Past
Exhibitions
Rightfully
Yours,
November
16 - December 30, 2007
Opening Reception: Thursday November 15, 5-7 pm
Curated
by Tejpal Singh Ajji, Curator-in-Residence
Wendy
Coburn, Steven Cohen, Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan, Alicia Framis,
Alison S.M. Kobayashi, Mingering Mike, Mattias Olofsson, The Yes Men,
Camille Turner, Sislej Xhafa, Your personal viewing of Borat, Ali G,
and Bruno.
 |
| Left:
Steven Cohen, Chandelier, 2001, photograph, courtesy of John Hogg.
Right: Sislej Xhafa, Padiglione Clandestino, 1997, Unauthorized
performance during the Venice Biennial 1997, © sislej xhafa.
|
Rightfully
Yours,
considers performative insertions into daily activities implicated in
the politics and ethics of institutions, professions, sexuality, and
nationalism. The artists included in the exhibition avoid the theatrical
stage, choosing instead the public realm— a site regulated by
laws, cooperation with official structures, and the suspicions of other
civilians. ‘Common knowledge’ about their chosen location
is subverted through public performance, adopting the legitimizing power
of graphic design, and enhancing the social function of everyday objects.
Sneaking into the Venice Biennial dressed as a soccer player and challenging
visitors to games of skill; overlooking the Canadian hinterland as rangers
examining the sexual regimentation of scientific knowledge; questioning
the right to represent nationality through the figure of the beauty
queen, these artists dissemble known positions and open them up for
reevaluation.
Rightfully
Yours, examines the practices, approaches and presentation models
employed by artists who use the transformative qualities of a ‘strategic
self’. The strategic self is a specific attitude and working model
taken from a lived situation and history. This becomes the artist’s
subject and can involve the assumption of the appearance of professionalism
through the adoption of its tropes and infiltration of organisational
structures. These performative actions present an image critical in
understanding the politics, attitudes and divisions of specific locations.
Exhibition
Projects & Images:
Wendy
Coburn, Ideas Take Time, Chromira print and frame, 26”x
21", courtesy of the artist, 2002
Wendy
Coburn (Toronto, ON) critiques academia through a photographic
series that appropriates the administrative positions and insignia of
the Ontario College of Art and Design. Ideas Takes Time and
Space Costs Money both made as works to support the capital
campaign, play with the institutions capital campaign slogan Ideas
Need Space. In Space Costs Money Coburn addresses the
art school as a site where creative output is increasingly governed
by professionalisation. Taking on the persona of President Ahab Coburn,
the artist questions corporate branding strategies and the rift between
the ideals that institutions strive towards versus the limitations of
their means. In Ideas Take Time Coburn infiltrates the institution
as yet another white patriarchal authority figure, the fictional art
historian Dr. Westford Coburn, replete with a terminal degree and the
upper-crust name.
Steven
Cohen, Chandelier, performance, photograph courtesy of John
Hogg / video courtesy of Vtape, 2001
In
his provocative performance Chandelier, Steven Cohen
(Johannesburg, South Africa) contrasts his position as a queer, Jewish,
white South African in relation to residents of a Newtown, Johannesburg
squatter camp being dismantled by government workers (identifiable by
their red coveralls). Dressed in a corset with attached chandelier and
wearing high heels, his dress and manner evoke the affluence, privilege,
and choice available to a select group of South Africans. The soon-to-be-evicted
residents respond to Cohen’s presence: some offer sexual gestures,
one man aggressively waves a pipe and charges toward Cohen, while one
woman takes his hand and kisses it, calling him “an angel”.
The performance presents one instance of the on-going divisions and
inequalities which still exist in post-Apartheid South Africa.
Shawna
Dempsey and Lorri Millan, The Lesbian National Parks and Services, performance
with installation, print and video components, courtesy of the artists
/ video courtesy of Videopool, 1997 – ongoing
Shawna
Dempsey and Lorri Millan (Winnipeg, MB) collaborate
as the Lesbian National Parks and Services using the tropes
of North American nature conservationists to examine sexuality and diversity
in human, animal, and plant systems. In the video documentary The
Lesbian National Parks and Services: A Force of Nature, the artists
appear as park rangers, officers responsible for the preservation and
protection of lesbian habitats. They conduct field studies in sites
such as lesbian bars, grasslands, and lakes, to “probe every lesbian
species”. Ranger Lorri Millan states they, “question the
heterosexual model” and consider “what it means to do your
own research” to address the ways in which the guardianship of
culture and nature has been programmed into sexual divisions.
A handbook and field guide accompany the documentary which illustrate
flora and fauna found in North America, and suggest handy tips for surviving
in the bush.
