On child abuse: “Snow in the water”

A small girl and a tall, middle-aged man eat lunch together at the local fast food restaurant. Both have sauce on their face: him on his chin, her just above her left eyebrow, and both eat the French fries between them with ferocity.

‘Can I have another burger?’ the small girl asks the middle-aged man.

‘No, you’ve had enough, little dumpling,’ the man replies.

The girl looks down at her white liquid thighs. There are delicate webs of blue vein just beneath the skin. She can almost see them wriggling.

The man and the girl go to see a film at the small cinema with the smell like neglected cupboard and forgotten jacket. They stand looking up at the posters.

‘What would you like to see?’ the man asks.

‘I don’t mind, Daddy,’ the girl replies.

The middle-aged man buys two tickets to Titanic and as the opening credits roll he reaches over and puts his hand in the small girl’s lap. She begins from one hundred in her head and pictures each number brightly coloured, flying free across the dark inside her skull.

word by Laura McPhee-Browne

“This piece of art is beautiful to me but it is also confusing, and I believe it is not what it seems. The title of the painting is ‘iceberg’, and I decided to write a little story about something that, like an iceberg, is almost never what it seems to be; child abuse.

When child abuse occurs between a parent and a child, it can easily be dismissed as imagination or exaggeration, but often what a child discloses about what has happened to them will be only the tip of the iceberg. It is important for us as adults to delve deeper—to dive down and find out what is really going on underneath the surface.”

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.”

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

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 Breakups: “Rome 2.0”

Fucking Rome. We got to the hotel and she cried.

It was meant to be a four-poster bed, not a four-poled bed. It was meant to be a terrace not the top step an iron staircase. It was meant to my swansong, the trip to show her what she going to fucking miss out on: the thing to remember me by. I wanted her to feel soaked in guilt when the final blow was delivered.

“Hey, come on, it’s not so bad. Let’s go out and grab some food, start looking at the city”

The sobs went from a 6 to a 9. Wails grew and smashed into me, wave after wave.

“Come on. Let’s go. Now please”

My tone had lost it’s grace and just robotically pressed.

The scrunched face emerged, drained with deep black holes for eyes, and we traipsed into silence into the city. My mind flicked through the situation, questioning all reason.

Her birthday, I wanted to impress so I took her away – how could I possibly be in the wrong?

I knew I felt warped and knotted. I flicked off topic and watched the people passing in the street. They all seemed so beautifully ignorant to unhappiness. I tried to add context: where was he off to? What did she do for a living? What does he think when he wakes up in the morning?

“tell me what you’re thinking”

She looked up at me with watery pupils. For a split second I felt for her, then firmly shut that inkling out.

‘well we can’t go on like this’

We walked over a bridge – it was brimming with life. Food, flowers, painters, water. Beautiful when I removed myself from the presence.

There was a warming delicateness to the city’s atmosphere, an over-whelming sensation that right here and now was an immersion in history.

More silence filled space between us.

“do you want to go to the Colosseum?”

“sure”

It’s an odd sensation that the connection between two people who shared a decent chunk of their life together could be actively worse than that of strangers meeting in the street.

Upon entering the Colosseum we both administered the look to walk separate routes in opposite directions around. I felt like the abiding balls of a Newton’s cradle. We passed at the mid-way point.

Rome was the city where I knew for sure I had fallen out of love.

word by Sam Fresco

“Ok, hands up. This was actually not-so-loosely based on personal experiences. The art reminded me of a lot of *that* bridge mentioned in the story so it felt natural for a piece to reflect a snapshot of how I felt in that moment. I wanted to make the experience as visceral as possible, really convey the coldness entangled with the helpless dependency you feel in that moment.”

colour by Adriana Coluccio

“Adriana Coluccio is a visual artist based in Montreal. She earned her BFA in 2008 from Concordia University where she studied Studio Art and Film Animation. In her early years as a multidisciplinary artist, Adriana was initially compelled by video art and experimental film. After dabbling with these for a few years, she discovered a true affinity for painting.

Adriana’s painting practice is invested in her passion for traditional forms of oil painting, while drawing influence from her explorations in experimental film, video and digital media. Her paintings are informed by her fascination with the instability of an image and the manner in which images are reproduced or transferred across media. She builds up her canvas with scenes that are potentially on the crux of formation or disintegration.

Adriana exhibits her work extensively in North America , notably in Montreal and New York. Her work can be found in private and public collections, notably in the office of the Deputy of Montreal-North.”

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

On Sexual Abuse: “Sizzler”

‘Is that all you’re having?’ Phillip has looked over her meal and seen that she is starving. It is the peak of a Melbourne summer outside and Merry feels fat and tired and large enough as it is. He frowns and pushes the breadbasket towards her. ‘You don’t have to worry about your weight, you wouldn’t suit being skinny. Have some bread.’

‘I’ve always been fat.’

art fiction

Suddenly she doesn’t care about anything except what this conversation could be. No one since her father has ever brought up her weight. She has never talked to anyone about it either but now she feels she might be able to tell Phillip something, something that could perhaps explain.

