggests that “the forearm […] to some gay men it symbolizes stiffening erection […] the head and pumped arm produce an image of fierce allure.”4 In the same way Mapplethorpe may have use a flexed forearm or neck to suggest sexual potency, Elliot’s long, straight body in this photograph can be read as a phallic form, meant to signal to the viewer the centrality of male arousal and sexual expression to this image. The same could be said for Dominick’s lit cigarette, held in front of his clothed crotch. In sharing form and placement with an erection, it suggests that although his penis is not visible, he is still invested sexually with the action of the image. Mapplethorpe has claimed that “in an ideal sexual relationship, there [are] three partners, himself, his lover, and the devil.”5 The BDSM of Mapplethorpe’s vision can be understood as what Michel Foucault refers to as “a different economy of bodies and pleasures”6 from mainstream notions of sexuality. BDSM communities are built from 49

relationships of power and pain which are ultimately unique and specific ways of creating and expressing sexual pleasure. They exist outside of the bounds of mainstream sexual economies and thus mainstream control, and as such are powerful tools for oppressed peoples. The glimpse of sadomasochism in this photo evokes this very specific and politically potent relationship between power, pain, and sexuality that Mapplethorpe placed extreme personal importance on, and acts as the image’s central motif. The same kind of BDSM imagery can be observed in Self Portrait, although its employment is much subtler. Just as Dominick’s cigarette and Elliot’s extended body can be understood as references to erections, the submachine gun in this photo can be seen as a phallic stand-in. Mapplethorpe brandishes it provocatively in a way comparable to the way Dominick holds his partner in the previous photo. It is a male-wielded tool of power; just as male sexual organs are presented in some Mapplethorpe’s more provocative photos. Also significant is Mapplethorpe’s outfit. Leather can be read as representative of gay BDSM culture. Not only was it a common dress code at gay clubs in the period, but it was also itself fetishized as a material, and thus often played a direct part in sadomasochistic sex. Although Self Portrait is nowhere near as explicit as Dominick and Elliot, it still contains coded references to the same sexual subculture, and thus can be understood as partially symbolizing of the aforementioned values of homosexual BDSM culture. The picture also contains a direct allusion to a violent moment in popular culture. As noted by the Tate Gallery, it bears a purposeful resemblance to a photo of American Heiress Patty Hearst posing with a submachine gun in front of the logo of the Symbionese Liberation Army after their kidnapping of her (fig. 3). In using this visual reference, Mapplethorpe asserts himself as a rogue violently departing, in a metaphorical sense, from mainstream consciousness in a way that those outside of his community cannot understand or sympathize Another motif which significantly ing of each work is the subtle notable example is the image of nick and Elliot formed by Elliot’s

informs the symbolic meanuse of religious imagery. A the inverted cross in Dominude suspended body. This 50

allusion can be understood as noteworthy in two ways. The act of homosexual BDSM cannot be reconciled with twentieth century mainstream Christian morality, as was clear based on the aforementioned dominant political opposition it faced. Homophobia was widespread, at least in part due to misinformation over the emerging HIV/AIDS crisis in 1980’s America. As such, ‘extreme’ images of homosexual pornography were far from being welcomed into the minds of many Americans. Thus, on one level, by inverting the cross (the central image of the factions that opposed Mapplethorpe), the artist can be read as rejecting the values of mainstream religion and culture through sacrilege. However, Mapplethorpe seems to have a more complex relationship with religion and religious imagery than this. He was raised in a Catholic family, and Catholic imagery and ritual figures prominently reappear in different ways throughout many of his works, not all of them subversive. Mapplethorpe himself stated, “The way I arrange things is very Catholic […] it’s rather important as an influence on my life.”7 Mapplethorpe carries a high level of respect for the aesthetics of religion that suggests his use of its imagery transcends the satirical. Thus, the use of religious signifiers in his work cannot be taken lightly. The cross in Christianity is traditionally understood as a symbol of Christ’s painful death in sacrifice to his followers. In other words, it represents a moment of beauty and power within extreme turmoil and suffering, a powerful symbol to consider in a sadomasochistic image. Just as Self Portrait contains coded visual references to BDSM culture, it also contains religious imagery in a manner comparable to Dominick and Elliot. Its most prominent religious icon is that of the inverted pentagram. The pentagram in Christianity is understood as a symbol of the five wounds Christ suffered upon his crucifixion,8 and thus represents the same moment of holiness in the Christian faith as the cross does. The inverted pentagram, however, represents Christ’s opposite, the Devil. Mapplethorpe, by standing in front of the symbol, “signifies the Devil’s goat, but most importantly, the reversal of man’s true nature.”9 Therefore, in a way similar to Dominick and Elliot, this photo could be read as a sacrilegious attempt to subvert what mainstream values considered to be “natural”. However, in the same way that he admired the aesthetics of 51

Catholicism, Mapplethorpe seems to have had a fascination with the Satanic. He was described by a college roommate as having “wanted the power of Satan” and having “tried to seek out people and situations through which they could get in touch with him.”10 Thus, the use of Satanic imagery in this photo must be read as one of reverence in the same way his use of the cross is. It can therefore be seen as a symbol not of satire, but of spiritual transcendence through communion with darkness. This metaphor is especially significant when considering its interaction with homosexual symbolism within the photograph. This interaction will be further elaborated upon through iconological description. Iconological Descriptions: Intrinsic Symbolic Meanings and Conclusions In order to determine the intrinsic symbolic meaning of these two photographs, the interaction of the two main types of symbols in each - those being the homosexual and the religious - must be considered. Dominick and Elliot is a graphically honest image of two men engaged in a sadomasochistic sex act. It represents the sexuality of the men as a complex experience of pain, power, and sexual gratification, which both men commit to different roles in. Its inverted cross suggests an opposition to mainstream conceptions of decency and morality, yet also Jesus’ moment of painful beauty and redemption in death. Mapplethorpe describes his own sexuality as such to his biographer: “When I have sex with someone I forget who I am. For a minute I even forget that I’m human […] I forget I exist.”11 Sexuality, for him, appears to be a sort of transcendent experience similar to what some may experience through religious belief. By associating these two motifs in his artwork, Mapplethorpe suggests that the sense of sexual beauty present in sadomasochistic homosexuality, while seemingly incomprehensible to those outside of it, is one comparable to the experience of knowing God through religion. A similar connection can be made in Self Portrait. Mapplethorpe’s allegiance to homosexual and BDSM culture is signified by his phallic gun as well as his leather-clad body. Rather than using a divine reference point in this photo, however, he uses a Satanic one, to the same effect of symbolizing super52

natural experience as analogous to sexual transcendence. This inverted pentagram also contributes to one of Mapplethorpe’s most powerful visual metaphors in these photos. The bottom point of the pentagram is obscured by Mapplethorpe’s body, the only object in the photo’s bottom half. Thus, he can be understood as a stand-in for the missing lower appendage of the symbol, or its phallus. Mapplethorpe stands at the convergence of these two symbolic motifs; he is the representative of the sexual and the spiritual brought together as he is the artist who asserts the association between the two in these works. He can also be understood as the phallus of the “subversive” sexuality represented by the sacrilegious symbol, as through his work he brings BDSM and homosexuality to the forefront of American artistic consciousness. In this way, he acts as an almost violent rogue who cannot be reconciled with or understood by means of mainstream American social values. Thus, his visual self-comparison to the kidnapped and transformed Patty Hearst is in this context both appropriate and effective. By connecting the motifs of sexuality and religious experience in the two works, much of their intrinsic meaning becomes clear. Mapplethorpe considers sex, in any form, to be a kind of beautiful human process as integral to our experience of life as religion may be. The conscious posing and framing of both photos, however, is essential to understanding Mapplethorpe’s ultimate assertion of the value of sadomasochism and homosexuality as artistic subjects. Dominick and Elliot “emphasizes the poses and premeditations of the photographic session over any offer of spontaneous BDSM sex.”12 The image isn’t a document of an active sexual event, but a symbolic presentation of the beauty and power of sadomasochistic homosexuality. In the same way, Self Portrait appears as a carefully staged photograph first, and a document of sexual expression second. In both pictures, the subjects look directly at the camera, betraying the artifice of the photographic moment. By acknowledging his artistic lens before insisting on the importance of the metaphor within the photos, Mapplethorpe reminds the viewer that this metaphor of sexuality as religious experience must be understood through a lens of artistic representation. By orienting the photos around an acknowledgement of their staged artistic nature, Mapplethorpe 53

insists that these subjects are not only worthy of critical consideration, but of depiction in high art. Panofsky suggests that artworks can be interpreted as expressions of the cultures from which they come. By using sexual and religious iconography, Mapplethorpe in Self Portrait and Dominick and Elliot insists that homosexual and sadomasochistic sexual desire and gratification can be complex and beautiful subjects. As a result, he advocates for the artistic and thus the personal validity of the identities and lives of so many individuals that in his conservative cultural moment desperately needed such advocacy, effectively acting in exactly the way Panofsky theorizes art and artists should act.

Notes 1 Richard Meyer, “The Jesse Helms Theory of Art,” October 104 (2003), 137. 2 Michael Hatt and Charlotte Klonk, Art History: A Critical Introduction to Its Methods (Manchester: Manchester U, 2013), 96. 3 Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures, Dir. Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato. (2016: HBO), Documentary. 4 Mike Weaver, Mapplethorpe’s Human Geometry: A Whole Other Realm, (ProQuest, 1985), 43. 5 P. Hamilton, “No sympathy for the devil,” The British Journal of Photography (1996): 32. 6 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), 159. 7 Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures. 8 Frederick Holweck, “The Five Sacred Wounds,” in The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 15 (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912). 9 Jeffrey D. Grove, Robert Mapplethorpe’s Self-Portraits (Western Reserve U, 1999), 198. 10 Patricia Morrisroe, Mapplethorpe: A Biography (New York: Da Capo, 1997), 44. 11 Morrisroe, Mapplethorpe: A Biography, 65. 12 Richard Meyer, “Imagining Sadomasochism: Robert Mapplethorpe and the Masquerade of Photography,” Qui Parle 4 (1990), 70.

HORROR ON THE MARGINS: EMBODYING OTHERNESS IN CRAFT MEDIA

WRITTEN BY ERIKA KINDSFATHER EDITED BY MIRAY EROGLU AND AIMÃ&#x2030;E TIAN

Horror on the Margins: Embodying Otherness in Craft Media In the tradition of Western art history, craft as a genre of creation has been marginalized and excluded from the canon, undermined for its association with the feminine, domestic sphere. Recent scholarship attempts to rehabilitate craft from the periphery of the canon to a place of critical engagement. While this work is inherently feminist in its goal to elevate the labor of marginalized individuals, it often fails to destabilize the binary models of identification that validates this hierarchy of art over craft, and by default, intellectual over physical labor, and masculinity over femininity. Rather, craft media’s traditional location on the margins makes it a particularly salient method of artistic production in dealing with embodiments of individuals marginalized in society beyond the confines of the art world. In examining the work of artists engaging with body horror through craft media I will reveal how its materiality and historical associations subvert patriarchal expectations of abjection, supporting the concept that craft serves an audience that shares its given identification with otherness. In dealing with the abject body, these works reveal issues of visualizing “otherness” in engagement with the patriarchal art historical canon.1 I argue that craft media’s proximity to the feminine and its traditional association as the other in relation to the art historical canon heightens its potential to solicit affective responses associated with horror, namely disgust and fear from an assumed white male viewer, while holding the potential to communicate solidarity to the marginalized viewer. Craft media is a useful tool for subverting the default male subject in beholding abjection, engaging ambiguities in representing embodiments that deviate from a hetero-patriarchal norm. Mary Russo’s theorization of the abject body in art will guide my understanding of the definition of abjection as an ‘other’ in hetero-patriarchal visual culture. She nuances the regulation of the female body into the categories of classical versus the grotesque, or abject, asserting that a classical 56

