arts&culture
JAN.23.2O13• UWINDSORLANCE.CA/ARTS // O7
The river and the land define us
AGW exhibit explores the complex and shifting notions of national boundaries
STEPHENHARGREAVES managing editor __________________________
B
efore anything else Windsor is a border town.
Whether the bridge connects us or the river divides us, the position of Windsor as a border town is paramount to the city’s identity. The Art Gallery of Windsor is acutely aware of its position from the gallery’s home at the shore of the Detroit River in the immediate shadow of Motown’s sky-scraping iconic landscape. Dialogue within their walls and on either side of the WindsorDetroit border has culminated in Border Cultures a three-part group exhibition series beginning this Friday. Curated by Srimoyee Mitra, the series explores the accelerated militarization of national boundaries, a society where capital and goods travel more freely than people, and the curious climate of surveillance and suspicion surrounding international crossings globally. “One of the first things that I noticed arriving in Windsor was the relationship artists have with our border and Detroit,” said Mitra. “The impact of 9-11 was pretty profound in Windsor and Detroit, it has changed communities on both sides of the border and it has changed mobility for both sides. For artists like (Canadian born Detroit residents) Christopher McNamara and Dylan Miner, it has been pretty dramatic.” Border Cultures brings together artists working in the region, nationally and internationally, to examine the complex and shifting notions of national boundaries through contemporary art practice.
The “exhibitions-in-progress” were conceptualized as a research-based platform for artists and cultural producers to explore and examine the border through different lenses. Border Cultures: Part Two (work and labour), and Part Three (security and surveillance), will run in 2014, following Part One (homes, land), opening this Friday. “The objective of this series is to mobilize and connect the ongoing critical dialogues on national boundaries in Windsor with multiple and diverse narratives and experiences of border contexts in different parts of the country and the world,” said Mitra. The first in the Border Cultures trilogy brings together artists working locally and nationally with those exploring these issues in Ireland, Mexico and Palestine. Using drawing and printmaking, sculpture and photography, video and soundbased installations, artists in this exhibition attempt to develop nuanced critiques and perspectives on questions of nationhood, citizenship and identity in the border lands. McNamara’s contribution to the installation explores Detroitbased Japanese-American architect Minoru Yamasaki, who is famous for his design of the twin towers of the World Trade Center and many buildings in Detroit. “Chris is approaching the border crossings through ideas of memory and nostalgia, and by looking back at the history of Yamasaki after the World Trade Center towers came down in 9/11, he became broke, his firm shut down and the story goes that his drawings were put out on to the curb and he disappeared,” recounted Mitra. “There is an erasure of the
exchange across borders.” Windsor artist collective Broken City Lab’s contribution to the exhibition is, as with many of their installations, about Windsor-Detroit friendship. Born out of BCL’s 2010 book How to Forget the Border Completely, the group is including a sculptural envisioning of a two-piece broken heart pendant when united reads “together forever, never apart.” Though when separated, one piece hangs in Detroit reading “together never,” while “forever apart” hangs in Windsor. Border Cultures: Part One (homes, land), curated by Srimoyee Mitra with artists Broken City Lab (Canada), Campus in Camps (Palestine), Iftikhar and Elizabeth Dadi (Pakistan/USA), Willie Doherty (Ireland), Marcos Ramirez Erre (Mexico/USA), Sanaz Mazinani (Canada), Christopher McNamara (Canada/USA), Dylan Miner (USA/Canada), Ed Pien (Canada) and Leila Sujir (Canada) opens Jan, 25 with a reception from 7 – 10 p.m. featuring Detroit Motown band In The Pocket.
[top to bottom] Ed Pien; Memento, Willie Doherty; Remote Control, Chris McNamara; Minoru (detail) • photos courtesy Art Gallery of Windsor
Additional border related works at the AGW are featured in A River that Separates? Imaging the Detroit River, 1804-2001, curated by Catharine Mastin. A River That Separates? brings together a varied group of artist’s perspectives of the Detroit River over the past 200 years, from renderings by British colonialists hired to map the border,to marine imagery of the river’s role in international trade, to scenes of the river in urban development. The featured artists’ stories demonstrate how the river has been both an important international border and water route that joins, as much as it separates.
pq trendingm TORONTO STAR WINS WORST SEXUAL ASSAULT LEDE AWARD
CREAM IN YOUR PANTS WITH NEW MOISTURIZING JEANS
LENA DUNHAM CALLS DETROIT FAT
In a “Wait, I’m sure you’re not supposed to be a massive douchebag in journalism” moment, we spotted the following lede in a Toronto Star article about an anesthesiologist charged with sexually assaulting 20 women while they were unconscious in the North York General Hospital. “She lost a womb but gained a penis. The former was being removed surgically — full hysterectomy — while the latter was forcibly shoved into her slack mouth.” Columnist, Rosie DiManno; have some respect for a survivor of sexual assault.
Yes. really. Moisturizing jeans. Wrangler has invented moisturizing jeans. The American denim brand will launch a line of, yes, moisturizing jeans with the choice of three imbedded lotions this Monday on asos.com. The lotion-laden pants will last for up to 95 wears. Skip the spa, because it’s already in your pants. Oh, just to make it stranger, they’ve hired rock star daughter Lizzie Jagger as their spokesperson.
Creator and star of the HBO series Girls Lena Dunham was tipped off that shock-jock Howard Stern called her “a little fat chick who sort of looks like Jonah Hill” by Girls co-star Jemima Kirke. So Dunham called Stern’s radio show, admitted to being a big fan of him and the show and threw Detroit under the bus. “I’m not that fat,” she said. “I don’t mean to take major issue with you about this. I’m not super-thin, but I’m thin for, like, Detroit.” What happened to saying nice things about Detroit?