| If artists give a visual expression to issues that concern us, disturb us, arouse us, excite us, challenge us, awe us, what could be a more deliciously provocative topic than sex?
Contemporary art practices offer many elaborate, meaningful and controversial conversations about sex and sexuality, but pillow talk it ain't. A swell of recent debate has been sparked by visual art exhibitions presented in Alberta, the latest issue of Saskatoon-based BlackFlash Magazine, dedicated to themes of love, sexuality, nudity and taboo in photo-based and electronic art practices, and a revised Child Pornography Act that was passed in 2005 after the "artistic merit" clause was removed.
Last January, two +15 window installations programmed by the Mutton Busting Festival in conjunction with TRUCK and Stride Gallery provoked enough public discussion to warrant a community forum around controversy and censorship in contemporary art. While many viewers who initially registered a reaction focused on the suitability of the images for public spaces, there was very limited airtime given to the content of the works and how the artists were using images to raise issues of sexual expression, safety and victimization.
Most recently, curator and critic Diana Sherlock wrote an article for FUSE Magazine that looks at the +15 Window projects forum as a case study of the power dynamics between artists, arts organizations, institutions and the public. She cites the economic conditions surrounding the presentation of art at the +15 windows projects in the Epcor Centre as having a pronounced impact on the ways in which it is viewed, deemed appropriate and commodified, or mediated and censored.
The attention was focused on works by Edie Fake, a New York artist who's zines, silkscreens and drawings often feature human-animal hybrid figures with body parts that are an elaborate cut and paste reference to constructing genderqueer identities. Fake's craft-paper and silkscreen installation were graced by an appearance from Gaylord Phoenix, complete with bird-wings and macaroni-tube genitals, in the throes of psychedelic gay park sex.
Megan Hepburn's realist paintings of animals in domestic environments also sparked discussion. While the three paintings in Terminal Modern weren't immediately sexual, her dark images of hurt and abused dogs and foxes emphasize the vulnerability of their bodies and the scenes of houses, domestic settings and urban spaces reference violence in domestic spaces.
While arguments raged on through the run of the +15 Window exhibitions, several cultural workers cited Alberta's history of controversy and censorship of visual and media arts exhibitions throughout the ’90s as laying the foundation for increased scrutiny of queer art practices and those that focused on themes of sexual expression. In her essay for the 8th annual Fairy Tales International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, local filmmaker and former member of Lock Up Your Daughters collective, Sandi Somers, reflected on the process of working within Alberta's charged political climate and of self-censorship and the effects that limited dialogue has on an artist's work.
Art writers, critics and publishers have played an important role in continuing discussion and creative investigation of sexual imagery in art and bringing the dialogue into broader contexts. The 1992 exhibition that was the subject of intense controversy, Much Sense: Erotics and Life, presented by the Walter Phillips Gallery at the Banff Centre became the basis for a comprehensive book of essays entitled Arousing Sensation: A Case Study of Controversy Surrounding Art and the Erotic. While the book focused attention on criticisms and reactions to controversial art from around the country, there hasn't been another major exhibition in an Alberta museum or gallery that has since tackled queer politics of the body and sexuality since.
The buzz around sexually charged art has continued in the current issue of BlackFlash, a photo and new media magazine published for over 20 years. It has become the centre of a censorship debate of its own. In The Last Taboo: Childhood Sexuality and Censorship, scholars Kyla and James Legard present a well-researched examination of the complexities of censorship and artistic expression that are often polarized by opposing views of the role of sexual expression within our culture. It faces the issues straight-on, by examining disputed images in the context of art history, contemporary practices and Canadian legislation on child pornography. It was originally planned to run with nine images to illustrate the essay.
After being declined by five printers who were unwilling to produce the magazine, the editorial board made a decision to run blank panels with captions and Internet links where the images could be accessed. Pulling up the image-links is an interesting exercise that highlights the changed contexts in which we interpret images. Instead of the downright shocking, we see nuanced images whose significance is more clearly understood in context.
The editorial and creative integrity of the magazine comes into play when discussing censorship of art. Managing editor Lissa Robinson describes yanking the images as "an act of self censorship." Ultimately, the glaring blank spaces and revised editorial comment add another critical angle. Robinson notes that, "In the end, the editorial board made a decision that we were willing to stand behind." The problems that BlackFlash encountered are a learning experience for the cultural community, especially with regard to how the new child pornography laws might be used in the future. The difficulty in printing the magazine's sex issue highlights the way that publishers and exhibition spaces are engaged with their communities and the economies that support them. In BlackFlash's case, the relationships between magazine and artist, writer, printer, distributor, postal service, magazine shop and the legal system are all being called into question. Each impose their own constraints and expectations on the content of the magazine.
One condition of the high-alert attention paid to the politics surrounding BlackFlash's sex issue is the drastically changed context in which the artist's works, texts and projects are read. The magazine features uncensored images and projects by several contemporary Canadian artists who have been situated at the centre of politically charged dialogues, censorship and scandal for past works, among them photographer Evergon, video artist Thirza Cuthand and multidisciplinary collaborators Dorothy Seaton and Susan Stewart.
Indeed, charged debates around controversy in art may have an overshadowing effect that obliterates the artist's original intent. They're also a testament to the power that artists hold to act as channels for hot topics. As these boundaries of artistic merit, freedom of expression, sexuality, obscenity, censorship and public space are drawn and redrawn, the implications for artists, cultural workers and audiences that wish to engage in this discussion will continue to have far reaching effects. |
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