Figure 1. Hans Bellmer, Untitled from the Die Puppe Series, 1936. Gelatin Print, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

female form is contained and regulated, while the grotesque female form is unruly, secreting, and deviant from the classical “norm.”2 The abject transgresses the boundary between the interior and exterior body; where the classical body is contained, the abject is open and cavernous. The abject female body is a central theme in the category of horror, as it solicits feelings of unease and disgust from a beholder in witnessing this transgression from the ideal classical form.3 The abject body solicits a dual affective response in the category of horror; the beholder is simultaneously drawn in and repelled by the object of wonder, consistently identified as a threat to the status quo that upholds a passive vision of ‘appropriate’ femininity. This dual solicitation of the abject disrupts binary oppositions between repelling and attracting forces by driving them to exist together. Further, when the beholder has been actively identified through their ‘otherness’ in a society that privileges the white heterosexual male subject, this act of identifying the self against the abject ceases and challenges the balance of attraction and repulsion. In this way, the abject body, beheld by a subject or creator who has been “othered” in hetero-patriarchal western society, has the potential to challenge the Hegelian binary of the self against the other in rejecting a presupposed white male viewer, which disrupts the default affective response that encountering ab57

jection is understood to solicit.4 However, male artists have employed the abject to uphold the marginalization of women and enact violence against the feminine body. Hans Bellmer’s Die Puppe (fig. 1) demonstrates this violent fragmentation of the female body as a means for the male artist to reduce women to a vessel through which patriarchal motives can be enacted. Bellmer uses doll parts to create a monstrous female form, calling attention to Freudian castration anxiety and the perceived threat of a transgressive female body. Bellmer stated, “the female body is like an endless sentence that invites us to rearrange it, so that its real meaning becomes clear through a series of endless anagrams,” demonstrating a male desire to enact this violence against the marginalized body to uphold his privileged position in society and maintain gendered hierarchies.5 This theme of the male enactor of violence and female victim is pervasive in the genre of horror. Carol Clover states, “the killer is with few exceptions recognizably human and distinctly male; his fury is unmistakably sexual in both roots and expression; his victims are mostly women, often sexually free and always young and beautiful.”6 The male aggressor is presupposed in artworks displaying a feminine embodiment marked with acts of violence. Beccy Ridsdel deals with this violence against the feminine as it translates through the imposed hierarchy of art and craft in her porcelain series Art/Craft (fig. 2). The porcelain plates show layers of white glaze decorated with flowers, peeled away with an implied incision held open by forceps. The incisions reveal different floral patterns that cover the exposed surface. Ridsdel comments on the series, stating, “the installation takes the form of an observation of a surgical experiment in progress. The ‘surgeon’ is dissecting the craft object to see what is within. He finds craft through and through. He tries the experiment again and again, piling up the dissected work, hoping to see something different but it is always the same.”7 Ridsdel indirectly rejects scholarship that attempts to rehabilitate craft in her assertion that her work is “craft through and through.”8 For example, Jo Dahn attempts to insert ceramic practices into the realm of art historical critical engagement 58

Figure 2. Beccy Ridsdel, Untitled from Art_Craft Series, 2016. Ceramic, Beccy Ridsdel Ceramics.

by examining contemporary conceptual ceramics as moving beyond ceramics’ traditional association with decoration and the domestic interior through works that explore the medium’s potential in the realms of conceptual and performance art.9 This scholarship reinforces the devaluation of craft’s associations with materiality, femininity, and decoration in attempting to distance the medium from these traditional connotations. That is, in using traditionally masculine modes of intellectual methodology to assert contemporary ceramics as transcendent of the medium’s material qualities and feminine connotations, Dahn confirms that femininity, ornamentation, and domesticity are seen as unsavory associations coded in failure and deviance from the canon, which is validated through her use of canonical methods to push ceramics into its culturally-privileged realm. Ridsdel’s work, however, embraces its materiality, femininity, and failure to perform canonical demands in denying the male surgeon anything beyond craft and all its traditional connotations. Art/Craft (fig. 2) creates an embodiment of craft itself, assumed feminine, that experiences medical violence at the hands of a male surgeon, whose experiment is destined to failure. 59

Art/Craft (fig. 2) identifies craft as deviant from the realm of art and personifies it as a feminine body being mutilated by the male surgeon. This visual register mimics the binary systems of identification on which the genre of horror relies: male and female, aggressor and victim, beauty and medical monstrosity. Yet these juxtapositions are performative and often enacted to maintain patriarchal value structures. I argue that binary models of visual identification, either one is or one isn’t, serves a distinctly patriarchal worldview.10 Judith Butler asserts that the cultural phenomenon of gender is established through stylized acts that are repeated, coded in gendered language, and therefore perpetuated over time.11 Here she identifies the concept of gender not as a pre-existing natural condition, but rather one that has been developed through the repetition of acts that came to be visual indicators of gender assignment in western society. Through Butlerian gender phenomenology, the dangers of binary models of construction and identification of the self in the actualization of masculinity and femininity as not only binary opposites but also signifiers of cultural hierarchy become apparent. The feminist artist’s undertaking to destabilize the institutionalized hetero-patriarchal legacy of art history is a challenge of interacting with the field’s canonical past and rethinking methods of coding bodies that rejects the violence that comes along with binaries in visual culture. Ridsdel successfully complicates the performative aspect of the binaries associated with the art/craft hierarchy in relying on the beholder’s cultural bias to enact the work’s meaning; she implies a feminine victim and male aggressor, forcing the viewer to confront and question why these genders are assumed and how this gendered violence has come to be by critically examining the constructed patriarchal society in which they live. Marginalized artists complicate this issue of juxtaposition further to engage with histories of material violence against the feminine body by employing it in their work literally to subvert the expectations of a patriarchal audience and potentially empower the marginalized beholder. Shary Boyle uses horror and the fragmented body to reference the media’s traditional feminine associations and history as associated with a decorative body. Her work, Untitled (fig. 3) depicts a slender 60

porcelain woman wearing an intricate black and light blue lace gown with a historicizing silhouette that covers most of her figure excluding her arm and neck. However, her head is severed from her body and she holds it gently in front of her waist. Her neck and head display marks of violence, with a choppy red surface where they were severed from one another. In cutting off the head of the woman, who still exhibits the affective register of a decorative figurine, Boyle subverts expectations of craft as a polite mode of decoration by employing visceral horror and violence enacted to the woman’s body. The ceramic woman is characterized by her failure to perform her traditional craft function of decorative beauty and non-disruptive presence. Boyle disrupts the binary of the classical versus abject body by using elements that define both, displaying the passive figurine woman as classical in her pose and dress, but abject in her physical fragmentation. Engaging with the concept of the classical body, Mikhail Bakhin states, “…that which protrudes... is eliminated, hidden, or moderated. All orifices of the body are closed. The basis of the image is the individual, strictly limited mass, the impenetrable façade.”12 Bakhin’s language identifies the classical body with its impenetrability, tied up not only in concepts of virginity but also of guarded interiority. Untitled (fig. 3) depicts a woman who is contained and guarded, yet fragmented through violence. This complicates the beholder’s reading of her body as a transgression; rather, one sees violence transform her from a classical figure to a monstrosity. Like Ridsdel’s Art/Craft (fig. 2), the aggressor is not pictured in Boyle’s Untitled (fig. 3), but rather implied through the mark of violence on the victim’s body. Yet in both cases, the transgression of the embodiment lies not only in the transformation from a classical form to an abject one, but also in its materiality as a craft object, which codes the work as deviant by nature. Julia Kristeva engages with the duality of abjection, stating, “abjection is above all ambiguity. Because, while releasing a hold, it does not radically cut off the subject from what threatens it- on the contrary, abjection acknowledges it to be in perpetual danger.”13 Yet this conception of abjection, like Russo’s, presupposes a viewership that would be threatened by a non-normative other. Likewise, Barbara Creed uses 61

Figure 3. Shary Boyle, Untitled, 2005. Porcelain, china paint, lustre, Shary Boyle Sculpture.

Kristeva’s scholarship to assert, “the abject threatens life; it must be ‘radically excluded’ from the place of the living subject, propelled away from the body and deposited on the other side of an imaginary border which separates the self from that which threatens the self.”14 However, this understanding of abjection presupposes the existence of a default self, culturally defined as a white heterosexual male. The life that is threatened by the abject is not life as a singular signifier of everything living, but rather “life” as defined through oppressive structures of power, holding the white heterosexual male as the self and any deviant from this norm as the other. Boyle’s Untitled (fig. 3) and Ridsdel’s Art/Craft (fig. 2) subvert this relationship between the presupposed male viewer and the abject body by calling to attention the aggressor’s role in rendering the feminine form monstrous through violence. The indexes of violence imposed upon these embodiments identify them as victims of an unidentified yet implied male assailant. Kristeva’s understanding of the abject as ambiguous in its potential to both draw in and repel the threatened beholder recognizes the system of opposites through which bodily identification operates. The marginalized artist, as demonstrated by queer women artists Ridsdel and Doyle, complicates this binary in considering the marginalized viewer as the privileged audience that may identify with the victimized body, while the traditionally assumed male viewer is forced to identify themselves with the disembodied, masculine assailant. Craft media, here ceramic in both cases, confirms the identification of violence as masculine in paralleling the figure’s wounds with the devaluation of craft, coded feminine, while the art historical canon, paralleled by the entity of the aggressor, is coded masculine. While disruptive of gender and material binaries, the artworks hold the potential of being coded with failure due to the embodiments’ characterization as others. That is, the embodiments displayed are intentionally deviant from a cultural norm, and while the marginalized individual may reclaim deviance as a mode of subversive self-identification, patriarchal Western society rejects otherness as failure to achieve the privileged identification of a white male. Engaging with Edelman’s No Future, Jack Halberstam states, “the queer subject [Edelman] 63

argues, has been bound epistemologically to negativity, to nonsense, to antiproduction, and to unintelligibility, and instead of fighting this characterization by dragging queerness into recognition, he proposes that we embrace the negativity that we anyway structurally represent.”15 While other scholars challenge this notion, Halberstam calls for an embrace of failure and negativity as queer experiences.16 Whether or not the queer community should embrace failure is not a concern of mine for the purpose of this essay, but the concept of the other as doomed to failure appears in the otherness of craft and feminine embodiments represented through craft media. Ridsdel’s Art/Craft (fig. 2) fails to reveal the depth beyond craft that the surgeon searched for and the embodiment of Untitled (fig. 3) fails to adhere to the classical expectation of the viewer in beholding a porcelain figurine. Though the horror of witnessing the dissected and fragmented body nuances the binary of art and craft and likewise abject and classical embodiments, the transgressive nature of craft and any quality of abjection force these artworks into the position of the other against the canon, therefore coded in their failure to achieve a culturally-determined normativity. Arguably, both artists embrace failure as a tactic to subvert the authority of the canon, but mourn this ideology’s material repercussions on the queer feminine body as the cause of violence against their subversive embodiments. Failure attached to the identity of the marginalized individual in Western society forces them to perform a distinct affective labor of engaging both with the instituted repulsion of their perceived otherness and their own difficulty in subverting pervasive systems of oppression to heal from these deeply rooted histories of Western binaries. Jennifer Doyle brings the unique labor of the marginalized artist in engaging with histories of oppression in the field of art to light in asserting, “artists working from the margins find themselves burdened with a distinct form of affective labor: dealing with the audience’s fascination and guilt as well as that audience’s desire to absorb such works into prefabricated narratives about what it means to make work informed by, for example, discourse on race and identity.”17 Women artists working with craft media today are forced to engage with histories of erasure and 64

devaluation of the labor of women before them and a systematic exclusion of their work from ‘high culture’. Artists working from the margins who choose to work with craft media perform this affective labor twofold: dealing with the audience’s expectations that Doyle describes as well as these histories coded in the medium of their work. Amelia Jones states, “art exists as a pivot between artist and interpreter (each of whom, in structures of Western aesthetics, views himself as uniquely positioned to make/view the work). Art in this sense is always “identified” with an individual.”18 While this may be true in the traditional formulation of male artist and erudite male viewer, I argue that craft’s history as a relegated process of visual cultural production allows the marginalized artist to appeal distinctly to the marginalized beholder, creating a sense of shared experience in picturing the systemic oppression imposed upon them. Boyle’s Untitled (fig. 3) supports this argument through her empathetic depiction of the woman for those who have likewise been dehumanized through structures of male violence. Horror in its traditional genre formulation relies often on the sexualization of female victimhood and sexualized violence against the woman as a plot device. In picturing the woman after the act of violence without narrative, she is the only visual focus, forcing the viewer to dwell on her visceral pain and suffering and their potential complacency in it. The marginalized viewer, who is left to fill in the figurine’s narrative, can identify with her victimization at the hands of the patriarchy, identifying with the figure’s corporeal pain and experience of epistemic and material violence. The affective labor that the marginalized individual carries in their daily life existing within a white hetero-patriarchal society is shared with the embodiment in Boyle’s work and is coded in the figurine’s materiality, establishing a potential framework of establishing solidarity through craft. Louise Bourgeois addresses the marginalized viewer and their distinct affective experience through embroidered textile in She Lost It (fig. 4), a white quilted dress with the words “The Cold of Anxiety is Very Real” embroidered in red capital letters frontally on the garment. This work deals with anxiety, a psychopathological affect, and uses craft to address the misogyny in medical histories of mental illness treatment. 65

