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A photograph of a piece of work that has flower patterns, with other unique shapes and colours. There’s a text on the work that reads “FATE IN YOUR HANDS.”.
Curated by

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.

Sponsors

Organized by the Art Gallery of Guelph with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and Ontario Arts Council.


Gallery

large and small protest banners installed on the walls of an art gallery
Installation view
four colourful crocheted protest banners hung on a gallery wall
Deirdre Logue and Allyson Mitchell
CAN'T/WON'T
an installation view of a room in an art gallery with colourful textile protest banners installed on the walls
Installation view
sixteen colourful textile protest banners installed on a gallery wall
Aram Han Sifuentes
Protest Banner Lending Library
an installation view from the exhibition Creative Dissent, showing four protest banners installed on a gallery wall
Installation view
many different coloured protest banners installed on walls in an art gallery
Installation view
a red, green, and black banner with words in English, Polish, and Arabic installed on a gallery wall
Slavs and Tatars
Friendship of Nations: Self Management Body
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Artists

Jordan Bennett

Jenna Reid

Allyson Mitchell and Deirdre Logue

Aram Han Sifuentes (Protest Banner Lending Library)

Slavs and Tatars


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