On Love: “Teach Me to Speak”

My apartment has the music of love in it. There is a row on my left and soupy breathing on my right. I hear “fuck you” and I hear “fuck me.” In love, someone is always getting fucked. The rain outside patters the windows like a bowl of milk being filled with Rice Krispies and these slow and then moderate and then fast percussive bangs mimic the action unfolding here and there. Snap crackle pop snap crackle pop snap crackle pop.

Behind the closed door to my right it sounds like my roommate and his girlfriend are hiccupping in harmony and it dawns on me there, wrapped in nothing but a towel, that this marked speechlessness seems more conversational and comprehensive and wholesome than the stuff going on to my left; but both still sound like love. These are but two of love’s many iterations.

When I was younger, I would tip toe from my room to the stairwell that led to the kitchen to sit there and listen to my parents disagree loudly, hurtfully. And I’d fear that the two people no longer loved each other. I might enter the kitchen, crying, and ask if everything was all right, if they weren’t going to get a divorce. It was in my kitchen that I learned that two people in love are allowed to fight. Love necessarily yields war but war does not necessarily yield love. And so back in my apartment, I feel like I’m seated again at the top of my staircase, all teary-eyed, only now I see that love can not only be scary, but that it is a choice.

Each of my roommates feels something in his heart if it is possible to feel there at all. Right now I feel something there too. Right now the Yankees are playing the Blue Jays and Lord knows a W for the Yanks here is huge. Right now I have an unwritten story that my publisher needs by Wednesday. Right now my English professor wants 500 words from me on the tension that Hemingway generates between language and experience. I like that writing prompt. It is worded beautifully. My publisher also wants 500 words from me. Twitter wants 40 characters. That last sentence was 36. Forty characters, 500 words: who cares? It’s as if I’m talking to you through a damn keyhole. Right now I have all this inside me but to you it’s only words and words and words. Right now I wish my heart could talk because it has so much it would say to you.

Love and conversation, though, aren’t characterized by words; it is me and it is you, bundled up for minus 50 degree cold, undressing one another without letting either of us freeze. My roommate engaged in the stuff at the end of the hall, you see, though, is freezing. He moved too fast. He inhabited himself without inhabiting his girlfriend. So that makes true love going up to someone and saying, “Let me thaw you out.”

Can I?

word by Jacob Goldberg: “The image has a heart in it. This all happened in my house the other night, and I thought it was fitting to write about love.”

colour by Sylvie Adams

“A native New-Brunswicker, Sylvie Adams has lived mostly in Montreal since the 1980s. She has travelled intensively throughout her life, residing for brief periods in Germany, England and France.

She obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts from Concordia University and a Master’s Degree in Applied Sciences (Architecture) from Université de Montréal. She worked in the design field for close to fifteen years in Canada, the United States and Europe. Her love of visual arts brought her back to painting and she now has her own studio in Montreal, where she paints.

Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions. She has also participated in numerous group exhibitions, nationally and internationally, in Quebec, Ontario and at the Affordable Art Fair in Seoul, South Korea (2015).

Her work can also be found in private and corporate collections, including the Permanent Art Collection of Rio Tinto Alcan.”

25th edition of the First Peoples Festival

Présence autochtone, the 25th edition of the First Peoples Festival, is currently taking place at Place des Arts in Montréal, and is definitely worth checking out.

The festival features movies, concerts, readings, art, and more, celebrating aboriginal culture and its importance for Canadian identity. Moreover, the festival highlights the evolution and adaptation of aboriginal music and art in a changing world.

Drumming circles and other forms of aboriginal traditional music, as well as new forms of aboriginal musical expression, such as DJ Psychogrid, Madekimo, Moe Clark, and Katia Makdissi Warren are featured every day on the big stage.

Additionally, many important aboriginal organizations like the APTN, the Makivik Corporation, Land Insights, and the AVATAQ Cultural Institute are using the festival to bring attention to the challenges that still remain within the aboriginal community, like the societal integration of First Nations and Inuit People who adapt to life in urban centres.

In response to this issue and others, the First Peoples Festival promotes the use of art as a means of societal mobilization, identity building and cultural understanding.

Inuit cultural expression using modern and non-traditional materials, including tepees and sacred animals like deer, turtles and moose, can be seen all over Place des Arts. In addition, the festival features First Nations artists like Jeffrey Veregge of Port Gamble S’Klallam. Veregge’s art will be of particular interest to comic book fans, as it integrates traditional aboriginal artistic designs with popular culture icons like Iron Man and Buzz Lightyear.

