Some people might find several of the pieces at the exhibit controversial, but the point is to create dialogue.
DETAILS
Think of the word “war,” and what do you see? Guns, uniforms, perhaps a triumphant flag?
You’ll find far more than that — bigger answers, subtler answers — in Diabolique, a contemporary art exhibit curated by Amanda Cachia. Featuring work from 22 artists from across the world, the exhibit comprises a spate of different media including paintings, sculptures and video, that together provide a thoughtful and nuanced portrait of war.
This isn’t just about war in the Canada-in-Afghanistan sense (although the works of Scott Waters, participant in the Canadian Forces Artist Program, was added particularly for the Calgary run). For example, in the hall leading to the main gallery one passes under dozens of portraits hanging from the ceiling. The piece, called *stan by Bogdan Achimescu, represents the faces of refugees displaced by war.
The show is impressively diverse. There’s artistic depictions of women’s roles in war, including Jason’s Thiry’s conflation of pornography and recruitment posters, and gang-level gun violence, such as in Dana Claxton’s video Gunplay and the large-scale sculpture of melted green army toys by Douglas Coupland.
If you choose war as your theme, sure, it might not be pretty. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be beautiful. A particularly mesmerizing piece is the work of South African artist, William Kendridge, called What Will Come (based on a Ghanaian proverb: What will come has already come). It looks like a mirrored cylinder set in a round, flat table, and is called an anamorphic projection: an animation project down onto the piece, which looks like nonsensical smudges on the table coalesces in the mirror into constantly morphing airplanes, trees and landscapes.
This loop of a few minutes is short compared to the many films within this exhibit. Note: When you go, be sure to book enough time: there are many places to stop, sit and ponder. Allow 20 minutes for Shirin Neshat’s poetic Munis, or grab headphones for any one of the five parts of Emanuel Licha’s War Tourist, from which he visited five former war zones with a video camera and a local guide. On a lighter note, animations from political cartoonist Dan Perjovschi cast an ironic, if no less cutting, eye on war.
Cachia says that the exhibit explores “the diversity of forms of violence” and raises questions about “the roles we may or may not play in war.”
“We see these images on TV and are often passive recipients,” she adds.
However, some of the artwork hits very close to home, the most controversial being David Garneau’s Evidence: A ghostly blue portrait of Neil Stonechild, the 17-year-old Cree boy who froze to death in Saskatchewan in 1990, allegedly abandoned in freezing temperatures by Saskatoon police.
Diabolique might not be the easiest art exhibit to digest— but it is artistic and thought-provoking and never gratuitously graphic.
“People might say it’s negative or depressing,” says Cachia, “but as a curator of contemporary art it is my responsibility to show what real artists care about. Despite the serious and disturbing material, these pieces are beautiful and the imagery is very moving.”
Post the first comment: (Login or Register)