Figure 4. Louise Bourgeois, She Lost It, 1992. Fabric, embroidery floss, Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Hysteria, a concept created by men to discredit women’s suffering in a patriarchal society and to punish their failure to perform contained and passive femininity, demonstrates the pathologization of women’s emotions. Bourgeois forces the viewer to confront the visceral burden of anxiety and heightens this discomfort in the formal qualities of the white garment, evoking a straitjacket. The sufferer of anxiety whose emotions have been undermined in a patriarchal society, may feel not the cold of anxiety, but a sense of solidarity in knowing that they are not alone in this feeling. Like Art/Craft (fig. 2) and Untitled (fig. 3), She Lost It (fig. 4) is coded in failure; not only does it evoke a woman’s transgression of culturally appropriate femininity but also uses the craft medium to facilitate and heighten this transgression. Christine Ross states, “as sufferers [of depression] or companions of sufferers we draw on discourses to give meaning to pain, to feel pain, and to construct identity in relation to pain.”19 This is enacted through the works I have examined as they attend to issues of otherness in relation to emotional and physical pain. The collective pain of marginalized groups becomes a means through which one can work through histories of oppression and create a system of solidarity. I establish that the affective burden in recognizing a connecting violence against the body that deviates from the privileged white heterosexual male can be referred to as cultural trauma. This refers to the systematic violence imposed upon the individual who is collectively othered by hetero-patriarchal society and its structures of oppression that pervade contemporary culture. Indeed, pain as a collective affect, though imposed upon the individual with marked difference, can be reclaimed as a productive means through which marginalized communities can establish solidarity and reinstate a community identity beyond the otherness imposed upon them. Ridsdel’s Art/Craft (fig. 2) erases the individual body, creating a personification of craft in its place, thus emphasizing the collective nature of the work. Ridsdel does not deal with an individual subject or object, but rather relies on the viewer’s understanding of the historical associations of craft to give the work meaning. The beholder witnesses craft’s embodied pain in failing to achieve art’s cultural status, yet the marginalized viewer may identify 67

with the pain of the work in both its affective labor in failing to perform a norm and inability to escape the confines of this oppression. Bourgeoisâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; She Lost It (fig. 4) recognizes this pain in carrying the affective labor of anxiety and engaging histories of misogyny, but more explicitly draws the aspect of viewer solidarity into light by evoking a visceral experience of the body. Returning to Doyleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s discussion of the affective labor of the artist working from the margins, one can see this labor translated into a relationship of empathy with the marginalized viewer.20 In carrying this burden of dwelling with the pain of being actively othered in society and the art world, these artists create a dialogue to address systems of oppression within and beyond the art world. Further, artwork that engages craft to depict violence against the marginalized body brings visibility to the material consequences of oppressive ideologies that are pervasive in the institutional space of the art world. This visibility enables individuals to empathize and interact with the artist behind the work, establishing solidarity through the pain of being forced to identify with deviance, a relational concept that Ross refers to as intersubjectivity.21 Craft, the abject body, and atypical affect transgress patriarchal boundaries of appropriate identity and serve a distinctly non-normative audience, disrupting the assumed male artist and beholder. This engagement, therefore, challenges oppressive binaries and the hierarchies they established in calling for the reconsideration of artâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s audience and its potential in establishing networks of solidarity through which communities of individuals can collectively heal from the material and epistemic violence they, and those before them, have experienced. The horror of the craft works I have examined does not repulse the viewer without nuance, but rather engages the viewer in a reciprocal dialogue regarding their position in systems that establish and maintain violence, or perhaps their identification as the suffering body. While each work shows a form of embodiment in a state of a wounded presence, whether the body is absent, abject, or symbolic, their pervasive lack of narrative invites the viewer to experience 68

this wounding with the figure and understand pain as a process through which healing could not be facilitated otherwise. Craft’s systemic exclusion from the art historical canon and devaluation in its associations with the feminine make it a particularly powerful medium through which the subject defined through otherness in Western hetero-patriarchal society can engage with histories of marginalization and violence.

Notes

1 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, “Self-Consciousness,” in Phenomenology of Spirit, eds. Arnold V. Miller, and J. N. Findlay (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977). 2 Mary Russo, “Introduction,” in The Female Grotesque: Risk, Excess and Modernity (New York and London: Routledge, 1994), 11. 3 Mary Russo, “Freaks,” in The Horror Reader, ed. Ken Gelder (New York and London: Routledge, 2000), 90-97. 4 Hegel. “Self-Consciousness.” 5 Hans Bellmer quoted in Sarah Friedman, “Endless Anagrams: Hans Bellmer and Anna Gaskell’s Imaginary Conversation,” in Inside/Out: A MoMA PS1 Blog, published June 14, 2012, accessed April 18, 2017. https://www. moma.org/explore/inside_out/2012/06/14/endless-anagrams-hans-bellmer-and-anna-gaskells-imaginary-conversation/. 6 Carol J. Clover, “Her Body, Himself (Extract),” in The Horror Reader, ed. Ken Gelder (New York and London: Routledge, 2000), 294. 7 Beccy Ridsdel, “Art/Craft,” Beccy Ridsdel Ceramics, accessed April 18, 2017. http://www.beccyridsdel.co.uk/page7.htm. 8 Ridsdel, “Art/Craft.” 9 Jo Dahn, “Elastic/Expanding: Contemporary Conceptual Ceramics,” in Extra/Ordinary: Craft and Contemporary Art, ed. Maria Elena Buszek (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2011), 153-71. 10 Hegel, “Self-Consciousness.” 11 Judith Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,” in Theatre Journal 40.4 (1988): 519. JSTOR [JSTOR]. Web. April. 2017. 12 Mikhail Bakhtin, “The Grotesque Image of the Body and its Sources,” in Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene Iswolsky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 320. Emphasis added. 13 Julia Kristeva, “Approaching Abjection,” in The Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University

Press, 1982), 4. 14 Barbara Creed, “Kristeva, Femininity, Abjection,” in The Horror Reader. ed. Ken Gelder (New York and London: Routledge, 2000), 65. 15 Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2005); Jack Halberstam, “The Queer Art of Failure,” in The Queer Art of Failure (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2011), 106. 16 Halberstam, “The Queer Art of Failure,” 106. 17 Jennifer Doyle, “Feeling Overdetermined: Identity, Emotion, and History,” in Hold It Against Me: Difficulty and Emotion in Contemporary Art (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2013), 94. 18 Amelia Jones, “Art as a Binary Proposition; Identity as a Binary Proposition,” in Seeing Differently: A History and Theory of Identification and the Visual Arts (New York: Routledge, 2012), 19. 19 Christine Ross, “Introduction,” in The Aesthetics of Disengagement: Contemporary Art and Depression (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), xxv. 20 Doyle, “Feeling Overdetermined,” 94. 21 Christine Ross, “Nothing to See?” in The Aesthetics of Disengagement: Contemporary Art and Depression. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), 172.

PUBLIC ART AND THE GLOBAL IN MONTREAL: A CASE STUDY OF JAUME PLENSAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S SOURCE

WRITTEN BY LAURENCE CHARLEBOIS EDITED BY MALLORY RAPPAPORT

Public Art and the Global in Montreal: A Case Study of Jaume Plensa’s Source The city of Montreal has become renowned over the years for its love for the arts and culture, especially with the ubiquity of art festivals, art installations and public works of art. Since the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, it has been customary for the city to commission Québécois art works to display in the public sphere. For example, upon the foundation of the metro of Montreal, a local artist was assigned to each metro station for the creation of a unique transportation system.1 Perhaps one of the reasons behind the ubiquity of local artists in Montreal is the Percent for Art Program. According to the Quebec Minister of Culture and Communications’ website, the policy states that upon receiving government funding for the construction of a building, 1% of the total budget must be used for the commission of a public work of art by a Québécois artist.2 However, not all public works of art in Quebec are from local artists. As of September 2017, a new international public work of art has found its place in the Montreal art scene. Commissioned by France Chrétien Desmarais and André Desmarais, Jaume Plensa’s Source was inaugurated just in time for Montreal’s 375th anniversary and will be loaned to the city for a period of 25 years. With his sculptures exhibited all around the world, Catalan artist Jaume Plensa is known predominantly for his public art, an art form that subsequently comes with a general lack of criticality and often fails to engage with its public. As Lossau and Steven note, the main strategy when analyzing public art is to assess the audience’s interaction around the work. In other words, a ‘good’ case of public art would be one where art has the capacity to engage with its public – whether in the making of the piece or in situ – while also providing an effective viewing environment.3 Certainly, public art makes the urban landscape more appealing to a city’s inhabitants but it should also encourage contemplation and participation. Considering this definition, this essay will situate Plensa’s sculpture in a context of global contemporary art while observing the issues at stake in placing a sculpture next to a busy highway. Specifically, using Marsha Meskimmon’s concept of the global, I will argue that while 72

Plensa’s Source embellishes the Montreal urban landscape and embodies concepts of globalism and nomadism, it fails to engage with its audience due to limitations in terms of urban planning and site-specificity. I will first begin by comparing Source to other artworks produced by Plensa, which are located internationally, in order to reinforce Meskimmon’s concept of the cosmopolitan imagination. Then, using othFigure 1. Jaume Plensa, Source, 2017. Painted Stainless Steel, Bonaventure Gateway, Montreal. er global examples from Plensa’s portfolio, I will continue this discussion on the problems encountered with the site-specificity of Source. My aim is to create a discussion centered on the status of Source in the global world while also taking into consideration issues of urban planning and site-specificity. With its emphasis on cross-cultural exchanges and on the local/global, Meskimmon’s concept of the cosmopolitan imagination is being represented in many aspects of Plensa’s sculptures. Source (fig. 1), which Plensa has also called ‘Nomad’, is a representation of a genderless human either sitting or kneeling, made out of letters or symbols. On this regard, the artist has commented that the figurative body of his sculptures can be compared to a text. Over the years, Plensa has produced multiple nomads around the world, which are each composed of an agglomeration of different alphabets. In Montreal and in other locations in the world as well, including 73