Alicia
Framis, Anti_Dog Copyrighting Unwanted Sentences Birmingham, Twaron
dress, production: Ikon Gallery, photography by Adrian Burrow, courtesy
of Studio Framis / video courtesy of Galeria Helga de Alvear, 2003
Upon
moving to Berlin, Alicia Framis (Madrid, Spain) was
dissuaded from living in the Marzahn district at that time known to
have high concentrations of hostile skinheads. Taking this danger as
a challenge, Framis designed a fashion line, ANTI_DOG, made
from dog bite-, bullet- and fire-proof fabric that would enable vulnerable
women to live in such violent areas. By creating the dresses –
made in a range of designs, from a formal gown to a Muslim hijab –
the artist positions herself as a public administrator able to address
social divisions between immigrants and neo-nationalists. The material
used to make the dresses, Twaron, is five times stronger than steel.
Public performance-demonstrations were held in five cities which had
high incidences of violence against women: Paris, France; Amsterdam,
Holland; Madrid, Spain; Helsingborg, Germany; Barcelona, Spain; and
Birmingham, England. The dress on exhibit here was initially presented
in a performance with several other pieces held in Birmingham, England.
Women with a history of abuse were asked to provide sentences which
they never wanted to hear again, such as: “You are only good for
a fuck.”©; “Can’t you speak English?”©,
and “Foreigners are taking our money.”©. The sentences
were copyrighted by the artist as a statement to eradicate their use
in public space. Presented for twenty minutes in Birmingham’s
Victoria Square, dresses such as this were worn by the women who had
contributed the sentences.
Dr.
Alison S.M. Kobayashi (Excuse Note Specialist), A.S.M.K. Assessments,
performance with print material, courtesy of the artist, 2007
During
scheduled visits with Dr. Alison S.M. Kobayashi (Mississauga,
ON), one can obtain an official excuse note exempting one from responsibilities.
Type of excuse, use, and purpose of the note can be negotiated with
the doctor. The ‘official’ note is an example of the fluidity
by which proof of professionalism can travel.
Dr. Kobayashi is holding office hours every Tuesday during the exhibition
and on the closing day in the Chess Room on the second floor of the
Hart House between 12 noon – 3pm.
Mingering
Mike’s Soul Superstars, Ghetto Prince / Live From the Howard Theater
/ Sickle Cell Anemia, drawn record covers: paper, pen, ink, pencil,
approx. ea. 13” x 13”, courtesy of Dori Hadar and HEMPHILL
Fine Art, 1967 – 1977
From
1967 to 1977, Mingering Mike (Washington, DC) created
an extensive series of handmade LP records and album covers, carefully
crafted from coloured paper, glue, pencil and ink. Inventing names for
fictional record companies, Mingering Mike ‘issued’ albums
from these labels, illustrating each cover with scenes drawn from the
world that surrounded him. Mingering Mike drew images of musical acts
performing at the influential Howard Theatre, represented scenarios
related to his album contents, and drew allusions to difficult urban
influences such as guns and drugs, and pervasive national issues such
as the war in Vietnam. Creating multiple musical personas for himself,
his friends and family members, these albums were fully conceived endeavours
for which Mingering Mike even recorded songs. Some of these original
reel-to-reel recordings have now been pressed on vinyl, and can be heard
as part of Rightfully Yours,.
Mattias
Olofsson, Big-Stina Learns Rinkeby-Swedish, DVD, 11.31 min, courtesy
of the artist, 2004
The
work of Mattias Olofsson (Umea, Sweden) presents a
moral limit to the concept of liberty, traversed by the artist’s
experience of Swedish national policy as discriminatory against both
queer and aboriginal people. As an outsider taking the liberty to represent
aboriginal Swedish Sami culture, Olofsson questions whether it is better
to have such positions enter contemporary art discourse through an interpretive
assumption of identity, rather than not being represented at all. His
work investigates Sweden’s national history and natural history
museums, Sami native culture, and contemporary Swedish culture through
the character of Stor-Stina (Big Stina): Christina Catarina Larsdoter
was a Sami woman known in nineteenth century popular Swedish culture
as ‘Stor-Stina’, referring to her incredible height. Assuming
this character, Olofsson travels within Sweden and other countries as
a representative of Sami people exhibiting a naive interest in learning
about contemporary cultures.
In
the video Big-Stina Learns Rinkeby-Swedish, Stor-Stina speaks
with linguists and receives lessons in Rinkeby-Swedish: this dialect
evolved in the Stockholm suburb of Rinkeby as a slang developed by immigrants
to the country adding words to Swedish. Knife is a small, hand-carved
work modeled on the objects made by Sami craftspeople for sale to tourists.