He doesn’t reply with anything, doesn’t deny her statement. Merry feels a little light-headed, though she has hardly touched her Amaretto Sour. She fishes around in the glass with her fingers and pulls out the cherry, dangling it above and then down into her mouth.

art fiction

‘Don’t do that. Women shouldn’t eat with their fingers.’

art fiction

She wipes hand on the paper napkin beside her plate, mouth slightly watering from the effort not to lick.

After Phillip has gone back for more veal schnitzel and duck gravy and they are lily-lipped and cloud-eyed, he asks her if she will take him home.

art fiction

‘I live with this old woman who hates it if I have guests. I think she’s in love with me.’

art fiction

He smiles a little and adjusts his sagging shirt collar. Merry feels that the woman is most certainly in love with him; she understands through the liquor that the woman flirts with Phillip in her tattered kimono over eggs and beans for breakfast and that she has a cat who curls often on Phillip’s knee.

art fiction

‘What’s her name?’ she asks.

‘June. Why?’ His voice has coloured slightly—it is a storm in the distance, in the heavy clouds.

‘Oh, I just wondered. June is a nice name.’

art fiction

He frowns, forcefully, as if it will help him to tolerate her stupidity.

art fiction

‘She’s just my housemate. She’s old and sagging and pays most of the rent.’

art fiction

There is a familiarity to Phillip’s forehead that she did not see before. It’s in his crooked eyebrows, the slight pouches of muscle above each one that move when he talks like they are his voice. It must be the reason why she feels a pulsing in her groin at every word he speaks—because she knows him.

They have dessert, coffee, more sours, more smooth froth on lagers like chocolate milkshakes. It is Phillip that decides when they need to leave, and he doesn’t come back to her nervous, cluttered flat after all. He starts to eat at her neck and then her chin in the taxi on the way there and tells the driver to stop so that he can fuck her up against an alleyway brick wall that is sprayed in red and green and blue: coloured words she can’t read but that she thinks just might mean everything.

Just as he pushes himself in she sees who his forehead is. Now it’s her father with his hand up under her dress, pulling at her nipple too hard. She closes her eyes and tries to remember the sound of Philip’s voice. She hears sirens and feels strangled breath heat the skin that covers her neck tendons.

word by Laura McPhee-Browne

“When I saw this art piece by Fannie Gadouas, I immediately felt protective towards the woman with the blood and strawberries in her lap, with all her vulnerability so blatantly displayed.

The character of Merry in my story ‘Sizzler’ is a vulnerable character because of her background, and the way her femininity and innocence was abused by those closest to her. Despite this trauma and vulnerability, Merry keeps living and trying to find something better for herself. The strawberries replacing most of the blood in Fannie Gadouas’ piece inspired the resilience inherent in the character of Merry, and reminded me of the resilience I have witnessed in so many (less fictional!) women I know and love.”

colour by Fannie Gadouas

“I am an interdisciplinary artist working with photography, fiber arts and performance. My work explores issues pertaining to femininity, identity and experience. By re-appropriating various traditional imagery, techniques and rituals, I question and challenge the way gendered identity is constructed, inherited and perceived in western society. Textiles is, and has traditionally been associated with the feminine realm. Critically engaging with techniques such as weaving, knitting and embroidery allows me to subvert and question my own role as both woman and artist. In this sense, my practice as a whole becomes a performance in which the process holds more relevance than the resulting objects. Informed and greatly influenced by feminist theory, the work I produce is a critical response to the social structure of western society.”

On Self-Doubt: “Weather”

It’s been raining for days. The girl has just been feeling like rain lately. She’s not sure when it’ll stop, but she knows it can’t go on forever.

She sits in the waiting room of the office and thinks about how boring it all is. The same magazines as always, the same water cooler across the room, the same assistant answering phone calls and shuffling papers.

The doctor comes into the waiting room and says the girl’s name. He holds the door to his office open for her, and she gets up slowly, walks toward him past the painting of a horse, past the painting of a whale. When they’re both in the office, he closes the door behind them.

“So,” he says, “how are we feeling today?”

“How do you think?” she asks.

“I thought we were past this.”

“Apparently not.” The girl sits in the uncomfortable chair she always sits in. The doctor sits in the more comfortable chair, takes the lid of his pen off with his teeth. The girl leans back.

There’s the sound of thunder and the doctor looks out the window.

She saw the first doctor when she was eight. He called her problem an Extreme Emotional Response to Weather Patterns, but even then she knew it didn’t explain anything. What was inside her head matched the weather before she ever saw the rain or the sun or the tornado. She could always feel the truth of it.

“What is good or bad weather anyway?” the doctor asks. She can tell he’s frustrated with her. They always get frustrated eventually. She gives this one another two weeks. “If you’d been feeling great for a month, say, so we desperately need rain, shouldn’t it rain then even if you’re feeling great, since rain would be the great weather?”