Miami, Boston, Singapore, Moscow and England, his sculptures constitute 8 different alphabets: Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian and Greek.4 Apart from Montreal, another example of Plensa’s Nomad can be observed on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) campus with The Alchemist (fig. 2). Like the sculpture in Montreal, Plensa’s Alchemist is sitting in a fetal position but instead of using letters to form the stainless steel frame, the artist chose to use mathematical symbols in keeping with the setting of the sculpture.5 More specifically on the use of different alphabets in his oeuvre, Jaume Plensa has mentioned that, when they are placed on their own, signs and symbols do not signify anything coherent, but viewed as a whole, they form ensembles of texts, words and culture.6 Furthermore, all the works from the Nomad series have an opening at the base of the structure, which lets the public access to the interior of Plensa’s work. According to Plensa, this artistic decision is done precisely to invite the viewer inside the sculpture and see the world through this filter of letters and symbols, which Plensa claims can be an alternative way of viewing culture.7 This participatory element not only encourages the viewers’ interaction with the sculpture but more significantly, it speaks to its relevance in the public sphere, since it has the capacity to reach a wider audience than it would if the piece were placed in an art institution. Furthermore, beyond Plensa’s interest in human anatomy and language, the monumentality of the work plays an important role in its reception. Drawing from my own experience when Figure 2. Jaume Plensa, Alchemist, 2010. Painted Stainless Steel, MIT, Cambridge Massachusetts

viewing the work in situ, my first impression was to notice the large scale of the sculpture, which the white stainless steel seemed to accentuate. Since the sculpture is situated in an urban park, Source’s large structure of white stainless steel is easily noticeable because of the stark contrast between the sculpture’s colour, the many shades of greens from the park and the dull colours of the cityscape. Moreover, the space in which Source is located entices visitors to observe and interact with the sculpture since its large scale clashes with the park’s flatness. If the different alphabets in Plensa’s work alter the public’s vision of the environment which surrounds them, then Source’s monumentality, appeals the viewers to interact with the work due to its grandeur and massiveness. Furthermore, Plensa’s production of his nomad series fits the notion of the global due to its many locations around the world in accordance to Meskimmon’s cosmopolitan imaginary. In her book Contemporary Art and the Cosmopolitan Imagination, Meskimmon writes on the state of global contemporary art and on the cross-cultural exchanges in the ‘art world’ resulting from the turn to globalization. As a Spanish artist displayed in Montreal, Jaume Plensa meets Meskimmon’s description of contemporary art. Meskimmon claims that by becoming global, contemporary works have, “no intention of staying at home. That is, […] [they] specifically seek to engage the transnational flows and cross-cultural exchanges that characterize globalization.”8 Moreover, Meskimmon explains that cross-cultural exchanges in a global world entail the notion of cosmopolitanism or cosmopolitan imagination wherein the global citizen is devoted to cultural diversity and lives without the constraints of geo-political borders.9 In other words, cosmopolitan identity redefines the notion of the home in that the perpetual movement of capital unsettles the traditional notion of the sedentary home. Placed in relation with the work of Plensa, his works’ multiple locations create a global identity with the example of The Alchemist and Source. Together, the ‘Nomads’ help to build different points of reference across the world and are the defining agents in the construction of multiple global homes. To a certain extent, Meskimmon’s argument on the movement of capital/art could be expended to the movement of visitors moving around the 75

sculpture, commuting from point A to point B. In this sense, Plensa’s international career reflects the globalisation of his works with most of his public works being exhibited in all continents. While Source and the entirety of the Nomad series encompass the concept of globalization, the unifying name of these works brings forth the question of nomadism in a global world and market. The circulation of art and of Plensa’s sculptures in the art market is a constant movement that is reiterated by the non-static installations of works of art. Nomadism, first established by Deleuze and Guattari, stems from Indigenous tradition of knowledge, which contradicts European sedentary mode of learning.10 Scholars like Meskimmon have written on the subject in relation to the global trend in the arts and have specifically said that nomadism “enables us to create our homes wherever we may be, using materials close at hand, that are transformed through the cathectic power of longing to belong.”11 Additionally, the sedentary way of living is constrained by paths and defined borders whereas the nomads have no final destination and no desire to remain at the same place for too long.12 From this brief definition of nomadism, one can deduct the easy connection between nomadism and Plensa’s works. In the urban setting of Montreal, this specific sculpture will only be displayed for 25 years and probably continue its journey in another location around the world thus challenging the Western view of the sedentary home. Certainly, the locality or local aspect of the art is an important part of nomadism. As Deleuze and Guattari explain, the nomad (or the local absolute): “has its manifestation in the local, and its engendering in a series of local operations with varying orientation.”13 The authors suggest that nomadism through globalization ought to operate from multiple, local imperatives rather than one unifying strategy. In relation to Source, the repetition of the same motif in Plensa’s composition proposes a global identity with differing aspects and symbols depending on the setting of the structure. Moreover, it is only when the Montreal audience gets accustomed to Source in its urban environment that Plensa’s sculpture will shift its home in another country and subsequently settle and interact with new audiences. Although the exact history of each Nomads’ 76

acquisition is unclear, further research on the Alchemist has revealed that prior to its purchase by an anonymous donor, the Alchemist was a loan similar to the context in Montreal.14 Therefore, while the nature of Plensa’s sculptures is nomadic, this nomadic capacity reflects a current globalizing trend. That is, whereas art was previously acquired to remain permanently in one emplacement, Source, Alchemist and other global sculptures are circulating in the world, akin to the movement of capital and of masses. If Plensa’s many sculptures highlight current trends of nomadism and globalism, then the specific location of Source in Montreal fails to fulfill its one mandate in the theory of public art in that its location does not incite contemplation and participation. Situated on the Bonaventure gateway, Plensa’s sculpture is part of the Bonaventure project, in collaboration with the festivities occurring for the 375th anniversary of the city of Montreal. According to its website, the project’s main goal was to redesign a new entrance to the city and, following the demolition of the old highway segment, to create a new urban boulevard for Montrealers.15 The previous highway segment (fig. 3) was dull and grey, partially blocking the cityscape of Montreal for those living in Old Montreal and Griffintown. This new urban space, which is one of the only routes to connect between Champlain Bridge and Downtown Montreal, houses two public works of art16, a park, a seating area with lounging chairs and further amenities for a better urban experience (fig. 4).17 At the extremity of the boulevard, Plensa’s Source greets pedestrians and drivers with its tall, white silhouette, isolated on its concrete pedestal on the South side of Wellington Street. Placed between touristic Old Montreal and highly residential Griffintown, Source is in a pivotal location for daily commuters, tourists and residents of the neighborhood. While the addition of a new public space and of new public art beautifies the area, the fact that this urban park is placed in the middle of the highway complicates the overall viewing experience of the work. Upon my first visit to Plensa’s sculpture, at first glance the scale and intricate details were impressing but the constant roaring of cars, buses and 77

Top: Figure 3. [Before] image of the Bonaventure project, Montreal, Quebec. Bottom: Figure 4. [After] image of the Bonaventure project, Montreal, Quebec.

construction work nearby impaired my experience and did not encourage a proper observation of the work and location. This specific location is not the safest to place a public work of art. During an in-class discussion on the research and developments of this essay, a classmate similarly felt the site was inconvenient for visitors especially with the danger of fast moving cars, often fearing sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d be hit by a car. Furthermore, during every visit I made from early November to the beginning of December, I was the only viewer in situ which, consequently, diminished my appreciation of the work. Combined with the lack of plaque or sign to describe the work or the artist and absence of benches next to the pedestal on which the viewer can rest and observe. The lack of specificity and viewing context is a crucial point in public art since a public work of art devoid of any form of acknowledgment towards to artist leads to confusion on the meaning of a given work of art in the public sphere.18 While the new Bonaventure seg78

ment is a far more agreeable place to visit than the old site, the background traffic sound and buzzing city life are still as loud and present as before. As urban soundscape researchers Manon Raimbault and Danièle Dubois explain, ‘noise’ and city soundscape must be taken into consideration by urban planners since it has become over the past 40 years one of the main problems in many cities around the world.19 Moreover, it has been suggested that soundscape advising must be provided to urban planners when designing urban parks.20 Thus, the main concern that remains from this discussion is one of accessibility: if public spaces are designed purposively for locals and tourists, then the placement of the Bonaventure Park in between a highway might not be the most successful setting to view art due to the excessive presence of traffic. A case in Boston known as the Underground at Ink Block project shares the same dilemma of a park built underneath an interstate. Critics of the park, mentioned that, “at rush hour on a recent weekday afternoon, there was a constant din from surrounding streets and the roadways above, and every minute a commuter train rumbled through.”21 This conveys the same issues dealt with in the Bonaventure project and subsequently decreases the accessibility of the public space due to the sound pollution. To claim that the Bonaventure project was not needed is not the aim of this argument but rather, a better viewing atmosphere, away from the excessive sound of traffic would have been a better fit. Although the setting in Montreal does not encourage interaction, the other contexts in which Plensa’s sculptures are exhibited allow for a closer observation from the audience and their engagement with the sculpture. Art historian Rosalyn Deutsche argues that it is the necessity of public art to create the space and to move beyond the mere role of decoration. Most importantly, on the topic urban planning and design, she claims, “the new public art, by contrast, moves ‘beyond decoration’ into the field of spatial design in order to create rather than question, the coherence of the site, to conceal its constitutive social conflicts.”22 This critique of public art as merely decoration is ubiquitous in the scholarship on public art. Moreover, what becomes a prime concern is that municipalities refuse to shock or challenge their local 79

audience by commissioning more ‘controversial’ art hence why some instance of public art blend in and become invisible way too shortly after their installation.23 As mentioned previously, my previous viewings of Source did not impel any forms of interaction or observation due to its setting and lack of crowd. Though Source’s large scale can serve as a boundary to delineate the space in which it is located, its lack of a participatory structure shifts it to the realm of decoration. Because the structure is separated from the park, isolated on a cement pedestal, it does not prompt passers-by to stop and therefore, serves a purpose of decoration rather than a defining object on the site. In a more global context, when researching on the Plensa’s website about the location of his other similar works, the two most common locations for this specific type of sculpture were parks and university campuses.24 In the case of the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Alchemist is situated at the front of the students’ center.25 Even tough Source and The Alchemist are structurally similar, what differentiates them from one another is the audience’s interaction. If public art can sometimes offer a means to the public sphere to express and engage with the work and space then the MIT sculpture manages to move beyond the state of decoration.26 MIT student newspapers The Tech have reported many instances of students’ creative initiatives in relation with the Alchemist. For example, MIT students have placed a large-scaled cut-out police badge on the stainless steel structure to commemorate the death of a campus police officer27 or in a more humorous situation, dressed up the sculpture as Walter White, the leading character of television series Breaking Bad, upon the series finale.28 Since The Alchemist provides strong art-viewing conditions, it is better suited to be incorporated as public art in city spaces.29 Whereas The Alchemist succeeds in involving its audience, primarily the student body, in its environment and setting, Source’s involvement with the masses is restrained by its location. The busy location, irritable soundscape and isolation of Source limit the access and involvement of Montrealers with the sculpture although Plensa’s design originally accommodates this principle. Perhaps a better inclusion in its environment would have been to include Plensa’s sculpture in the middle of a green space, where an easier access could 80

have granted Source with more civil interaction. Although its location is problematic, the inclusion of Source in the urban background of Montreal lends itself perfectly to this new project. The addition of a work of art by Plensa in the Bonaventure gateway, a major point of access to enter downtown Montreal, signifies the global interest towards Jaume Plensa. With his ‘nomads’ circulating amidst the art market, Source encapsulates the concept of the cosmopolitan imagery offered by Meskimmon by moving to different locations for short periods of time. For the next 25 years, the public will grow accustomed to the sight of Plensa’s structure before the nomad takes to the road again and settles into a new home. Contrasted to Plensa’s other global sculptures, Source’s placement is in the heart of a cosmopolitan milieu, where the majority of its viewers are transiting from one place to another. While the Alchemist on the MIT campus is located in front of a students’ building and, subsequently, is more likely to provoke interaction between the art work and the students’ body, Source’s problematic setting complicates the engagement between the immense white silhouette and its public. Nevertheless, its addition in the Montreal cultural scene amplifies Montreal’s status as a metropolis of the arts and demonstrates the city’s interest in the global trend. Notes

1 Annie Gérin, Garry Sherbert, and Sheila Petty, “Maître Chez Nous- Public Art and Linguistic Identity in Quebec,” in Canadian Cultural Poesis: Essays on Canadian Culture (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2006), 325, http://muse.jhu. edu/book/12245. 2 “Politique d’intégration des arts à l’architecture,” in Arts visuels, architecture et métiers d’art, Gouvernement du Québec. Accessed February 14 2018. https://www. mcc.gouv.qc.ca/?id=59. 3 Julia Lossau and Quentin Stevens, The Uses of Art in Public Space (New York and London: Routledge, 2015), 2. 4 TEDx Talks, TEDxSMU 2011 - Jaume Plensa - Art & Form (YouTube, 2012), https:// youtu.be/-zKCb7fjNsM. 5 “Alchemist, 2010,” Public Space - Jaume Plensa. Accessed February 13 2018. http://jaumeplensa.com/works-and-projects/public-space/alchemist-2010. 6 TEDx Talks, TEDxSMU 2011. 7 TEDx Talks, TEDxSMU 2011.