Lastly, Parks Canada is giving out free airbrush tattoos of modern and traditional designs of aboriginal spiritual animals, each created by an aboriginal artist. With each tattoo comes a short explanation of the spiritual importance of each animal, and a description of the artist’s vision for the design.

The First Peoples Festival is not to be missed – check it out this week, until August 5, at Place des Arts!

words by Jiliane Golczyk

Not Afraid of Drowning

The first time they met was spectacular. She moved her hands across her body like breath, and told her every lurid detail of her dreams. She listened so hard and attentive as they untangled the depths, brushing pollen from her cheek and unfolding the bedsheets. She pulled the socks directly from her feet, insistent, and stood there naked and nauseated.

Her spit on her mouth like the milk at the broken stem of a fig pulled directly from the branch: these are soft, round fruit, weighty as organs. Fleshy and pink she carried them all day in the sun, stopping intermittently to adjust the sweater that cradled them in her bag. They bruised and split anyway.

Blackberries ripened in the hot field and along the train tracks and the only blank space was the white blue sky: asking no questions, reaching for nothing. She was having trouble looking at her hands, berries bleeding from small fists hanging at her sides.

What was soft at dawn had unfurled wicked and cheap. Every sentence was a scribble: unfinished and impossible to hear. The last time they met there was gravel underfoot and it was raining. She was indecisive and distracted by every turning head calling her name. They ate oysters and hard, ripe cheese. Green grapes.

When she turned the tap out poured rust and sediment, but they stepped in all the same to bathe in that murky swamp. She rubbed tea tree oil into her skin and ran a comb through knotted hair

When they made the bed that night every fold made her choke. She pulled the sheets taught and felt her body tense, muscles binding. Every sweeping gesture cut through the air, the blurred alarm clock’s blinking digits. It was not terrible, it was completely normal: the weight, the sinking feeling, the inability to remember what it was like to be awakened by her own vital breath.

She woke to the rain and the dampening of summer bush fires. The sharp smell of a half empty glass of red wine on the table reminded her of last night’s strain and she poured it down the sink.

She showered: clean, hard, spitting hot water, and sat at a single chair at an empty table in the kitchen and wrapped herself in a lavender bathrobe. She ate toast with warm blackberries, and the sugar hurt her mouth and the seeds lodged between her molars. She was not afraid of drowning in this rain, but only of slipping away.

word by Alisha Mascarenhas

“I wrote the piece as a documentation of tumultuous experiences occurring on several planes: fragments of dreams, fiction, and so-called reality that met or clashed in some way with the form and feeling of Rondeau’s work. The painting fed its form, and served to surface and to purge some previously unarticulated sensations and images.”

colour by Emilie Rondeau

“My visual practice is a transgression and alteration of our perception of reality. I encourage free and intuitive interventions. Although abstract, my paintings carry the memories of atmospheric gardens, nebulous spaces, organic landscapes and architectures. Made of solid and bright colours, washes, painted and drawn marks, the compositions are reminiscent of complex and dreamlike environments. From the infinitely big to the infinitely small, cosmic or cellular spaces transport us with a strong impression of movement and energy.

The lines intersect and intertwine, linking shapes and colours together. Sometimes fast and agitated mark making succeeds to slow and smooth gesture. Colour is pure and vibrant. The harmony is rich and thoughtful within the limits of strangeness. A delicate balance takes place in this continual research for new visual forms. The eyes travel, search and rest. My paintings are an invitation for a trip in between the painting surface and your mind.”

On Mental Health: “blue”

She felt all sorts of colours, but she noticed blue the most. Its thin translucent shade seemed to seep into the corners of her eyes, through her tear ducts, tainting everything in a filmy azure haze. It was vague and arbitrary. Resting above her heart, compressing the edges ever so slightly on good days, or sitting clammy and heavy (as a stiff tongue) on not-so-good days. Such weight meant lengthy exhaling and slight inhaling, her chest exhumed its fire as the oxygen departed. Her shoulders rolled forward, concave, curling inward.

