The aesthetic figure as disfigured representation

Community of Images: Strategies of Appropriation in Canadian Art, 1977-1990. Ed. Gurney, Haladyn, 2022

Community of Images: Strategies of Appropriation in Canadian Art, 1977-1990 takes on the different histories in the work of Canadian artists within a practice that is now identified as appropriation art. This project brings together the scholarhsip of numerous writers, artists and curators who speak about the issues and ideas that framed much of the work and discussions happening in Canada in the period from late 1970s up to the early 1990s, pointing out many striking differences between the American practice of appropriation and appropriation as practiced in Canadian art, especially in Toronto. This history has never been traced in a book or represented by a comprehensive exhibition. With this edited volume Julian Jason Haladyn and I correct this oversight by writing a history replete with images, interviews with the artists and essays that define a specific practice of appropriation that developed in Canada during this period – what Haladyn will call Canadian Appropriation art.

RACAR : Revue d'art canadienne, 2018

, article published in Hyperallergic by Elisha Lim, a Toronto-based graphic novelist and illustrator, and anti-racism activist who promotes queer and trans people of colour, comes across as another one of those "Dear white people" shots across the bow. The article is titled "How BIPOC Artists Fight Canada's Biased Art Scene," with the sub-header, "Since 1949 a combination of colonial government, the rich, and viral trends have decided how Canadian art is made. The results are unspectacular."1 The article compels me revisit two of my previous articles to consider what if anything has changed in the last decade in terms of how Canadian identitarians approach culture and politics: "The Colonial Copy: Ends of Canadian Art History" and "Art World as Zombie Culture: Excellence, Exodus and Ideology." I add to this some suggestions on how it is that the art world's failure to challenge the capitalist orientation of neoliberal institutions has contributed to the elevation of some of the more reactionary tendencies in postmodern culture. Dear BIPOC and LGBTQIA2+ People The very short article by Elisha Lim in Hyperallergic, the main news source for all things woke in the contemporary art world, is more self-promoting than anything else. It begins with the assertion: "Canadian art has a reputation for being White bland, and that might be because it's controlled by government grants and the tastes of wealthy white patrons."2 That is a shame, they go on to say, since Canada is a diverse country, as evidenced by the author's reference to the festival they and their Qouleur collective started for bi-spiritual-2-spirited-queer-trans-POC but had to abandon due to lack of funds. The article deplores the lack of government arts funding targeted specifically for Indigenous, diverse, deaf, disabled and minority language citizens. The Canada Council for the Arts is then defined in relation to its origins with the 1949 Massey Commission as an effort, simply put, to distinguish Canadian culture from British and American imperialism, and to discourage socialism. Citing the racial equity specialist, Andrea Fatona, Lim suggests that the Council intentionally privileged white artists at the expense of racialized and Indigenous art, favouring European forms, like Shakespearean theatre. Lim's anti-racist sensibility is captured by artwork that was presented in Hyperallergic at the same time as their article: an unannounced Illuminator-style light projection by Bay Area artist Christy Chan onto an office building, which reads: "White supremacy is the Original Cancel Culture."3 Such works are presumed to correct mistakes made in the past. More pragmatically minded, Lim recommends three strategies for change: 1) recognition of the fact that Indigenous artists do not seek equity but sovereignty, 2) financial redress from the Association of National Non-Profit Artists Centres for its history of classism and racism, which led to the collapse of ANNPAC after artist-run centres and associations withdrew and joined the Artist-Run Network instead, 3) rejection of a pending shift from a biased grant system to one that is based on market demand and promotion instead of a basic income for artists, as suggested by MP Leah Gazan. In conclusion, Lim suggests a path away from colonial arts administration by the wealthy and trendy, which has led, they assert without further argument, to unspectacular art. One would presume that in order to be exciting, art has to be made by people who are Indigenous, black, queer, trans, etc.

