Masks

This afternoon Renee and I and a couple of students walked through the excellent David Wojnarowicz: Photography & Film: 1978-1992 at the Belkin. After two years of 1970s-set exhibitions, I cannot think of a better artist to kick in (kick out?) the 1980s than David Wojnarowicz.

The billboard outside the gallery is from Wojnarowicz's Arthur Rimbaud in New York (1978-1979) series, where the artist encouraged friends to pose throughout the city wearing a mask made from the 1946 New Directions Press cover portrait of Rimbaud's Illuminations. Later, while reflecting on this series, I recalled another mask project, this one by Kevin Killian (camera, friends) and Raymond Pettibon (mask).

For Kevin (and Raymond's) Tagged series (2013-2019), mostly male friends were given a cut-out section from a discarded Pettibon drawing and asked to place it over their corresponding regions. Below is a portrait of the writer Jason R. Jimenez:

Hexsa'a̠m: To Be Here Always

Attended the opening of Hexsa'a̠m: To Be Here Always at the Belkin last night and of course I felt the power. Wish more of it was on the walls and floor and not landlocked from the Dzawada’enuxw speeches (including one by Elected Chief Willie Moon) and the friendly presence of those who came down from Kingcome Inlet to help celebrate that which was recently active in their community as a relational research-creation nexus.

Interim-Director Lorna Brown curated Hexsa'a̠m: To Be Here Always, and thanked Dzawada’enuxw artist Marianne Nicolson and UBC artist Althea Thauberger for their extraordinary work in helping to put it together. Both Marianne and Althea contributed material works to the exhibition: the former a large patterned wall hanging, the latter a poster-sized 2018 black-and-white digital inkjet print of school kids sitting with their teacher(?) on the front steps of a small wooden school house.

Although I intend to return to the exhibition, I admit to sad feelings about not having experienced much that has me looking forward to this trip. The retro-revisionist missionaryism of Althea putting smiles on sites of past trauma (schools) is problematic, but I have pictures (below) of the Inkameep Day School to balance that. (Incidentally, an exhibition of late-1930s/early-1940s drawing and paintings from the students of the Inkameep Day School will be mounted next month at the Kelowna Art Gallery and the Okanagan Heritage Museum.)

If there was one work that got me out of myself (besides Inuk/Haitian Taino artist Siku Allooloo's sealskin on canvas Akia, 2018, atop this post) it was Métis-Cree artist Kamala Todd's video Known and Unknown Trails, from Digging Up the Last Spike (2018). Here, the landscape is not captured directly onto the camera's memory card but via its (upside-down) reflection on the waters "running" alongside an ocean-going motor boat. 

Letters: Michael Morris and Concrete Poetry (2015)

On Monday I visited the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, where Technical and Design Services Manager Owen Sopotiuk previewed for a group of us the twenty short films in Maria Eichhorn’s Film Lexicon of Sexual Practices (1999/2005/2008/2014/2015).

Eichhorn is strict that visitors see her films in film form only. Her piece involves viewers selecting a film (from a list of titles that include Japanese Bondage, 2015) then asking that it be projected for them.

While waiting for Owen to set up the projector, I saw the first copies of the Letters: Michael Morris and Concrete Poetry catalogue that I contributed to, and whose exhibition I co-curated (with Scott Watson) at the Belkin in 2012.

Most of the essays in the Letters book focus on Michael and his work, both as an artist and as a curator. For my part I tried to provide a context for what was going on in Vancouver prior to Michael’s arrival, and concluded with where some of today's poets are shopping.

Tom Burrows

Also opening on January 8, 2015 is Tom Burrows at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery. A shuttle bus will be available for those who would like attend both openings.