Not all art paints a pretty picture. But what it can do, instead, is offer an impactful prospective on a subject that needs to be asserted.
Off the Beaten Path, the current exhibit at the Art Gallery of Calgary (AGC), aims to motivate its viewer toward social change with a powerful collection of artworks created by 32 international artists.
"When we encounter violence against women, we often experience a sort of blindness," describes the show’s curator, Randy Jayne Rosenberg. "We choose not to see the devastation of domestic violence, calling it a family affair. Honour-killings of women in faraway regions of the world become nothing more than a cultural difference."
The show intends to bring these themes close to home. In fact, written on the gallery’s wall are these chilling words, taken from the Calgary Emergency Women’s Shelter: every 6 days a woman in Canada is killed by her intimate partner.
These are not issues that exist somewhere else or belong to someone else. These are our themes on display for us to submerge ourselves in, think about, and emerge with a positive discourse for change.
"The beauty of this project is that it combines the highest integrity of art with important messaging and storytelling," Rosenberg says.
And through this non-tabloid, non-media approach the show intends to use the language of art to represent a real senseless suffering, and to create a new approach to addressing this global problem; an approach that aims to take women and all those affected by this form of violence "off the beaten path".
"The works themselves were not created for this show," explains The AGC’s Chief Curator Kayleigh Hall. "The artists were working within their own practices and the curator selected these pieces to comprise the show."
This means a stunning array of multi-media contemporary art pieces encompass every space offered by the gallery’s four floors.
From Cut Pieces, a film by Yoko Ono made in 1965 which plays on two old television monitors purchased at a pawn shop, to a collection of exotic mix material dresses that hang in eerie silence by Peruvian artist Cecilia Parades, the exhibit takes us through a harrowing journey of various forms of gender based violence.
Curator Anne Ewen booked Off the Beaten Path at the AGC with two intentions: to find a show that would attract new audiences for the gallery and to showcase a number of international artists.
Indeed this show achieves these goals, but more intuitively it forces its viewer to examine an all too infringed human rights violation through the glasses of several different cultures. That is the right for women to be safe in her home, in her government, in her society and within her own skin.
Thus the exhibit is grouped into five sub-themes: Violence and the Family; Violence and Politics; Violence and the Community; Violence and the Individual; and Violence and Culture.
We see the large knotted brooms that Mexican women in border towns have reintroduced culturally as a method of symbolically sweeping the demons that have taken so many of their daughters and sisters away from them; as a symbol of their suffering.
On a ceiling hangs several sheer chiffon sheets inked with female silhouettes, perpetually in motion yet forever suspended. Korean artist Jung Jungyeob suggests these figures are suspended in anonymity and held in insignificance.
On a wall, nine pictures selected from a photography project that took place in Sierra Leone, Cote d’Ivoire and Liberia illustrate the struggles that women dwelling in areas of conflict face. A Global Crescendo: Women’s Voices from Conflict Zones gave cameras to several women in these countries, to empower them to take images of their own trying circumstances.
"Off the Beaten Path promises to be the first of many exhibitions at The AGC which promote an exchange among community-based initiatives and groups, augmented by a wonderful roster of public and education programs," says Hall.
Indeed the calendar for February and March are well stocked with screenings, talks and workshops.
February 14th the gallery will screen The Burning Times at the Central Branch library, a documentary that examines the witch hunts that occurred in Europe in the 18th Century, what the films deems as a time of "female holocaust".
On the 16th the gallery will interview and photograph Third Street Theatre, Calgary’s new LGTBQ performance creation ensemble, for a future online exhibit.
February 21st at the Central Branch, Heaven on Earth, a film that explores the isolation and disappointments experienced by a Punjabi family who immigrate to Canada, will be screened; and on February 28th, Finding Dawn, a documentary commemorating the estimated 500 Aboriginal women who have disappeared or been murdered in Canada over the last 30 years will be shown.
March 6th, Josie Nepinak, Director of the Awo Taan Healing Lodge, will share the story of her cousin’s disappearance off the streets of Winnipeg in 2011 at the AGC.
The following evening, collaborative quilting artists Linda Hawke and Cat Schick will discuss their initiative on the exploration of female perspective of sleep and dreams, and support of healing through art.
October 19th and 20th, the gallery will host a Chicago-based initiative entitled the Voices and Faces project, in which writing is used as a form of therapy following sexual abuse. Though the workshop is free, participants will need to submit an application. The workshop has space for twenty contributors. If interested you may contact the gallery by phone.
Calgary marks this traveling show’s 10th stop thus far, and inaugural showing in Canada, though recently the show has been booked by the Art Gallery of Winnipeg for 2014.
Off the Beaten Path opened in Norway before heading to galleries throughout the United States and Mexico.
When the show closes at The AGC March 9th, it will be packed up to head next to Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa.
The show offers viewers a message tree on which to leave their comments and thoughts about what they saw in the gallery. According to the messages left thus far, Hall says the show has been well received.
For more information on public programs or to attend a workshop visit The AGC website.