The blue was pervasive. It was a tinge with the boldness to disobey the doctors and smut her everyday life. It was prescribed that she share sadness and cool shades with the therapist on Mondays, and reinvigorate her heart and head with pilates on Tuesdays and piano on Wednesdays. Her room was painted yellow, an attempt to restrict pathetic fallacy. From Thursday to Sunday she was unmoored. In such barren gaps, she aimed for off-white and neutral shade. A dank white was as martyred as it was innocent. Shinning like an exemplary virgin untainted by any distressing moods, she perfected a bared-teeth smile and upturned eyes. In the schoolyard and dining room such whiteness was encouraged by her mother’s wrinkled brow. She floated down the sidewalk. A wispy white cloud pulled through a royal-blue sky.

The abject arrival of the sadness dumbfounded the medical men. No predicating calamity validated the diagnosis. She was bred with a full palette. Rosebud bushes and rose-rimmed eyelids. Spinach salads and vitamins in colour-coded bottles. It was juvenile and chaotic.

The flooding of blue necessitated a quarantine of colour. Its existence was permissible, but in controlled segments. She would be a swirling kaleidoscope. In the turvy checkered shape, eyes would roam, seeing nothing lucidly.

But on Sundays, she found pleasure in evoking the hue. Blue, cerulean, plum, indigo: she let her lips wander over their sounds. Stepping out of the yellow rooms and white shrouds, she made her way to the seaside. Alone at the cusp of this cumulative blueness, she could rest. Other colours slipped off the edge and fell into its abyss. Carmine reds, vivid greens and rusted oranges overpowered by the silver-blue mass. She wouldn’t dive in- she was satisfied sitting on the shore. Though comfort lie in this watery body, she held out for other colours to come through.

word by Keah Hansen

“I relate the colours of this piece to emotions. The distinct yet blended shades symbolize the complexity of our moods, while the lines represent an artificial attempt to restrict or regulate feelings. The prevalence of blue represents depression, and society’s discomfort with it. While the protagonist tries to understand her mental state privately, she is subjected to regimented treatments. Her accepting its existence is a cathartic step in recovering from it.”

colour by Emilie Rondeau

“

On Homelessness: “Walking past”

“Look. I know. But I’m telling you, we, like, run in the same circles or something.”

“Which fucking circles are you running in?”

“I dunno, man, just…I’m telling you, I see him everywhere.”

“Give him some cash, man, he’ll leave you alone.”

“I dunno. Do you think he, like, stalks me?”

“Who knows, man. You know what he’s after.”

“Think he can hear us?”

“Probably. Keep looking forward don’t want to give him the wrong idea.”

The subject of their intrigue happened to be a well-recognized face on this street. His salt-and-pepper beard perpetually caked in sweat, eyes bloodshot, if ever opened, fingernails speckled with dirt.

When he wasn’t pacing the corner of the main street, he would lie curled on the ground, enveloped in a makeshift bed, a mattress formed from warped cardboard and a newspaper pillow.

A Styrofoam coffee cup rest at his feet to collect spare change—its position was far enough from his person so as not to elicit too intimate an interaction between hopeful donors and himself, yet close enough to grasp in the case of a thief lurking uncomfortably nearby. This was his domain.

The men who passed him daily found themselves split between curiosity and repulsion as they, in American Apparel, wondered how one could end up on the streets, and why the man couldn’t pull himself up by the bootstraps “and just find a job,” as they all had done for themselves.

The day he disappeared, those who questioned his absence primarily didn’t know who to confront with their concern, or why they felt they needed an answer in the first place, and never did anything about it.

word by Annie Rubin

“With such ease, passersby devalue or dehumanize the lives of homeless people. This story’s focus on the interactions of one man tries to demonstrate a lack of compassion and emphasize the societal conditioning that our culture perpetuates towards those who are not able to work or find a home.”

colour by Shalak Attack

“Shalak Attack is a Canadian-Chilean visual artist dedicated to painting, muralism, graffiti urban art, and canvases. Shalak has manifested her artistic expression on urban walls across the world. Shalak is a co-founder and member of the international art collectives “Essencia”, the “Bruxas”, and the “Clandestinos”.

Shalak also works with several other mixed media approaches such as tattoo art, jewelery, illustration, installation, sound, and video making. In the past ten years, she has participated in numerous artistic projects and exhibitions in Canada, Chile, Brazil, Mexico, Palestine, Jordan, Isreal, France, Belgium, Spain, Argentina, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Senegal and recently in Sweden for the Artscape Mural Festival.

