Creative Dissent
Shauna McCabe and Pearl Van Geest
Out of nowhere a community, a sacred community, forms, fueled by the unforeseen chance to fight back. Decades drift away. Decades of gutting what was left of the social contract…. Once in a lifetime the unpredictable occurs and reality gets redefined. – Michael Taussig
How do we change the world? This exhibition offers a glimpse of a social aesthetic, a visual culture of protest, emerging in and through mobilization, participation, and action. Blurring the lines between artist and community, precedents can be traced throughout the twentieth century: the artful interventions of the Bauhaus, the transformation of the everyday integral to Fluxus happenings, and the profound thread of the personal, the political, and the social in the work of second-wave feminists like Mary Kelly, Yoko Ono, Joyce Wieland, and Faith Ringgold. The banners and flags on view here come from artists Christi Belcourt and Isaac Murdoch, Jordan Bennett, Allyson Mitchell and Deirdre Logue, Jenna Reid, Aram Han Sifuentes (Protest Banner Lending Library), and Slavs and Tatars, as well as local organizations and activists including Guelph-Wellington Women in Crisis, the Midwifery Task Force, and street artist, Lionel. Infused with both craft and community, they advocate for human rights to clean water, resources, safety, asylum, citizenship, equality, and participation. And while each speaks to a distinct time and place, together they point to how protest movements around the world are seen and heard, mapping a history of social change and a society that is yet to come.
Image detail: Slavs & Tatars, Friendship of Nations: Self Management Body, 2011. Collection of the Art Gallery of Guelph.
Organized by the Art Gallery of Guelph with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and Ontario Arts Council.
Gallery
Artists
Jordan Bennett
Jenna Reid
Allyson Mitchell and Deirdre Logue
Aram Han Sifuentes (Protest Banner Lending Library)
Slavs and Tatars
View More Exhibitions
exhibition
Contemporary Indigenous Artists at AGG
January 16.2025 / May 4.2025
exhibition
September 12.2024 / May 4.2025
Juxtaposing Susan Mogul’s 1997 video with a collection of quillboxes, this exhibition unifies both forms of expression through themes of women’s identity, family, relationships, and the quest for home.
exhibition
September 12.2024 / January 5.2025
Some kind of we brings together works that approach t4t sensibilities, emphasizing trans relationality, self-representation, cross-generational inheritance, desire, and love.
exhibition
September 12.2024 / January 5.2025
Eternal Transcendent highlights a selection of photographic works by Robert Flack that convey his reverence for the more-than-corporeal and a yearning for healing in light of the AIDS epidemic.
exhibition
September 5.2024 / May 4.2025
In Entrelazados, Guatemalan-Mexican-American artist Justin Favela continues his exploration of notions of identity, place, and authenticity through his distinct remixes of popular culture and Latinx experience.
exhibition
Paul Nadeau
July 18.2024 / August 25.2024
Paul Nadeau’s paintings explore Canadian eco-tourism and resource extraction that contributes to the settler-colonial view of Canadian wilderness.
exhibition
Richard Bedwash
June 13.2024 / August 25.2024
Explore the vivid, symbol-rich images of Anishinaabe artist Richard Bedwash that connects his work, his life, and the cultural landscapes of Guelph.
exhibition
May 30.2024 / July 10.2024
The work of Catherine Chan delves into human entanglements with the more-than-human using rocks and other materials of geology to explore the intersection of deep time with more fleeting experiences.