The value of artistic experimentation
Pre-budget furor surrounds Mexican artist Israel Mora
Masturbation! Semen! Did that get your attention?
Those words appeared in the headlines of several major Canadian newspapers over the past couple of weeks. Word of Mexican artist Israel Mora’s performance and installation at The Banff Centre for the Arts spread through the media like a dirty limerick on an elementary school playground. Disappointingly, it is the only visual arts story which has received extensive national coverage lately.
Entitled Level 7, Mora worked on the project during a residency at the centre, and its final form was a small refrigerator sealed in a wooden box, hanging between two trees behind one of the Centre’s buildings. The box was clearly labeled: "Warning: Contents: 6.0 ml of semen extracted through masturbation distributed among seven glass tubes."
Mora also traveled along Banff Avenue wheeling the box on a small cart. The exhibition lasted for just seven days, and was not advertised publicly.
"It’s an affront to any decent citizen... The act is an act of obscenity," said Canadian Alliance heritage critic Jim Abbott about the project.
Abbott is quite certain that his personal definitions of obscenity and decency apply to the rest of us. Mora, on the other hand, spent his seven-week residency at the centre exploring the logic of those terms within contemporary society. Why is masturbation acceptable in terms of sperm donation and artificial insemination, but unacceptable as a subject of artistic inquiry? Working on the fuzzy boundary between public and private, Mora’s piece dealt with some timely issues.
The most important job of an artist is to pose questions, and Mora has certainly done that. In a statement, the artist said that the seven vials represent seven members of his family. Can the human complexity of family relationships be reduced to the biological source material in a few vials? DNA testing, genetic research and the possibility of human cloning make this a question based in reality, one that has been hotly debated as of late.
I did not see Level 7, so I cannot pass judgment on the success of Mora’s work. From the information available, the project seems to have been an honest and serious attempt to navigate complicated issues.
But the success or failure of his piece is not the most important issue here. The Banff Centre is a cultural laboratory that provides the tools and atmosphere for artists all over the world to experiment freely, developing their work. It’s an extremely valuable resource.
Israel Mora was a part of a Canada-Mexico artist exchange program. Abbott (MP for Kootenay-Columbia) also questioned the fact that taxpayers paid for a small percentage of his seven-week residency, estimated to be about $285. Abbott’s phrase "masturbating Mexican" was coined in many different sources. (Most of the $4,000 cost was covered by the Mexican government and funds generated by the Banff Centre. An anonymous donor has since come forward with $1,300, the entire share of the Centre’s costs.)
Calgary-based artist Robin Arseneault took part in the same residency as Mora. She found the opportunity to work with international artists one of the most valuable parts of her experience.
"It makes you think of your work in a broader context," she says.
Dialogue between artists was facilitated by studio visits, reading groups, and discussions. She describes the residency as a concentrated experience during which artists are immersed in their work 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The time and facilities available allowed Arseneault to work through problems that might have taken a year to resolve elsewhere.
"I was overwhelmed by all the opportunities, I was able to do things I couldn’t have otherwise. I’m aware of how amazing (the Centre) is for the province and the country."
Freedom of expression is a fundamental element of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms for a reason; art serves as an emotional and intellectual system of checks and balances. Observing the world they experience everyday, artists try to look beyond what is accepted, to wonder why and how certain things came to be "acceptable," and this allows for the possibility of change.
No subject should be off limits in this process, which must be preserved and fostered if artists to flourish. Sometimes art makes people uncomfortable, but that is part of its function. Voices unafraid to question anything keep us honest. |