Shalak shares her passion for freedom of expression, and has facilitated visual art workshops to youth of under-privileged communities and prisoners in various countries across the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and in Africa. Her artistic work and community art-reach is rooted in the social and cultural values she received from her family growing up across Canada. Since then, her most impacting education has been learning from different communities around the world. Public walls has become her favourite place to paint, she uses graffiti as an art form to create accessibility to culture for diverse communities.”

Is Mural Fest an Art Festival?

Montreal hosted its third annual Mural Festival this year on Saint Laurent Boulevard; lasting 11 days and featured 20 different artists from all over the world.

This year’s murals, in addition to the final products of the 2013 and 2014 festivals, certainly leave a feeling of awe – but street art does far more than add colour to a neighbourhood.

Most artists don’t create for the sake of creating.

The very nature of street art is accessible to all by being outdoors, free, and easy to appreciate, and there is a strong belief amid the street artist community that there is a certain degree of responsibility to criticize, to create debate, or to denounce injustice through murals and street art.

Namely, Spanish-American Axel Void is known for acting as a witness in depicting the homeless and the persecuted in order to create relatable symbols out of people who are generally discounted by the rest of society. As a part of his series titled “Nadie”, Axel Void painted a homeless man he met on Boulevard St. Laurent. The mural is called “Personne”, and the man in question is at first glance easy to miss, almost concealed, behind the white letters stamped over his face. His mural is a testimony and a criticism to the fact that itinerants are often seen as invisible in society.

Mural by Canada’s ASTRO

Mexico city based Curiot is known for blending animal forms in creations inspired by Aztec art and Mexican traditions. His Montreal mural is no exception, and his chalk looking figures call for a heightened connection to nature and between human beings and animals.

Austria’s NYCHOS- read his Word and Colour collaboration

Argentinian Jaz is known for his political graffiti, often depicting scenes of conflict, confrontations, or combats. In his contribution to this year’s Mural Festival, he created a scene depicting cultural and identity clashes between two bulls with human bodies. The bulls are covered in tattoos of maple leaves, fleur de lys, and other Canadian and Québecois symbols.

Another interesting facet of street art is in its reflection of globalization. In addition to their murals in Montreal, you can find Reka One’s aboriginal inspired art in Australia, Italy and Austria, Seth‘s outward looking children in France, Tahiti and China; Etam Cru’s scenes of young girls in Poland, Germany and the United States.

If the artists strive to denounce inequality or injustice through their murals, the process of commercializing said art may strip it of its very purpose.
A mural by Brazil’s Bicleta Sem Freio

The nomadic nature of street art allows for a presence of these recognizable characters all over the world. This creates a certain “fil d’attache” between street artists and enthusiasts, as well as between different countries, each faced by their own societal issues.

While Inti‘s mural in Montreal warns that our greed in exploiting Canada’s natural resources will in turn leave us waterless, his mural in Istanbul, Turkey encourages resistance to the government’s austere policies in solidarity with the 2013 Gezi protests. Through their murals, street artists encourage global solidarity in facing world issues.
And yet, when artists are commissioned into creating murals during a festival that clearly has commercial goals – commercial goals that became quite obvious through the street shopping component of the festival – we are called to question the subversive impact of the presence of capitalism in such a festival. Can art be critical of capitalism if it is created by and for capitalism?

Moreover, many artists criticize capitalism through their work, but also struggle to pay for the materials necessary to create their works of art. Benjamin Moore sponsored most of the paint used by the artists during Mural Festival. Does art play the same role and have the same mission when its creator was sponsored, or commissioned, by commercial entities?

Though the muralists themselves may want to create art that criticizes capitalism, injustice or austerity, the fact that there was no platform to for them to discuss such themes with the public testifies to the fact that the organizers of the festival are perhaps not as concerned by activism as they are by capital.

In response to the commercialization of art within Mural Festival, the Anticolonial Street Artists Convergence has created a grassroots festival promoting anti-capitalist street art; Unceded Voices will take place from August 14 to 23 with the goal of sharing anticolonial values and indigenous resistance. Unceded Voices brings attention to the fact that Mural Festival takes place on unceded Kanien’kéhá:ka and Algonquin territories.

Contrary to Mural Festival, Unceded Voices will create spaces for artists and members of the community to discuss political issues and how art can act as a platform for such debate.