8 Marsha Meskimmon, Contemporary Art and the Cosmopolitan Imagination (London and New York: Routledge, 2011), 2. 9 Meskimmon, Contemporary Art and the Cosmopolitan Imagination, 7. 10 Paul Patton, “Nomads, Capture and Colonisation,” in Deleuze and the Political (London: Routledge, 2000), 119, https://www-taylorfrancis-com.proxy3.library.mcgill. ca/books/9781134855582. 11 Meskimmon, Contemporary Art and the Cosmopolitan Imagination, 79. 12 Patton, “Nomads, Capture and Colonisation,” 116-117. 13 Deleuze and Guattari as cited in Ronald Bogue, “Nomadism, Globalism and Cultural Studies,” in Deleuze’s Way - Essays in Tansverse Ethics and Aesthetics, (Burlington: Ashgate 2007), 133. 14 Janelle Mansfield, “Alchemist to Call MIT Home - The Tech,” The Tech, September 11, 2011, http://tech.mit.edu/V131/N37/alchemist.html. 15 “Bonaventure Legacy a Redesigned Entrance to the City,” Ville de Montréal, Accessed December 10, 2017, http://ville.montreal.qc.ca/375/en/legs/projet-bonaventure. 16 The two works are Jaume Plensa’s Source and Michel de Brouin’s Dendrites. 17 “Bonaventure Legacy a Redesigned Entrance to the City.” 18 Cameron Cartiere, “Coming in from the Cold: A Oublic Art History,” in The Practice of Public Art, ed. Cameron Cartiere and Shelly Willis (London: Routledge, 2008), 8. 19 Manon Raimbault and Danièle Dubois, “Urban Soundscapes: Experiences and Knowledge,” Cities 22, no. 5 (October 1, 2005) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2005.05.003. 20 Daniel Steele, Catherine Guastavino, and Nik Luka, “Constructing Ideal Soundscapes: A Study on Closing the Gaps Between SoundScape Studies and Urban Design.” (Société Française d’Acoustique, April 23, 2012), 2165. https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00811341/document. 21 Tim Logan, “Boston Gets an Artsy New Public Space in a Former No-Man’s Land - The Boston Globe,” BostonGlobe.com, September 7, 2017, https://www.bostonglobe. com/business/2017/09/07/boston-gets-artsy-new-public-space-former-man-land/ q2AVuEQS3o5riiN878HcEK/story.html. 22 Rosalyn Deutsche, Evictions - Art and Spatial Politics (Cambridge: MIT University Press, 1996). 23 Johanne Sloan, “At Home on the Street: Public Art in Montreal and Toronto,” in Urban Enigmas: Montreal, Toronto, and the Problem of Comparing Cities, ed. Johanne Sloan (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007), 218, http://www.deslibris.ca/ ID/433026. 24 “Public Space - Works and Projects,” Jaume Plensa, accessed December 11, 2017, http://jaumeplensa.com/works-and-projects/public-space. 25 “Public Space - Works and Projects.” 26 Vernet, The Uses of Art in Public Space, 197. 27 Greg Steinbrecher, “MIT Remembers Officer Sean Collier - The Tech,” The Tech, April 23, 2017, http://tech.mit.edu/V133/N20/memorials.html. 28 Tami Forrester, “Hackers dressed The Alchemist this week as Walter White.” The Tech, October 1 2013, http://tech.mit.edu/V133/N42/. 29 Harriet F. Senie, “Responsible Criticism: Evaluating Public Art,” Sculpture 22, no. 10 (December 2003): 47.

DIVERGENCE & FRAGMENTATION: CONTEMPORARY INDIGENOUS ART IN THE MAPPED “GLOBAL” WORLD WRITTEN BY HANNAH DESKIN EDITED BY JOSEPHINE SPALLA

Divergence & Fragmentation: Contemporary Indigenous Art in the Mapped “Global” World In the art world, the global contemporary moment is characterized by a polarizing duality that scholars, artists, and curators are continuously forced to grapple with. Unified through communication, travel and technology but fragmented by nationalism and the material effects of colonization, artists navigate a world that emphasizes cultural and national identity, and assigns value on the basis of their “transnational” appeal.1 According to curator Francisco Bonami, “the concept of globalization is often used to define the world as a unified territory, which it is not. We experience fragmentation in this world.”2 Responding to Bonami’s emphasis on international division, Geeta Kapur further points out the movement of art and artists across geo-political boundaries when she writes that “[i]t is still necessary to ask how art situates itself in the highly differentiated national economies/political societies that bear the name of countries; and how, from those sites it reckons with divergent forces at work within globalization.”3 In an attempt to address Kapur and Bonami’s insistence that now, more than ever, it is important to consider how art is situated within this international framework, this paper will examine certain “divergent forces” within de-colonial conceptions of the fragmented nation state, and in doing so, will trouble existing notions of what can and should be considered “international” or “global” art. In particular, I will propose to extend the terms “international”, “global” and “nation-to-nation” to the artistic production and interactions of the over six-hundred Indigenous nations of Canada. Through a de-colonial methodology that recognizes Indigenous sovereignty and the validity of two-row wampum treaties, I will consider artworks that place First Nations within our fragmented global framework, while attempting to distinguish them from the oppressive, reductive and homogenized umbrella of “Canadian.”4 Through contemporary artistic “survivance” (survival/resistance) movements, particularly those dealing with land and resource sovereignty, Indigenous artists and activists subvert and reclaim territorial borders, sacred geographies and cartographic expressions of power.5 To support this assertion, I will 84

analyze several pertinent artworks, which deal with the issues at stake by using comparable but distinct methodologies. I will first examine how Métis artist Christi Belcourt uses language, semiotics, original place names and the visual iconographies of de-colonization to paint land claims. I will then explore how mural artists in Montreal take up space in unceded territory and challenge existing notions of relationality, ownership and belonging. By deconstructing and re-imagining what is understood as “Canadian” territory, and what should be considered sovereign Indigenous lands belonging to independent nations, these artists challenge Canada’s position and composition within the mapped “global” world. Before unpacking the specific artworks at hand, I would like to establish the parameters, contributions and limitations of this project. As a non-Indigenous woman living on unceded Haudenosaunee and Anishinabe territories, I recognize that I must grapple with various gaps and flaws in my understanding of the issues at stake. Subsequently, I approach the following project with unyielding respect for indigenous ways of knowing and being, and will continuously rely on the voices of First Nations scholars and artists to enable a balanced and collaborative approach to the task at hand. I would also like to address the use of the concept of “nation-to-nation” that will appear throughout this paper. Guided by the principals of the Kaswentha (two row wampum), nation-to-nation relationships should be understood as the embodiment of interdependence: two parties in agreement may share the same space while retaining their status as “distinct political entities”.6 While I find the term useful as a theoretical framework, particularly in laying the foundations for what I will establish as issues of transnational and transcultural relationships of exchange, for many Indigenous scholars and activists the term has come to be associated with problematic trends in Canadian policy making. In particular, the so far undelivered promises of Justin Trudeau’s liberal government have led some activists to repeatedly ask, “Where is our nation-to-nation relationship, Mr. Trudeau?”7 So far, the lack of realized equitable relationships espoused throughout the campaigns for the 2015 election, and continuously posited on online state platforms today, has somewhat complicated the original ambitions that the term 85

signified.8 Instead, it has been appropriated and emptied of its meaning by colonial state agents through false conjecture and a distinct lack of delivery on issues such as access to clean water, housing, the suicide crises, climate change and resource extraction. Nonetheless, scholars still find merit in the term’s theoretical application when it is dissociated from the Canadian Liberal Party’s appropriation of the term (if this is possible).9 Ultimately, while using carefully and critically selected language, such as de-colonial (and rejecting the terminology of “post-colonial,” which positions colonization as an event we can and have oved on from), this project aims to call attention to the ongoing nature of the North American colonial project. At stake in considering concepts of land and sovereignty within artistic production are potentially new reflections on how indigenous artists can bridge indigenous/ settler social, ecological and geographical knowledge systems through the communicative framework of the visual arts. In effect, indigenous artists ultimately demonstrate the power to deconstruct enduring notions of the “Canadian” state and the people subsumed within it. Turning to the primary artworks with which this project is concerned, it is essential to note how land figures into methods of “survivance” for the specific artists under consideration. In a keynote speech entitled “The Revolution has Begun”, given at the Maamwizing Conference in 2016, Christi Belcourt argues, “Land is the most important thing that is overlooked when we talk about things like reconciliation or nation-to-nation… Land is the foundation of everything for us now and into the future”10. Belcourt’s publicized belief that land is fundamental to “survivance” is echoed in the work she produces as an artist. In particular, her Land and Water series of 2014 speaks to her understanding of territory, and how it has been manipulated to serve colonial exploitation. Similarly, Belcourt later stated in the same speech of 2016, I want Canadians to begin to […] let go of the crown lands they have claimed as their own [...] It says on this map that 0.2% of all Canadian landmass they say is “Indian reserves” but when you look at the Indian Act it says that the land is owned by the Queen and her heirs forever set aside for ‘the 86

use of the Indians’. This means actually that zero percent of our land is in our control [...] Canada represents the largest land heist, the largest land theft, in the history of the world. [The treaties] are fraudulent documents that still need to be amended to include the indigenous perspective that is wholly absent from them. Doing that will shake the validity of Canada to the core of its foundations.11 Belcourt continuously references land theft, fraudulent treaties, and the current issues of Indigenous sovereignty on unceded territory throughout her work and public appearances. Furthermore, looking beyond the state, Belcourt calls on settler Canadians to relinquish their hold on unceded territories (also known as Crown Land), owned by the Canadian federal/ provincial Crown, for which treaties have not been signed and therefore sovereignty never ceded. By implicating the settler population, Belcourt creates space for the exchange of divergent understandings of land and ownership. For Belcourt, to do so would “shake the validity of Canada to the core of its foundations”, as unceded territory makes up about 89% of Canada’s total land mass or 8,886,356 square kilometres.12 In service to her ambitions as an artist and activist, and this time visually communicating her message to the public, in A Work in Progress (fig. 1) from the 2014 Land and Water series Figure 1. Christi Belcourt, A Work in Progress, 2014, acrylic and paper on canvas.

Figure 2. Christi Belcourt, A Work in Progress (detail), 2014, acrylic and paper on canvas.

Belcourt re-imagines the Ontario region by deconstructing a Canadian state circulated and produced map. As she paints over settler-colonial locations and borders in acrylic, Belcourt depicts over four-hundred original place names for regions, settlements and geographical features such as rivers, lakes and mountains.13 Further to this, Belcourt chooses to de-emphasize existing borders between the Canadian provinces and the United States, and therefore complicates existing ideas of (inter)national division and fragmentation. Painted in black and white, the original place names that Belcourt researched and superimposed upon the map are written in Anishinaabemowin and Mohawk languages, depending on the location (fig. 2). In recognizing a variety of Indigenous languages, Belcourt acknowledges the pluriversality of indigeneity, and insists that sovereignty and “nation-to-nation” relationships must include the perspectives of multiple Indigenous identities. Upon addressing A Work in Progress and her subversion of settler-colonial mapping processes, Belcourt explained, When mapmakers came into this territory, they didn’t bother to find out what the original names were […] and they renamed a lot of places across North America into English and French names. And so this painting is about reclaiming these territories back for ourselves by using the original place names, acknowledging them, and putting them over top of the English and French names.14 88

As Belcourt suggests, map making has traditionally been used as a tool of domination, and the omission of place names is a specific semiotic strategy used by state agents to undermine and manipulate sovereignty claims. As Martin Doge, Rob Kitchin and Chris Perkins argue, mapping has always served political and economic purposes, which often leads to people being strategically â&#x20AC;&#x153;pushed off the mapâ&#x20AC;?*. These acts of domination appear ubiquitously throughout colonial maps, such as the imposition of new naming systems as referents for existing locations, or the inscription of new cartographic structures like legends, keys and symbols to signify settlements, roads and natural resources. Traditionally, new territories have been scripted as if blank spaces, allowing explorers and cartographers to claim, name, subjugate and exploit without any consideration for the geographical and semiotic systems already in place. As is clearly articulated in A Work in Progress, Belcourt recognizes the power imbued within cartographic expressions of ownership, and acknowledges that naming/renaming is an essential step in the process of determining sovereignty. By superimposing Anishinaabemowin and Mohawk place names over top of the settler-colonial French and English, Belcourt reverses the process of naming/ renaming, and instead positions the colonial names as the objects of erasure. Building on her subversive message, and further illuminating the divergent signs present within Indigenous and colonial Figure 3. Christi Belcourt, Goodland, 2014, mixed media on canvas.