“I don’t make the rules,” the girl says, crossing her arms.

“Let’s try a visualization exercise.”

The girl knows how this goes; she closes her eyes.

The doctor speaks slowly, confidently. “Think of a forest. You’re deep in the forest. So deep that nothing can come through the trees. It’s very, very dark. You’re feeling angry today, so let yourself really feel that. Stay there for a minute.

“Now I want you to start walking. You’re walking through the forest and you come to a clearing, and the first thing you notice is that it’s sunny. You can smell it and feel it as you come to the clearing.”

The girl feels her anger and she feels the sun on her shoulders and she opens her eyes.

The doctor pulls his sweater a little tighter around his body.

“It’s only going to get colder,” she says.

word by Leah Mol

“The artwork reminded me so much of those moments when a storm is just beginning or just ending. My story is about a link between weather and emotion in the mind of a girl who nobody believes. She is, after years of trusting her own instincts, finally feeling the self-doubt creeping in, which could be the ending or just the beginning of the storm.”

colour by Nadoune Doune

“Nadine est née à Montréal, d’une famille venant de s’installer d’Algérie. Elle grandit dans l’école buissonnière, une école dédiée à l’apprentissage par l’art. La musique et le visuel sont toujours présents dans sa vie, dès qu’elle le peut elle voyage avec son violon et ses poèmes/dessins au Mexique, dans l’ouest Canadien, et aux États-Unis où elle s’y installe un an. C’est une autodidacte qui apprend par les expériences, la rue est son terrain de jeu et où elle est le plus inspirée. Elle essaye de rendre la connaissance accessible en donnant plusieurs ateliers (notamment dans une coopérative d’art communautaire nommé le Milieu qu’elle essaye d’aider à bâtir). Elle est intervenante sociale, vend des popsicles artisanaux, et travaille présentement sur un projet de prise de parole chez les femmes immigrantes.”

“Nadine was born in Montréal to a family who arrived from Algeria. She grew up in the Buissonière School, where learning is achieved through art. Music and aesthetics are always present in her life, as she travels with her violin, her poems, and her drawings to Mexico, to Western Canada, and to the United States, punctually for years. The street and her experiences are her main sources of inspiration. She works to make education and art accessible by giving workshops – notably in Le Milieu, a community art cooperative that she’s involve in. She is currently working on a project that centers on the voices of immigrant women.”

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

On Mental Health: “Fight or Flight”

It was an invisible voice, driving him onward.

“Run.”

He took comfort in knowing he wasn’t completely alone, but he paused, motionless, for someone else to lead the way.

“Hide,” the voice repeated, this time almost a shout.

Faint rustling, as someone else approached, were muffled through his own heavy breathing as he turned to stare, head on, into yellow evolving eyes. He was face to face with death.

He remained, unmoving, assessing what it would mean to his survival: the choice to fight.

He glanced behind his shoulder, out of options, as the eyes grew less distinct and he was forcefully pushed back into his helpless body, unable to run, no longer in time to hide.

Heart beating wildly, chest rising, yet he felt no air reach his lungs.

“Freeze.”

He opened his eyes and the room was no longer spinning—chest no longer growling. His stomach felt heavy, a bead of sweat meandered down his right cheek. He swiped at it, halfheartedly, with the back of his hand. There was no forest, no golden eyes staring him down, just a microphone in hand and an audience on looking, an uncomfortable pause between applause and speech, hanging in the air as they waited for him to begin.

“Yes-” he cleared his throat.

“Thank you all for coming out tonight.”

The hairs on his arm still stood on end. A shiver ran through his body. “Keep calm,” the voice now instructed.

He closed his eyes to shake himself of the attack, there was a bottle of Valium waiting for him at home, for now, the task at hand remained.

word by Annie Rubin

From the author: “The harsh edges, intensely vibrant colours, and the vivid animal-like quality of the artwork inspired an intensity motivated by animalistic instinct. The jagged edges and bright lines were reminiscent of a sense of anxiety, in this case manifested in the form of a panic attack. Such an episode takes place as the body’s natural “fight or flight” instinct to combat present danger replaces logic. While many people have suffered from panic, our society rewards silence around the issue, perpetuating a stigma around mental health.”

Tag: montreal

On child abuse: “Snow in the water”

Not Afraid of Drowning

On Mental Health: “blue”

On Breakups: “Rome 2.0”

On Homelessness: “Walking past”

Is Mural Fest an Art Festival?

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.

On Sexual Abuse: “Sizzler”

On Self-Doubt: “Weather”

Montreal’s Tam Tams Is Textbook Cultural Appropriation

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

On Mental Health: “Fight or Flight”

word by Annie Rubin

colour by Marina Gonzalez Eme

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SHARE this collaboration!

SHARE this collaboration!

SHARE this collaboration!

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.

SHARE this collaboration!

SHARE this collaboration!

SHARE this collaboration!

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

SHARE this collaboration!

word by Annie Rubin

colour by Marina Gonzalez Eme

SHARE this collaboration!

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