Acadiensis, 2000

And above all I do not know what this thing is, that is neither essential nor accessory, neither proper nor improper, and that Kant calls parergon, for example the frame". 1 In order to unravel Kant's search for the "proper object of the pure judgment of taste", Jacques Derrida exposes a point of uncertainty in the philosopher's Critique of the Faculty of Judgment (1790). When Kant uses the term parergon, or "by-work", he refers to those adjuncts (such as the frames around paintings, colonnades of buildings or drapery on statues) that separate what properly belongs to a work from what remains outside of it. Derrida shows, however, that these putative margins function as more than ornamental additions. On the contrary, because they differentiate between the intrinsic and extrinsic aspects of a work, these borders not only produce a bounded object of study (namely the work of art), but they are also fundamental to making visible the very concept of "art" and thus every discussion of "art". Derrida capitalizes upon the intermediary status of the parergon to break down the binary distinctions between inside and outside, intrinsic and extrinsic, essence and ornament. By destabilizing the classificatory order devised by Kant, Derrida shakes the very foundations of the Western aesthetic tradition. At the same time, when he demonstrates that frames are indispensable in order for the "main subject" of art discourse to appear, Derrida turns our attention toward the constitution, and possible reconstitution, of those margins. This unsettling conceptual apparatus has been hugely influential-not just in art history, but especially there. Art historians have been concerned for quite some time (as the "new" art history is hardly "new" anymore), not so much with the physical frames that tell us where works of art supposedly begin and end, but rather with the less tangible institutional frames, such as art-historical narratives, the canon of "great" art works and the policies of museums and art galleries. These structures do not simply enhance art works; they both produce and reinforce the very categories of art and non-art. Museums are currently garnering increased attention from historians of visual culture because these spaces construct, rather than merely preserve, the shifting distinctions between "high" and "low" art, "elite" and "popular" culture, educated and uneducated viewer, citizen and foreigner, self and other. 2 The classification, ordering

American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 2016

Third Text, 2002

2015

Building on such established anthropological approaches to art as those of Alfred Gell or Pierre Bourdieu, this workshop seeks to map out contemporary anthropological approaches to art. Furthermore, by asking what distinct views on artistic practices are offered by such new theoretical perspectives as ethnographic conceptualism (Ssorin-Chaikov 2013) or relational aesthetics (Sansi 2014), we hope to propose new pathways of anthropological inquiry. A key proposition behind this workshop is the idea that contemporary art theory and practice are increasingly in dialogue with theories of sociality – how we relate to other people to create meaning – and therefore connected to core anthropological interests. The objective of this workshop is therefore not just to apply existing anthropological theory to potentially new ethnographic situations characterized by the production of art, but to develop anthropological theory through an engagement with the conceptual approaches that underpin the contemporary production of art today. The premise we wish to interrogate with this workshop is thus that there is something distinct about contemporary artistic practices. If this is so, what would a contemporary anthropology of art – or rather – contemporary anthropologies of art look like? As the inaugural research event of the Anthropologies of Art [A/A] network, we wish to propose this digital platform as a space to map, link, and interrogate answers to these two questions. Some possible lines of thought addressed by papers may be: • How can we productively theorize the porous boundaries between artistic practice and every life activities? • Has the body been overlooked as a site of artistic production? For example, can we consider the performance of gender as an aesthetics of becoming? • What contribution can anthropology make to understandings of models of postfordist creative labour? • What are the (dis)connections between artivism, protest, and public art? • Can we consider the relationship between aesthetics and politics without a consideration of the state? • How can we provide a better analysis of the porous boundaries of the art world and the market? • What are the potentials of contemporary art for anthropological research? For example, how does the mode of artistic installation challenge and provoke alternative strategies of research?

RACAR : Revue d'art canadienne, 2019

PRAXIS, Ethics and Deep Aesthetics Keywords: Ecological Art, Ethics, Community, Deep Aesthetics, Cultural and Environmental Change It is no secret that we, our environing world, and all species who share it with us are living through what artist and critic Suzi Gablik back in 1991 called a time of global eco-crisis. In response to this crisis, we see a varied and ever-expanding body of ecologically engaged artworks and art practices. But do these help? Can they make a difference to how we make choices and act in the world? Can artworks and art practices engage us in such a way as to help transform the nature-culture, or human-world relationship for the better, and if so, how might they do this? Any significant changes for the better must be tied to a kind of ethical framework that informs cultural beliefs and actions in the human-world relationship. Drawing from a constellation of influences in philosophy, anthropology and the arts, this paper examines some examples of contemporary Eco-art – or Ecological Art – practice as sites of ethical engagement with our environing world. These works and projects are complex, engaging people in multiple ways – some ways direct and overt, and others subtle. Important as many of the overt methodologies of engagement are, it is the more subtle ways that these works engage us that are of particular interest here. In taking a close look at examples of some Canadian Eco-art projects, I track and untangle some of the ways these engage with individuals, communities, and the land. Because of a persistent colonial history, Canada is a nexus where important questions and issues of self and world, of place and belonging, of colonialism, resourcism, empire, industry – and in particular, a clash of differing worldviews – are visible and foregrounded. This is rich ground for artists and art practices that engage ethics with a goal of bettering the human-world relationship. I assert that such practices do have a vital role to play in changing this relationship. While obvious activist, didactic, technological or science-based aspects of practices may, because of their perceived pragmatism and utility, initially appear to be the most effective elements of these, I believe it is the more subtle and often backgrounded aspects that effectively promote more ecologically sensitive behaviours by engaging our entire bodied and cultured selves in a complex ethical, emotional conversation that foregrounds the world as a relational matrix within which we dwell.