Figure 4. Christi Belcourt, Goodland (detail), 2014, mixed media on canvas.

concepts of space, Belcourt materializes different perspectives of land and humanity’s relationship with it in Goodland (fig. 3). In describing her own relationship with these sacred geographies, Belcourt explains, “The waters of our world are viewed as the lifeblood of Mother Earth, so highly regarded that certain lakes were considered off limits, except only to grandmothers who would go harvest medicines there.”15 Later in her speech, Belcourt asserts that colonial agents and settler societies do not share the same respect for Mother Earth, which later informs her artistic interventions.16 In dialogue with Doge, Kitchin and Perkins’ views that maps often reflect and constitute political relationships, and enable the exploitation of material and economic interests, in Goodland, Belcourt maps the effects of resource extraction and the climate change crisis. Belcourt writes onto her map that “the Haudenosaunee were robbed”, again rooting the issue in the theft of Indigenous resource sovereignty.17 Further to this, Belcourt adds signifiers to the map (fig. 4), which can only be understood through the use of cartographic keys, which, as Doge, Kitchin and Perkins suggest, may be analysed through a semiotic process to reveal the power behind the map.18 Belcourt includes two such semiotic keys, one pertaining to the meanings shared by Indigenous occupants of the land, and the other to the meanings shared by colonial agents and settlers. To correspond with the information provided by the keys, Belcourt places small repetitive symbols such as mountains, trees, bulldozers and pipelines. Each symbol is attached to a caustic explanation, 90

and bares a distinct socio-political message about the use, theft, and exploitation of Indigenous territories. On the Indigenous cartographic key, mountains are “places of spirits;” trees are “the lungs of the earth;” pipelines signify criminal activity/ pollution; and bulldozers represent the “loss of territory for animals” (fig. 5). On the colonial cartographic key, mountains are “useless unless for a quarry/ mine; trees are simply represented by dollar signs; water is “a resource there for the taking;” and bulldozers are “necessary” (fig. 6). Similar to A Work in Progress, Goodland Above: Figure 5. Below: Figure 6. Christi Belcourt, appropriates colonial Goodland (details), 2014, mixed media on canvas. mapping processes such as the use of cartographic signifiers and uses divergent semiotic systems to point out the material violences active colonization has enacted on North America’s sacred geography. While Belcourt’s subversive maps address the violences of colonization through a discursive methodology, the work of Tiotia:ke/Montreal based street art collective, Unceded Voices, confronts issues of territory, fragmentation and belonging by physically occupying material space. As a group of primarily indigenous women from across North America, these artists continuously engage in trans-cultural and international relationships of exchange, while often rejecting concepts of 91

difference and fragmentation based solely on imposed state borders and citizenship. In describing the objectives of the collective, the artists explain, Unceded Voices: Anticolonial Street Artists Convergence is a biennial of primarily Indigenous-identified women/2spirit/Queer artists in […] unceded Haudenosaunee and Anishinabe territories (also known as Montreal). We recognize the importance of walls and structures as critical spaces to reclaim unceded Indigenous land and to aim Indigenous artists in their movement towards justice and healing for themselves and their culture. This work prompts a dialogue with the public about colonialism...19 In the 2015 edition of the collective’s occupation of Tiotia:ke/ Montreal, the work of visual artist Melanie Cerventes (Xicana) from San Francisco, California, addresses the issues at stake through an exploration of iconographical, as well as mapped, methods of resistance.20 In her wheatpaste mural (fig. 7), Cerventes depicts a map of North, South and Central America, uniformly coloured red, to represent what she subsequently labels “tierra Indigena,” or indigenous land. Repeated next to the recognizable icon of the map is a meta-image of the central Xicana woman in the foreground, and inscribed beside her are the words “Indigenous women defending land and life since the beginning of time.” In service to the mural’s public location and overt anti-colonial message, Cerventes points to the centrality of land (and its protection) within concepts of ownership, stewardship and belonging, while also bringing attention to the enduring presence of Indigenous peoples across the Western hemisphere. Like Belcourt, Cerventes uses an immediately recognizable map to draw her viewer’s attention to the status of unceded and stolen territory. However, unlike Belcourt who chose to include specific locations and a variety of languages to specify regional ownership, Cerventes clearly depicts the territory as uniformly indigenous. Subsequently, in opposition to the fragmentary perspectives experienced thus far, the artist rejects emphasis on any form of spatial border, indigenous or colonial. This materialized denial of regional and international 92

Figure 7. Melanie Cerventes, Wheatpaste Mural, 2015, Avenue Coloniale, Montreal, Quebec.

borders highlights divergent understandings of the land and its occupation, while proposing an alternative to the fragmented composition of modern colonial states. Instead, indigenous occupants are scripted as being entirely sovereign, across all three continents, without exception. By presenting this to the settler public in the streets of Montreal, Cerventes takes up space and pushes back against the colonization of the entire Western hemisphere.21 As a Xicana artist from the United States, Cerventes’ cohesive map and presence in Montreal speaks to a palpable sense of pan-indigenous land-based solidarity manifested through distinct relationships of “global” exchange. By way of these relationships, the movement of art is facilitated through the transcendence of geo-political understandings of belonging. In particular, as a defender of land and life, the artist’s voice and presence in Montreal becomes highly relevant despite being from thousands of miles away, since it speaks to a shared history of colonization and the collective pursuit of justice for indigenous peoples. This separation of community building from the conditions of citizenship aims mutually beneficial relationships towards the pursuit of collective life-projects, while refusing to exclude participants based on geographical origin. In doing so, Cerventes creates space for the voices of other 93

indigenous artists from across the Americas to be publicly represented in territories that do not traditionally belong to their specific home nations. Through her denial of divisive territorial borders, the artist disregards relationships of exchange based on regional ownership, and instead demonstrates that shared social values, parallel histories of colonization and the pursuit of goals held in common can effectively guide nation-to-nation relationships. By presenting her perspective and the lived experiences of other Indigenous peoples across the colonized Americas in this way, Cerventes places Indigenous artists within the realm of the “global” through a refusal to adhere to enduring notions of belonging determined by state regulated citizenship and fragmentary borders. As is demonstrated by the works of Cerventes and Belcourt, for some Indigenous scholars and activists, the material effects of painted land claims lay in their ability to incite a resurgence and reclamation of Indigenous sovereignty and sense of belonging.22 While it is unrealistic to assume that such painted land claims can independently alter the borders and title of North America in a legal sense, the true power of these acts of “survivance” lay in their ability to discursively and materially disrupt the colonizer. In doing so, these artists work to incite reconsiderations of Canada’s position and composition as a settler colonial state within the global framework. For example, Taiaiake Alfred, an outspoken advocate for land-based resurgence and professor at the University of Victoria argues, If colonisation were a process that could be framed simply in legal terms — the erasure of our names from the map, the denial of our laws, the control of our resources — then we could foresee a resolution of colonisation through the resurgence of our nation and the reclamation of these things.23 The reclamation of these things, made visible in Belcourt’s maps and Cereventes’ presence in Montreal, leads to what Belcourt positioned earlier as a discernible rupture in Canadian conceptions of identity and sovereignty. Through the repossession and dismissal of naming systems, citizenship, borders, territories, and resources, Indigenous nations and 94

artists become distinct from the assimilatory Canadian body politic. Instead, by denying or modifying these imposed spatial boundaries and state sovereignty claims on their own terms, these Indigenous artists become concretely located within the “global”/international framework positioned earlier by Bonami and Kapur. While navigating the divergent forces at work within fragmented globalization, a direct result of aggressive colonization, these artists act as independent participants engaging in transnational and transcultural relationships of exchange.

Notes

1 Ruth Iskin, “Introduction,” in Re-envisioning the Contemporary Art Canon: Perspectives in a Global World, ed. Ruth Iskin (New York: Routledge, 2017), 10. 2 Iskin, “Introduction,” 24. 3 Iskin, “Introduction,” 24. 4 Jon Parmenter, “The Meaning of Kaswentha and the Two Row Wampum Belt in Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) History,” Journal of Early Ameri 3 no. 1 (2013): 84. 5 Julia Skelly, “Alternative Paths: Mapping Addiction in Contemporary Art by Landon Mackenzie, Rebecca Belmore, Manasie Akpaliapik, and Ron Noganosh,” Journal of Canadian Studies 49 no. 2 (2015): 277. 6 Parmenter, “The Meaning of Kaswentha,” 84. 7 Robert Jago, “Where is Our Nation-to-Nation Relationship Mr. Trudeau,” The Walrus Online (2017). Accessed December 12, 2017, https://thewalrus. ca/where-is-our-nation-to-nation-relationship-mr-trudeau/. 8 “A New Nation-to-Nation Process, Platform for Real Change,” Liberal Party of Canada, 2017. Canada: Government of Canada. Accessed December 12, 2017, https://www.liberal.ca/realchange/a-new-nation-to-nation-process/. 9 Alfred Taiaiake, “Cultural Strength: Restoring The Place of Indigenous Knowledge in Practice and Policy,” Australian Aboriginal Studies 1 (2015): 4. 10 Christi Belcourt, “The Revolution has Begun,” keynote speech at Maamwizing Conference, Laurentian University, 2016. 11 Belcourt, “The Revolution has Begun.” 12 V.P. Neimanis, “Crown Land,” in The Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Canada (2011). 13 Christi Belcourt, “Videos,” Accessed November 28, 2017, http://christibelcourt.com/videos-2/. 14 Belcourt, “Videos.” 15 Belcourt, “The Revolution has Begun.” 16 Belcourt, “The Revolution has Begun.”

17 Belcourt, “The Revolution has Begun.” 18 Dodge, Rethinking Maps, 11. 19 Unceded Voices, “About,” July 14, 2017. Accessed November 28, 2017, https://decolonizingstreetart.com/about/. 20 Unceded Voices, “About.” 21 Unceded Voices. “About.” 22 Taiaiake. “Cultural Strength,” 3. 23 Taiaiake. “Cultural Strength,” 3.