Check out the murals on St. Laurent, and support Unceded Voices this August.

word by Jiliane Golczyk

Montreal’s Tam Tams Is Textbook Cultural Appropriation

Montreal is known for its summer festivals, such as the weekly drum circle around Sir George-Étienne Cartier’s Monument that occurs every Sunday. Thousands of people gather on the park’s lawns to listen and dance to the rhythm of the hundreds of Tam Tam players gathering to form an incredible drum circle.

Drum circles have shamanic origins, and have been used for centuries by aboriginal peoples around the world in order to celebrate their connections with each other and the Earth.

The nature of the drum circle, with no head or tail, suggests inclusivity.

To witness the Tam Tam festival in Mont-Royal Park is to see solidarity within a group that in appearance has little in common, yet that has the desire to share rhythm and create a collective sound.

However, the fact that this circle takes place on unseeded Kanien’kéa:ka and Algonquin nations territory reminds us of the colonial components of the current festival.

Cultural appropriation takes place when a group of people belonging to a dominant culture adopts the traditions of a historically oppressed culture.

Though the participation of settlers in a drum circle or a potlatch may at first glance seem inoffensive, one must take note that these very traditions were outlawed by the Canadian government not so long ago in an effort to suppress the existence of aboriginal culture.

The appropriation of the drum circle by settlers is confirmation that colonization is an ongoing process in Canada. Attempting to conceive of white Europeans as apolitical participants in colonialist practices is impossible. Choosing to ignore settler impact mirrors the logic behind colorblind racism: ‘Race doesn’t matter, because thinking about my privilege makes me uncomfortable.’

Failing to recognize the appropriation of aboriginal culture during the weekly Tams festival is proof of the persistence of the settler colonization mentality – the same mentality that refuses to recognize the residential school system as a genocide.

Wayside crosses, like the one on Mont-Royal, are an important component of settler heritage: there are more than 3000 in the province. These crosses are not only proof of a material culture symbolizing religious belonging, but evidence of the first colonial occupations by the French, starting with the first cross planted by Jacques Cartier in 1534 – who was the first European to climb Mount-Royal and give it its name. Tams’ drum circles take place in a park footed by this cross.

Settler colonialism in Canada originates with the very same Jacques Cartier, who, in one of his most infamous interactions with the aboriginal peoples, went so far as to ruse and abduct Iroquoian Chief Donnacona and his sons, bringing them to France to serve as circus attractions.

The juxtaposition of the Mont-Royal’s wayside cross, a symbol directly linked to Jacques Cartier, above a dancing group that is formed by a majority of settlers is a textbook case for cultural appropriation in North America. If you are a settler show your solidarity by not participating in the drum circles at Tam Tams.*

Jiliane Golczyk is originally from Red Deer, Alberta, but has lived in Belgium, Chile and Turkey. She will be beginning her Master’s in International Affairs at Sciences Po this fall.

More:

http://www.lemontroyal.qc.ca/en/learn-about-mount-royal/short-history-of-mount-royal.sn

http://www.lemontroyal.qc.ca/carte/fr/html/La-croix-du-mont-Royal-42.html

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/analysis/will-truth-set-us-free-306094501.html

http://racerelations.about.com/od/diversitymatters/fl/What-Is-Cultural-Appropriation-and-Why-Is-It-Wrong.htm

http://mycultureisnotatrend.tumblr.com/

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/donnacona/

http://www.umista.org/masks_story/en/ht/potlatch02.html

Review: Howl! and CKUT host panel on austerity

image via Ecole De La Montagne Rouge

As part of the Howl Arts Collective Festival, CKUT FM invited four panelists to discuss artistic resistances to austerity in a live broadcast at Casa del Popolo. In discussing the relation between art and the movement against austerity in Montreal, the chief question was: What is the role of artists in the fight against austerity?

According to the panel – which included artists Edith Brunette and François Lemieux, graphic designer Kevin Yuen Kit Lo, and photojournalist Amru Salahuddien- artists have a choice: they can use their creativity to smooth over the bumps or they can reveal societal tensions through their creations.

However, if art can be used as a space where it is possible to dream, to envision a new future and to picture new social relations, then artists have not only the option, but the responsibility to define and depict an anti-oppressive future in order to raise awareness about austerity and engage discussion.

