Exhibition

Curated by: Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre
October 3 - 19, 2014, public opening on Thursday October 2, 6PM
Petirama, Friche la Belle de Mai, 13003 Marseille

Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre, a Quebecois curator and art critic in residence as part of the exchange between Fonderie Darling (Montreal) and Astérides (Marseille), presents ENTRE-DEUX, an exhibition project that initiates a reflection on the issues of immigration and colonization, approached from various angles by Canadian and French artists.

This first installment includes video works by four Canadian artists—Milutin Gubash, Jacqueline Hoang Nguyen, Keesic Douglas, and the Mass Arrival project. These works will serve as a starting point for engaging in dialogue with French artists who are also reflecting on this social and political reality. In resonance with the context of the residency, the ENTRE-DEUX exhibition is conceived as a space for research where visible, developing thought is showcased rather than a final, completed proposal.

Curatorial statement:

According to a statement made by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper at the G20 Summit in Pittsburgh in 2009, Canada supposedly has no colonial history. This vision of the nation’s past is rooted in a widely shared conception of Canada as an open, tolerant society that respects differences, largely because it developed through immigration. Such an image is reflected today in the country’s major political institutions, such as the Official Languages Act of 1969, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms of 1982, and the Multiculturalism Act of 1988—all three adopted under governments led by Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau.

Yet, the narrative of Canada’s founding in 1867 by two nations—the descendants of French and British colonists—is already controversial, as it allows for multiple interpretations. For some, it announces a national identity inherently inclusive of diversity and thus open to difference. For others, it represents a pact between two historically dominant nations, whose status overshadows other cultures—a position notably defended by Quebec. It also highlights the invisibility of Indigenous peoples, as it overlooks their prior presence on the land. Today, 617 First Nations are officially recognized and scattered across the country.

This history thus silences the exclusionary policies practiced by the Canadian government since its inception. These include, for example, the refusal to uphold treaty commitments to Indigenous populations—treaties that are meant to carry the force of law. The recognition of these peoples’ right to self-determination gradually gave way to the implementation of a cultural assimilation policy, crystallized in the Indian Act. This narrative also turns a blind eye to the discrimination faced by thousands of Chinese laborers who were hired to build the railroad that aimed to unite the country “from sea to sea” at the turn of the twentieth century. These workers were effectively denied the rights and freedoms associated with Canadian citizenship.

The image projected by Canadian society has never been the subject of consensus among its citizens; indeed, its history has always been fragile, complex, and contested from the outset. The artists featured in the exhibition ENTRE-DEUX each, in their own way, announce what Canada is, taking alternative paths with political, activist, economic, and familial accents. Together, they reveal pitfalls, absences, or testimonies that disrupt the surface of a modern national discourse that one would want to be smooth, unified, and linear. Keesic Douglas, Milutin Gubash, Jacqueline Hoang Nguyen, and the collective Mass Arrival dig into archives and newspapers, exploring family experiences, news stories, or journeys that recall the trade routes of the fur trade. In doing so, their works emphasize the unique contexts in which their experiences are grounded, influencing their understanding of this national narrative. The questions of constructing and transmitting history are also raised by these artists, who multiply the ENTRE-DEUX viewpoints on a historical raw material that inevitably invites interpretation and, therefore, is tinged with subjectivity and fiction. Thus, the works brought together in ENTRE-DEUX craft another version of Canadian history, one that is less consensual and could be summarized as follows:

Since the Trudeau era, Canada’s perception abroad has been that of a land of welcome, an accessible country, which makes Canadians proud, as they claim to be open to all types of immigration, even the most improbable, such as that from distant galaxies. However, the massive arrival of immigrants at various times in history has not always been met with the expected hospitality. Some populations, like the Tamils, were suspected of being associated with terrorist groups, others were quickly sent back to their countries of origin, or employed as cheap labor working in precarious conditions, as was the case, notably, during the construction of the transcontinental railway. This situation is thought-provoking, especially considering that the arrival of Europeans in America, bringing with them diseases that contributed to the decimation of Indigenous populations, weapons, and alcohol, which caused immeasurable harm to these same populations, who were later sought to be assimilated through various tactics, includes episodes of violence that have not been openly acknowledged. This raises the question of the distinction between “good” and “bad” immigration, and the criteria developed within immigration policies to justify this distinction. Numerous factors push people to immigrate, such as difficult living conditions in their country of origin or an untenable political situation. Once accepted, other challenges arise: the non-recognition of professional skills, which forces immigrants into careers that bear no relation to their previous professional prospects, the language barrier, distrust, and cultural distance that creates ambiguities, silences, and misunderstandings between parents and children who do not integrate in the same way into their new reality.

Text by Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre, curator of the exhibition

To reach the exhibition guide, click here (French).