DOING DIFFERENTLY NOW: DOING DIFFERENTLY NOW: LUBAINA HIMID AND THE FUTURE LUBAINA HIMID AND THE FUTURE OF BRITAIN’S OF BRITAIN’S LANDSCAPE MEMORIAL MEMORIAL LANDSCAPE WRITTEN BY JACQUELINE HAMPSHIRE WRITTEN BY JACQUELINE HAMPSHIRE EDITED BY ÉMILIE PERRING EDITED BY ÉMILIE PERRING

Doing Differently Now: Lubaina Himid and the Future of Britain’s Memorial Landscape In 2011, Lubaina Himid began a presentation at The Monument and the Changing City symposium by asking the question: “Who are monuments for?”1 The question seems to both interrogate the past – who have monuments been for? – as well as suggest a way forward – who might monuments be for in the future? Though not always stated so openly, questions such as these permeate Himid’s writing, art and curatorial practice. For decades, the Zanzibar-born, England-raised artist has created “work that you’re supposed to do something with, or that you’re supposed to interact with and then do something about it [sic].”2 Though it is tempting to classify her work as either art or activism, such distinctions are fruitless – Himid’s work exists as both. This refusal to be neatly categorized often comes up in conversations with the artist, who speaks openly about her political goals and her experience as an African diasporic artist working in Britain. My research for this essay has largely been driven by Himid’s personal accounts and statements of intention. Having chosen to engage with an artist who creates spaces to commemorate peoples who have been intentionally written out of history and otherwise silenced, including the voice of the artist was essential. The voice of the artist will be complemented with sources outside the discipline of art history that speak on collective memory and lieux de mémoires. I utilize all of the above to engage with art historian Marsha Meskimmon’s optimism towards the positive potentials of contemporary art and the cosmopolitan imagination.3 I argue that Lubaina Himid’s creative pieces blur boundaries between real and imagined, art and memorial, in order to expose how the commemorative landscape in Britain has contributed to the amnesia of a nation that has willfully erased the contributions of people of the African diaspora. I further contend that Himid’s works challenge the future of memorialization and suggest potential for new actors to democratize the process of creating collective memories. The Memorial Landscape Memory is often understood as a process of recollection that happens within the individual’s mind. Though there is 98

understandably a great deal of comfort in perceiving memory as a personal and individual process, to understand memory as a social phenomenon makes visible how it functions as a tool for nation building, control and resistance.4 Memory is used to create collective identities and plays a crucial role in formulating and maintaining boundaries between nations as well as the cultural, ethnic and religious groups within them.5 Memory can serve as a reminder of the potential dangers that threaten our current democracies and can function as visual or discursive aides, “putting the past in the service of the present.”6 This is an ideal use for memorial landscapes, however, this is often not the case. The confederate monuments that are crashing to the ground in the southern United States are a testament to how memorial landscapes are highly politicized, contested and unreliable.7 This physical response to the memorial landscape demonstrates a recent impulse, among some, to be wary of memory’s role in rousing white supremacy and the intolerance; a reaction that is not misguided. The United States and Britain are only two of many memorial landscapes that have been carefully constructed by those in positions of power to control collective memory and to promote a single and flawed version of history. As Geoff Quilley notes at the beginning of his article on Yinka Shonibare’s commission for Trafalgar Square: having to mention that the memorial landscape is politicized seems to be stating the obvious.8 Though this may be true, until there is a major overhaul of these exclusionary commemorative landscapes, it is the job of scholars, journalists, activists and artists to continue to make visible what historical landscapes have deliberately hidden. Figure 1 Lubaina Himid, Toussaint L’Ouverture - Trafalgar Square London from “What are Monuments for? Possible Landmarks on the Urban Map - London and Paris,” 2011, University of Central Lancashire.

In his foundational text on memory, Pierre Nora introduces the term lieux de mémoires, places “where memory crystallizes and secretes itself.”9 Nora also makes the distinction between memory and history. He describes history as “how our hopelessly forgetful modern societies, propelled by change, organize the past,” whereas “memory is a perpetually actual phenomenon, a bond tying us to the eternal present.”10 Britain’s memorial landscape is historical. Monuments and memorials are seamlessly integrated into the fabric of the city, glorifying the history of British imperial rule through the celebration of figures such as Admiral Horatio Nelson, and slave owners William Beckford and Hans Sloane, along with countless others who contributed to Britain’s violent colonial legacy.11 When slavery is alluded to in the memorial landscape, it is in reference to abolition and takes on a self-congratulatory tone.12 These public displays idealize a post-colonial Britain and attempt to obscure that “its legacies and impositions are far from over, and that they remain embedded and inter-twined in, and imprinted on, the here and now.”13 It is precisely the “here and now” that critics of alterations to the memorial landscape ignore. Monuments and memorials do not perform the work of history textbooks and archival research. While they do exist to remember the past, more importantly, they exist as reminders of what should be valued today. Those who fear that history will be re-written ignore the key role of monuments in the present, or more likely, are comfortable with the historical landscape that surrounds them. The irony of this controversy is best addressed by Afua Hirsch in a recent Guardian article where she states: Britain has committed unquantifiable acts of cultural terrorism – tearing down statues and palaces, and erasing the historical memory of other great civilisations during an imperial era whose supposed greatness we are now, so ironically, very precious about preserving intact.14 When Hirsch suggested on social media that Britain revisit its memorial landscape, she was met with hostile reactions. One person went so far as to call her racist, a confusing statement demonstrating that the feelings of discomfort about the colonial legacies of an empire continue to play out in contemporary discussions on monuments and memorials.15 Instead of working through the discomfort of colonial legacies, denial and active forgetting has been the tactic of a nation 100

Figure 2. Lubaina Himid, Slave Ship - Greenwich London from “What are Monuments for? Possible Landmarks on the Urban Map - London and Paris,” 2011, University of Central Lancashire.

dealing with an uncomfortable and shameful history.16 The memorial landscape itself provides visual evidence of this deliberate forgetfulness. Through creating spaces to commemorate the contributions of people of the African diaspora, Himid’s works disallow for what Paul Gilroy explains as “an additional catastrophe: the error of imagining that post-colonial people are only unwanted alien intruders without any substantive historical, political or cultural connections to the collective life of their fellow subjects.”17 Her works demonstrate that a distinctly British landscape can and should include the contributions of African people. “What are Monuments for?” Lubaina Himid’s presentation “What are Monuments for? Possible Landmarks on the Urban Map: London and Paris” (2011) uses fictional guidebooks to take the audience on a tour of London and Paris to sites of interest where the contribution of people of the African diaspora are commemorated in important public spaces. In Trafalgar square, a vista currently dominated by Nelson’s column, Himid imagines an enormous sculpture of Toussaint L’Ouverture, the leader of the Haitian independence movement and the only successful slave revolt in the Caribbean (fig. 1).18 In Greenwich, where the world’s time is measured and the National Maritime Museum is located, Himid envisions a life-sized wooden slave ship on the lawn that comes alive every weekend when children come to re-enact the rescue and repatriation of African slaves. The enactment also features the punishment of their captors (fig. 101

2).19 The tone of this performance is humorous, not a-typical of Himid’s work and writing. Many of the monuments she proposes appear to be impossible feats of engineering, such as the ceramic saucer sculpture she imagines attached to the chimney of the Tate Modern to commemorate the role that Africans played in the history of art and culture in Britain (fig. 3).20 The impossibility of the physical structure forces viewers to wonder what else would bar such a work from fruition. Is it really a question of structural feasibility? Or might it remain imaginary for social and political reasons? Would the Tate Modern sacrifice the visibility of their iconic building to celebrate a group of cultural actors that they scarcely display inside its walls? Probably not. In mimicking the guidebook format, Himid has subverted the familiar to call attention to the uniformity of the monumental landscape and the exclusion of non-white bodies from sites of commemoration. Guidebooks are easy to read; they are pleasant and helpful, and explain everything there is to know about a city. I argue that the guidebook itself stands in for the way that the memorial landscape has been created to be easily understood and comfortably consumed by white Western audiences and tourists who do not want to experience unease as they navigate the city. This discomfort surfaces in comments made by onlookers that disapprove of proposals for monuments commemorating important Black figures in highly visible public spaces. Thinly-veiled unease with the subjects is revealed through poorly worded critiques about the aesthetic qualities of these monuments, examples of which are cited in Rice’s chapter on the Lancaster memorial,21 as well as in comments made regarding the proposed Mandela statue in Trafalgar square that found his hands to be ill-proportioned.22 Himid’s performance is a call to action, Figure 3. Lubaina Himid, Southwark and Bankside from “What are Monuments for? Possible Landmarks on the Urban Map - London and Paris,” 2011, University of Central Lancashire.

102

Above: Figure 4. Lubaina Himid, Detail of Jelly Mould Pavilion, 2010, Sudley House Liverpool. Below: Figure 5. Lubaina Himid, Detail of Jelly Mould Pavilion, 2010, Sudley House Liverpool.

and it has been a successful one. Though the addition of the guidebooks is new, the presentation was originally given at the inaugural public meeting of the Slave Trade Art Memorial Project (STAMP) in 2003, which culminated in the construction of a monument called “Captured African” by artist Kevin Dalton-Johnson in 2005.23 The monument was built in the city of Lancaster, Britain’s fourth largest slave port.24 Imagined Pavilions The “Jelly Mould Pavilion” project works in a similar way. Taking place in 2010, the work was a collaboration with the Liverpool Museums Service and was located at multiple sites around the city.25 The work imagines an architectural competition where African architects have submitted proposals in the form of maquettes for a memorial to commemorate the contribution of people of the African diaspora to the city of Liverpool (fig. 4-5). The structures are in the shape of tradi103

tional jelly moulds, used to contain and shape jelly, and to make it presentable on the dining tables of the British aristocracy.26 The objects are arranged on a plain white surface and are accompanied by model trees and human figurines to make their larger-than-life scale clear. The surface of the recognizable jelly mould shape is painted with bright patterns and portraits, a juxtaposition that references the city’s historical connection to the African continent. Himid’s work, which “is trying to fill the gaps in history which is there in front of us but is somehow obscured or perceived as clear and complete when it is not”, calls attention to the flawed and incomplete historical na,rative of the city.27 The choice to stage a ‘fake’ competition plays with the real and the imagined. Logistically, it seems possible, but its existence as a hypothetical scenario in which Himid has submitted all the maquettes herself creates a sense of discomfort. Why is this not real and could it potentially be realized? These questions might come to mind as people move around the city to visit the multiple sites hosting the pavilion submissions. This pilgrimage of sorts encourages visitors to consider a site for the memorial in various urban spaces. I argue that through this form of active participation, the audience becomes involved in the creation of lieux de mémoires, even if they remain, for the time being, imaginary. The collaborative nature of this project is important for much of Himid’s work. In an interview with Jane Beckett, Himid states that “the aim has always been to engage in a dialogue with an audience, to exchange and build on ideas about ways we could collaborate in a life-long project to make the invisible threads of certain historical narratives part of an everyday conversation.”28 This work positions the spectator as an actor in changing the landscape of Liverpool, in choosing a pavilion, in choosing a suitable public location, and ultimately, in choosing to commemorate the contributions of Africans to every aspect of the city. To return to Meskimmon, I argue that this work has played a role “in conceiving and reconfiguring the political, ethical and social landscape of our time.”29 Just this past year, the imaginary was realized. Realized Pavilion n 2017, for the Folkestone Triennial, a Jelly Mould Pavilion was built. The Pavilion now sits on the beach in the port town of Folkestone on the English Channel (fig. 6). Not only 104

Figure 6. Lubaina Himid, Jelly Mould Pavilion, Folkestone, 2017, Commissioned by the Creative Foundation for Folkestone Triennial. Image by Thierry Bal.

does this particular site engage with the beach as a site of arrivals and departures, so significant to the slave trade in Britain, but the pavilion sits where the Rotunda Amusement Park used to be, a site of pleasure and enjoyment all fuelled by the consumption of sugar, a commodity violently extracted from British colonies.30 As suggested above, the active selection of site is an important process in memorial projects. The choice of this palimpsest landscape in which many mnemonic traces coexist demonstrates a process of reflection through site specificity and lieux de mémoires. In this case, there is acknowledgement of the lives that were lost in the waters surrounding Britain and the violence of the forced migration and slave-labour facilitated by British ports. The pavilion, which differs somewhat in form from the maquettes of 2010, acts as a void or container in which people are invited to enter, seek shelter, or sit and take a pause. Rather than representing a specific figure carved in stone – a style of monument associated with the imperial landscape and historical narrative, this monument creates a space to be filled with memory by those who visit the site, much like the counter-monuments described by James Young.31 The monument does not display a specific revised vision of the past nor does it “exist to shame the living,” which as Himid remarks, would achieve little.32 Instead, the monument provides 105

a space for dialogue and conversation, thus preventing it from becoming grounded in the past and instead ensuring its continued existence in the present, denoting the capacity for evolution that Nora attributes distinctly to memory.33 In this way, the monument does not risk becoming irrelevant with time as many of the traditional monuments from the imperial era have. As Young suggests, the counter-monument instead allows for a new generation to “find its own significance in this past.”34 Having existed for less than a year, this memorial’s success or failure can hardly be asserted, however, it is reasonable to assume that the two previous works discussed in this essay, which existed predominantly in the imaginary, contributed to the Jelly Mould Pavilion’s realization in Folkestone. The memorial inspires confidence in Meskimmon’s notion of a cosmopolitan imagination that “generates conversations in a field of flesh, fully sensory, embodied processes of interrogation, critique and dialogue that can enable us to think of our homes and ourselves as open to change and alterity.”35 In particular, it is productive to consider the memorial landscape, often thought of as static and grounded in the past, as unstable and open to change. Himid’s engagement with the memorial landscape, both real and imagined, attends to what is perhaps the most important role for monuments in the present: “to honour the dead who have been ignored, suppressed or denied when in peril in the past…[in order to] show that you would do differently now, that you would be able to defend those people now.”36 Perhaps the best way to accomplish this is to offer opportunities for the creation of lieux de mémoires to those who have similarly been silenced as a result of the very history that continues to be celebrated by the commemorative landscape. As a feminist, African diasporic artist working in Britain, Himid has boldly spoken out about her “usefulness” to institutions and the tokenism she experiences as a result of the othering of her identity.37 Those who have previously controlled the collective memory of a nation have often done so in order to promote a specific agenda that served those in positions of power.38 Misztal suggests that in a global age when memories so often transcend national boundaries, the role of deciding what to remember should be taken out of the hands of those in political power and should instead be a task for public intellectuals.39 Though I resist assigning the role of memory to a single group within society, Himid is the ideal candidate to help guide a nation 106