In addition to the discussion by the four panelists, La Chorale du Peuple, founded in 2011 during the occupation of Square Victoria, denounced neo-liberal policies and inequality through their songs: “Que la vie est belle” and “Ça fait rire les Libéraux.”

A problem underlined by Amru Salahuddien, an Egyptian photojournalist who was on the ground during the Egyptian uprising, was the lack of connections within the international anti-austerity movement. Though the fight against capitalism seems to be a fight that has a certain level of continuity across time and space, the lack of links, not only on an international level, but also within our own communities, has rendered the anti-austerity movement quasi-ineffective.

Salahuddien parallelled the Egyptian and Quebecois students, stating, “while in Egypt, bullets were used against the protesters, the weapon used by the government against Quebecois students was neglect.”

Despite the possibility of connections between these two groups of protesters, Salahuddien criticized the fact that very little support was given to either group by the other: that, though our world is said to be shrinking through technology and social media, there is little global awareness or concern for movements that do not affect us directly.

Concluding the discussion was a conversation about hope, where panelists suggested that if art is used as a tool in the fight against capitalism and the structures of power, it is because artists have hope for a better future, despite their use of seemingly sinister artistic tools, like irony or dystopia, in depicting their criticisms.

Thank you to Howl Arts Collective and to Casa del Popolo for hosting this interesting panel discussion- click here for more events happening this weekend!

Jiliane Golczyk, 23 Apr 2015, Montréal

Job opening: Head Of Colour

Job opening: Head of Colour

Word and Colour

Reports to Editor

The Art Director will curate the art for upcoming features at the magazine. After contacting artists, the Art Director will inform the Editor of upcoming features with all required information. Certain events in Montréal may require the attendance of the editor to represent our brand, and the Editor may also select artists to feature.

*An awareness or openness to social justice politics is essential as a representative of the Word and Colour brand. Word and Colour is a creative Non-Profit Organization of volunteers. This position will be paid when revenue streams are implemented according to workload, and requires minimal hours of commitment.

Our Ideal Candidate:

Reliable, organized, proactive

Education / Experience with visual art

Knowledge of social justice issues

Responsibilities:

Contacts artists for weekly features

Represents Word and Colour at art events

Responds to e-mail within the day

Is available for monthly meetings in Montréal

Please read over our mission statement before applying!

Application deadline: Friday, May 1, 2015

Send CV to word@wordandcolour.com

Review: ASA’s Theatre of The Oppressed

The Theatre of The Oppressed, put on by the Arab Students’ Association, was a two act show that served to ask important questions about interactions on oppression – without claiming to have the answers. The performance intertwined lives of the oppressed and their oppressors in an interactive way: upon closing, members of the audience were invited to recreate scenes where they felt harm could have been reduced by taking the place of an oppressed character.

The innovative technique – developed in 1971 by activist Augusto Boal – brought tangible excitement to the audience. The feeling seemed that these new interventions would make a significant change in the scenes on gender roles in the family, racial profiling, and street harassment.

Audience members brought new ways of interpreting the scene from the oppressed, although bringing little change to the treatment by the oppressor: street harassers went on harassing, regardless of new responses from the harassed. A police officer was confronted on the racial motives of a search. The officer’s response?

“So what?”

Valuable lessons come from the ASA’s decision to portray all characters in a multifacted perspective, each struggling to find a balance of peace in their home and public lives, raising many questions: is oppression simply ‘around’ the oppressed, or is everyone born with it? How do we reduce harm in oppressive situations, when it seems that, however the oppressed responds, the same treatment seems to occur?

As the group proposed, the Theatre of The Oppressed was not to provide prescriptive solutions for change, but rather to raise awareness and pose questions while ‘humanizing humanity.’ An important group doing important work in Montréal – we look forward to their next event.

Allison Kutcher, 23 March 2015, Montréal

Image credits: Arab Student Association of McGill

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If the artists strive to denounce inequality or injustice through their murals, the process of commercializing said art may strip it of its very purpose. A mural by Brazil’s Bicleta Sem Freio

Contrary to Mural Festival, Unceded Voices will create spaces for artists and members of the community to discuss political issues and how art can act as a platform for such debate.

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Cultural appropriation takes place when a group of people belonging to a dominant culture adopts the traditions of a historically oppressed culture.

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If the artists strive to denounce inequality or injustice through their murals, the process of commercializing said art may strip it of its very purpose.
A mural by Brazil’s Bicleta Sem Freio