The Negotiating Culture exhibition ran October 31 to November 10 2024
Curatorial statement by Soheila Esfahani
In a multicultural society such as Canada, many people live in-between cultures and inevitably participate in cultural translation. Within the framework of cultural theory, the act of translation is the negotiation arising from encounters of various social groups with different cultural traditions. Furthermore, cultural translation destabilizes the notion of an originating culture and opens up the space of negotiation called the third space. This curatorial project asks artists to reflect on how they define culture and what it means to live in the third space and negotiate cultural variance. If artists are cultural producers, how do they represent culture in their work? What are some of the ways we connect to other cultures and possibly live in liminal or in-between spaces?
Artist statements
Artwork titles: Sarcophagus, Lorha and Sils, Teacups of Belonging
As the child of immigrant Chinese parents from Hong Kong, I was born there, grew up in Canada and now living here for over 60 years. As an adolescent, I was ‘negotiating culture’ without the intellectual cognition of what it was. Only much later, studying theology and social sciences did I learn the term that described my life experience. Upon reflection, even now, I’m unsure I fully grasp the significance of learning to ‘negotiate culture’; it was survival, yearning for a sense of ‘belonging’. Being in the liminal space between familiar and uncharted territory can provoke fear of the unknown. Or it may lead to new possibilities otherwise overlooked. Being face to face with our inner fears about who we are, our strengths and vulnerabilities, even survival, can cause us to question the core of our identities, and doubt life’s meaning and purpose. Engaging with liminality is the launchpad to cross thresholds that lead to life beyond what is familiar. I believe being in liminal spaces is a universal human experience, essential to adapting to change and experiencing growth, individual and communal. Art can draw us in, mirror life experiences to facilitate becoming more cognizant of and make choices for how we want to live. In this exhibition I have chosen pieces of my art to focus on the intrapsychic and spiritual dimensions of negotiating culture.
Artwork title: Red, Blue, Rise.
There is a truth we have all learned about social media algorithms: they show us what we expect to see and have engaged with in the past. Algorithms are complicit in confirmation bias. My own culture can act like an algorithm, reflecting my beliefs back to me from other people just like me, showing me just what I was raised to expect and reinforcing what I already believe is true. Epistemic circularity results since I trust the source of the bias. In this artwork I use the chairs to represent confirmation bias which prevents finding something relatable and compatible in some idea or person you haven’t engaged with before. This sets up a confrontation between belief systems that can result in a dichotomy where similarities are obscured. Art can call out this issue and create third space opportunities for cultures to intersect and document their experience of this negotiation.
Artwork titles: Shimenawa Undone, I am a Loom, Drawn into the Pattern
When I had first arrived in Kyoto to take up studies in water-based woodblock printing (aka mokuhanga), I was living near a small Shinto shrine which had hanging at the torii entrance, a thick rope made of rice straw. I learned this rope was called shimenawa and that some handmade variations of the rope could be found in most shrines. My suburban house beside a rice field allowed me to experience the complete cycle of rice growing. I noticed hand woven straw matts being used as compost covers and made the connection between the annual appearance of new shimenawa at New Year, and celebration of the rice harvest. I learned that rice straw was still being used for many functional purposes in rural areas, examples being raincoats, suspension devices for fruit to dry, footwear and sake barrel wrapping. The efficient use of this natural material derived from an agrarian culture struck me as a way to explore a traditional, yet still vital element of Japanese material culture and way of seeing the world.
The thick and thin linear aspect of rice straw lent itself to carving and printing mainly black and white woodblock prints. After first exploring images of the shimenawa, my work evolved into creating visual metaphors reflecting certain social and psychological challenges I experienced [due to exclusivity of the most appropriate tools and materials to Japanese customers]. With research into Homi Bhabha’s work I realize that the work reflects my struggle as a Canadian living in a highly choreographed society that unlike Canada, does not look favourably upon diversity, exhibits stricter gender expectations and subliminal social codes. The images of multiple strands of straw being formed into tightly bound patterns to create a functional object became my means of exploring this culture and insights about my own culture by comparison.
Wen Li (also Assistant Curator)
Artwork title: The Names
The name that is given to a newborn conveys many meanings, such as good wish, hope and expectation from the parents and family, marks of the generations and birthplace. For immigrants, the original names contain ethnic, social, cultural, and historical information of their background. Due to various reasons, when an immigrant enters a new country, choosing a local name to use as preferred name at school and workplace becomes common practice. This adopted name is chosen for the convenience of a new language environment; to embody different social identity and culture adaptation. It becomes their new identity in the “third space”. The preferred name that conveys different meanings from the original one expresses complex emotions: excitement, hope, uncertainty, and anxiety of the new identity the new name brings.
I have printed the business cards with original names on one side and preferred names on the opposite side to represent the different part of the identities embedded in each individual. When viewers walking by the installation, they will see all English names on one direction and all cultural/ethnic names in translation on opposite direction. All the names are from real people.
Artwork titles: When the Bird Departs it Leaves No Trace, When Your Mind is Calm, A Step Back - in Time
Nancy is a “Sansei” -third generation Canadian of Japanese ancestry. Raised to “assimilate” into a White settlers’ society, English is her only fluent language. Shame and denial were part of the multi-generational trauma inherited with the label of “enemy alien” given to her Canadian born parents who were relocated and interned during WWII for their Japanese ancestry. She negotiates and repatriates her cultural heritage in a third space, both as a foreigner in Japan and a visible minority in Canada. Through her art, Nancy is reclaiming her pride in her Japanese Canadian identity and transforming perspectives about Japanese Canadians.
For this exhibit, Nancy explores her Japanese Canadian translation of traditional Japanese culture, words and sayings by blending her photography, sumi-e painting, printmaking and western watercolour techniques with contemporary Japanese calligraphy. Nancy uses photographs to create a composition that makes use of the open blank space, which is an element of Japanese art aesthetic.
Artwork titles: twenty nineteen # 6, twenty nineteen # 9, twenty nineteen # 10
I had never thought about “cultural variance” as an aspect of my life’s work until this call for entry to “Negotiating Culture.” I associate myself with art, I am an artist and my professional cultural history, according to Wikipedia, is 100,000 years. My contribution to art is contemporary and mundane because my subject matter is contemporary yet drawing on a deep history and, hopefully, extending that history into the future where my mundanity will become a peek into history. Our culture has always taken place in the third space and, probably, world culture has too. I could not see it because I was in it. Now that I can see from the outside, which is the proper artistic standpoint, I comprehend that one of the major themes of my life’s work has been a negotiation arising from encounters of various social groups with different cultural traditions. That is the essence of Art History.
When I look out at my people, my neighbors, they are all different races, cultures, and they are individuals. They all have different stories. No two people are alike, and no family is the same as any of the others. I didn’t, and hopefully will not in the future, see our culture as composed of a division of peoples after this arising awareness within me of Cultural Variance.