Culture Constructing Nature is a series of photographs featuring
Olofsson as Stor-Stina, posed in Swedish natural history museum dioramas.
The
Yes Men, Dow Chemical to Clean Up Bhopal, 3-channel video, 5 min loop,
courtesy of the artists, 2005
The
Yes Men (International Corporation) are notorious for infiltrating
professional seminars and media broadcasts. On December 3, 1984, a cloud
of toxic gas seeped from the poorly maintained Union Carbide plant in
Bhopal, India, killing 5000 people. It is estimated that approximately
15,000 people have died in the last twenty years from residual toxicity
that was not removed when the plant closed shortly after the accident.
In 2001, Dow Chemicals acquired Union Carbide. Dow Chemicals has only
settled outstanding obligations and liabilities acquired from Union
Carbide for matters in the United States, and are adamant about not
accepting any responsibility for the Bhopal gas leak accident. On November
29, 2004, DowEthics.com—created by The Yes Men to appear as a
legitimate Dow Chemicals website—received an email from BBC World
Television requesting that the company to talk publicly about their
role in the accident. Posing on BBC World Television as Dow Chemicals
Representative Mr. Jude Finisterra, Andy Bichlbaum of The Yes Men publicly
admitted Dow Chemical’s full responsibility in the Bhopal accident,
and unveiled plans to compensate survivors and clean the Bhopal site.
Andy Bichlbaum’s pseudonym plays on the names Jude, patron saint
of the impossible, and Finisterra, earth’s end.
Camille
Turner, Miss Canadiana in Dakar, Senegal, performance, courtesy of the
artist, 2005
Making
appearances in Canada and abroad wearing a red gown, white gloves, tiara,
and a sash proclaiming Miss Canadiana, Camille Turner
(Toronto, ON) addresses the ways in which Canada represents visual minorities
in the public imagination. Turner examines one particular meaning of
the idea of Canada, which she makes explicit through her skin colour
and hair rather than through verbal acknowledgement.
Miss Canadiana was honoured with a tea ceremony at the Hart House and
inaugurated the second Hart House Dignitary Guest Book.
Sislej
Xhafa, Padiglione Clandestino, Unauthorized performance during the Venice
Biennial 1997, © Sislej Xhafa, 1997
Dressed
as an Albanian soccer player, Sislej Xhafa (New York,
NY) challenged visitors at the Venice Biennial of 1997 to games of skill.
The soccer player—an archetype of athletic trans-nationalism—roved
the exhibition grounds representing the exclusion of foreign nationals
from both the Biennial and western European political structures. Moving
throughout the Biennial grounds as a mobile pavilion, his action reflected
the daily transient realities of many refugees and illegal immigrants.
In 2005, Xhafa, a Kosovar-Albanian, officially represented Albania at
the Venice Biennial. His contribution, Ceremonial Crying System
PV, an impermanent monument shaped with a round base and conic
apex built with scaffolding and draped with a white cloth, suggests
the iconic hood of a Ku-Klux-Klansman which in form is shared by the
Esperanza de Triana confraternity in Seville, Spain. Water sprays out
from two slits positioned to approximate eyes anthropomorphizing the
work making it appear to cry. Situated in a grassy area of the Biennial
grounds not occupied by another country and facing the water that surrounds
Venice, Xhafa’s work cries, again and again.
Event
Calendar
Tea with Miss Canadiana
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
East Common Room, Hart House
3:00pm – 4:30pm
Please
join the JMB Gallery, Hart House in a tea ceremony held in honour of
Miss Canadiana. The reception will mark Miss Canadiana’s first
official visit to the Hart House. She will join the ranks of many dignitaries
who have visited the historic Toronto building.
A.S.M.K.
Assessments, with Alison S. M. Kobayashi are scheduled every
Tuesday 12 pm – 3pm from opening – close of exhibition.
Sislej
Xhafa Artist Talk
‘Shine and Elegance of Clandestine Strength’
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Debates Room, Hart House
7pm
Sislej
Xhafa Undergraduate Student Workshop*
Friday, November 2, 2007
8am – 1pm
*Sislej Xhafa will be conducting studio visits and
seminars with local art and architecture students culminating in a group
workshop, Monday, October 29 – Friday, November 2, 2007. In conjunction
with his participation in Rightfully Yours,
Acknowledgements
Canada Council for the Arts, Centre for the Study of the United States,
University of Toronto, Art and Art History Programme, University of
Toronto at Mississauga and the Sheridan Institute of Technology and
Advanced Learning, Toronto School of Art, Hart House Art Committee,
Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto Art Centre, Lord Lansdowne
Public School
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