in discussing how to commemorate the contributions of the African diaspora. Recently, British institutions appear to have shown they might be willing to embark on this enormous task, starting with a small but important declaration that they would do differently now. On December 5, 2017, Lubaina Himid was awarded the Turner Prize, a long overdue and much needed celebration of the contributions of a Black female artist among many others to British culture and a celebration that will hopefully be heard far beyond the walls of the museum. Notes 1 Lubaina Himid, “What Are Monuments for? Possible Landmarks on the Urban Map : London and Paris,” April 27, 2011, https://vimeo.com/22938970. 2 Alan Rice, “Exploring inside the Invisible: An Interview with Lubaina Himid,” Wasafiri 18, no. 40 (December 2003): 20. 3 Marsha Meskimmon, “Introduction: Contemporary Art: At Home in a Global World,” in Contemporary Art and the Cosmopolitan Imagination, 1st ed (London: Routledge, 2010), 1–10. 4 Barbara A. Misztal, “Collective Memory in a Global Age: Learning How and What to Remember,” Current Sociology 58, no. 1 (January 2010): 27. 5 Misztal, “Collective Memory in a Global Age,” 26. 6 Misztal, “Collective Memory in a Global Age,” 35. 7 Jess Bidgood, “Confederate Monuments Are Coming Down Across the United States. Here’s a List.,” The New York Times, August 16, 2017, sec. U.S., https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/16/us/confederate-monuments-removed.html. 8 Geoff Quilley, “Sitting the Circum-Atlantic: Nelson in a Bottle in Trafalgar Square,” in Visualising Slavery: Art across the African Diaspora, ed. Celeste-Marie Bernier and Hannah Durkin, Liverpool Studies in International Slavery 9 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2016), 155. 9 Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,” Representations, no. 26 (April 1989): 7. 10 Nora, “Between Memory and History,” 10. 11 Madge Dresser, “Set in Stone? Statues and Slavery in London,” History Workshop Journal 64, no. 1 (October 1, 2007): 162–99. 12 Dresser, “Set in Stone?,”168. 13 Deborah Cherry, “Statues in the Square: Hauntings at the Heart of Empire,” Art History 29, no. 4 (September 2006): 665. 14 Afua Hirsch, “Toppling Statues? Here’s Why Nelson’s Column Should Be next | Afua Hirsch,” The Guardian, August 22, 2017, sec. Opinion, http://

107

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/22/toppling-statues-nelsons-column-should-be-next-slavery. 15 Hirsch, “Toppling Statues?” 16 Paraphrasing Paul Gilroy as quoted in Alan Rice, “Creating Memorials, Building Identities: The Politics of Memory in the Black Atlantic,” Liverpool Studies in International Slavery 3 (Liverpool: Liverpool Univ. Press, 2010), 32. 17 Gilroy as quoted in Rice, “Exploring inside the Invisible,” 32. 18 Himid, “What Are Monuments For?” 19 Himid, “What Are Monuments For?” 20 Himid, “What Are Monuments For?” 21 Rice, “Creating Memorials, Building Identities,” 46–47. 22 Betterton, “Alison Lapper Pregnant: Embodied Geographies, Post-Imperial Identities and Public Sculpture in London’s Trafalgar Square,” in Women, the Arts and Globalization: Eccentric Experience, ed. Marsha Meskimmon and Dorothy Rowe (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015), 177. 23 “Slavery Sculpture to Be Unveiled,” October 10, 2005, http://news.bbc. co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/lancashire/4325898.stm. 24 “Slavery Sculpture to Be Unveiled.” 25 “Jelly Mould Pavilion,” Making Histories Visible (blog), February 20, 2015, http://makinghistoriesvisible.com/portfolio/jelly-mould-pavillion/. 26 “Jelly Mould Pavilion.” 27 Lubaina Himid, “Lost and Found at the Swap Meet: Betye Saar and the Everyday Object,” in Visualising Slavery: Art Across the African Diaspora, ed. Celeste-Marie Bernier and Hannah Durkin, Liverpool Studies in International Slavery 9 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2016), 25. 28 Marsha Meskimmon and Dorothy Rowe, “Diasporic Unwrappings: Lubaina Himid in Conversation with Jane Beckett,” in Women, the Arts and Globalization: Eccentric Experience (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015), 190. 29 Meskimmon, “Introduction: Contemporary Art: At Home in a Global World.” 5. 30 “Lubaina Himid,” Folkestone Triennial , accessed December 4, 2017, http://www.folkestonetriennial.org.uk/artist/lubaina-himid/. 31 James Young, “Memory and Counter-Memory: The End of the Monument in Germany,” Harvard Design Magazine, 1999, http://www.harvarddesignmagazine.org/issues/9/memory-and-counter-memory. 32 Himid, “What Are Monuments For?” 33 Nora, “Between Memory and History,” 19. 34 Young, “Memory and Counter-Memory.” 35 Meskimmon, “Introduction: Contemporary Art: At Home in a Global World.” 8. 36 Lubaina Himid, “Monument Talk: Delivered at the Inaugural Public Meeting of the Slave Trade Arts Memorial Project (STAMP), Dukes Theatre, Lancaster, on 15 November 2003,” Atlantic Studies 9, no. 3 (September 2012): 275.

108

AUTHORS Alexa van Abbema is a U3 student majoring in Cultural Studies and completing a double minor in and Communications and Gender, Sexuality, Feminist, and Social Justice Studies. Alexa works with various local organizations such as: African Rainbow and the Prisoner Correspondence Project. Forging the multiple relations between theory and praxis, Alexa is particularly interested in questions of the body – or embodiment – located in the emerging discourses surrounding new materialism(s), critical race theory, and queer theory. Laurence Charlebois is a recent graduate from McGill University with a major in Art History and a minor in Hispanic Studies. Born and raised on the South Shore of Montreal, she loves exploring museums, galleries, cafés and restaurants around the city. As of next Fall, Laurence will begin her MA in art history, attempting to combine her interests for contemporary art and Latin America. Hannah Deskin is a U3 undergraduate pursuing an honours degree in Art History along with a minor in Anthropology. Hannah also works as a curatorial intern at the McGill Visual Arts Collection where she helps to manage over 2,500 artworks across 90 buildings and several campuses. Her research interests include the globalisation of the art market, contemporary de-colonisation movements and the intersections of art and law. After she graduates, she hopes to either pursue a Masters degree in Art History or attend law school. Jacqueline Hampshire graduates in June having completed a major in Art History and a minor in Geography and Urban Systems. Her areas of interest include site-specificity, memory, architecture and urban design. Jacqueline also enjoys printmaking and papermaking in her spare time. Erin Havens is a Computer Science and Art History student in her final year at McGill. Erin is always interested in discussing conceptual foundations of the unexpected, which explains her keen interests in art movements such as Minimalist Art and Pop Surrealism. Outside of her studies, she has experience with robotics, startups, and venture capital. Erin is looking forward to a future working with the conceptual nature behind how emerging technology can be crafted into beautifully-designed experiences.

110

From Philadelphia, Erika Kindsfather recently graduated with a First Class Honors major in Art History and a minor in German Language. Her research interests include approaching the study of fibre arts from a queer feminist theoretical perspective, cyber- and post-cyber-feminist themes in contemporary art practices, and the intersections of architectural spaces and structures of power. Her recent scholarship focuses on embodiment and emotion in intermedia contemporary art practices. She hopes to pursue post-graduate studies focusing on new media and intersectional feminist theory. Thomas Macdonald is a fourth-year in honours English literature with a double minor in Art History and German language. Originally from Boston, he hopes to go into urban planning and policy. Luke Sarabia is a U2 Cultural Studies major and Art History Minor from Toronto. He is currently on a semester abroad at Trinity College Dublin. He has also been published in The Channel and is a contributing writer for The McGill Tribune. Lukeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s primary academic interests include American contemporary art and film and the intersection of these media with social and class politics. He spends most of his free time trying to pick his favourite Coen Brothers movie.

111

EDITORS Tara Allen-Flanagan is a third year student with a double major in English Literature and Art History. Her academic interests lie in the history of cosmetics, female beauty standards in advertisements, and the gender politics of art. She enjoys beekeeping and rock climbing in her spare time. Lucia Bell-Epstein is in her second year at McGill majoring in Art History and Islamic Studies. She grew up in New York City, but has also lived in Berlin and Rome. In her spare time, she enjoys oil painting, film photography, making banana bread, and visiting galleries and museums. Her favourite contemporary artist at the moment is Shirin Neshat, an Iranian visual artist based in film and photography. Miray Eroglu is in her third year at McGill majoring in Art History and minoring in French and Medieval Studies. She loves traveling, painting, writing and visiting museums and galleries in her free time. She spent the fall semester studying abroad in Switzerland at the University of Geneva and has enjoyed editing for Canvas this year! Gabby Marcuzzi Herie is in her third year majoring in honours Art History and minoring in Anthropology. She was born in Toronto and likes to spend her spare time listening to podcasts and embroidering. She is still trying to reduce a wide range of art history-related interests including contemporary feminist art, textiles, taxidermy, and crystals into one focus. Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s officially an Aries but is a Taurus at heart. Lily-Cannelle Mathieu is in her second year of her joint honours B.A. in Art History and Anthropology. She was thrilled to join both Canvas and Orientations this year! Her research interests are ever-expanding, but she is particularly curious about cultural politics in museums and the art world. She loves watching plants grow, learning, visiting exhibitions, and eating mochi! Ă&#x2030;milie Perring is a third year student doing an honours in Art History and a minor in History. She enjoys painting, drawing, playing piano, skiing, getting lost in a book, and spending her summers traveling. She is also a proud crazy cat lady and would have eggs benedict for breakfast, lunch, and dinner if she could. She is particularly interested in the French Romanticism of the late eighteenth, early nineteenth century and hopes to pursue her studies in this area in grad school. 112

Greta Rainbow is in her third year studying English-Cultural Studies and Art History. She is passionate about magic realism, Monday crosswords, and public art that engages with all citizens, regardless of their background in the art historical canon. Greta is interested in the ways in which art opens conversations of difference, and she is excited about the role of Canvas in highlighting unseen voices and stories. Mallory Rappaport is a fourth year International Development major, with minors in Communications and Gender, Sexuality, & Feminist Studies. She is thrilled to have joined Canvas this year. Her academic interests range in topics, but often form at the intersections of race, class, and gender. She is an unabashed Aries, pineapple pizza lover, and avid to-do list maker. Josephine Spalla is a fourth year at McGill in Joint Honours Art History & Asian Religion. Her research interests lie in Southeast Asian art, particularly the transmission of aesthetic manifestations of Buddhist devotional practice across the region. Additionally, she once wrote a paper on the history of the cashew in a first year history course, however the project did not gain widespread academic acclaim. AimĂŠe Tian is a fourth year student pursuing her B.A. in Art History, Communications Studies and Economics. Her interests lie in all realms of arts and culture, but she is particularly fascinated by urban/public art, the de-commodification of art, racial politics and identity, and streetwear fashion. During her undergrad, she has written on various topics including textile art, camgirling, the language of light, and Cardi B (not all at once, that would be a bit of a stretch). Muhan Zhang is in her fourth and final year in Joint Honours Art History and East Asian Studies. Her honours thesis is a comparative case study of the installation works of contemporary Chinese Canadian artists, Gu Xiong and Karen Tam. She has been an editor of both Canvas and Orientations Journals at McGill for the past three years.

113

115

116