By: Natalie Clark
This year marks the 125th anniversary of the Women’s Art Association of Hamilton. To kick off celebrations, the WAAH is featuring their annual juried exhibition at the Art Gallery of Hamilton. The Celebrations! exhibit features art from current and past members of the WAAH.
The WAAH was created in 1894 by a group of women who feared that cultural and artistic pursuits would be lost in Hamilton’s booming industrial growth. The ambitions of the organization at the time were simple.
WAAH wanted to create a general interest in art, establish art scholarships, hold lectures and seminars, hold exhibitions of paintings, designs and sculptures and develop art and handicrafts in Canada.
125 years later, these ambitions still hold true, though there have also been some changes.
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Zorica Silverthorne, WAAH exhibitions chair and vice president, notes that technology and digital media have contributed to the recent changes made to the organization.
“Our website hosts online exhibitions featuring artist members, there is an online gallery for our members to exhibit their works and we are even digitally selecting some of our exhibitions,” mentions Silverthorne.
Meanwhile, old traditions are also being kept alive. From the tireless efforts of the founding women of WAAH to the current executive board have ensured that an annual juried exhibition has taken place every year since the organization’s inception.
For the past seventy-two years, the exhibition has made the AGH it’s home. Long before that, the organization played a crucial role in establishing the AGH itself. Needless to say, WAAH has a lot to celebrate.
“Our exhibition statement is ‘it is in our nature to celebrate’… whether with a large group of people, small intimate gathering or solitude… ‘Celebrations!’ is open to interpretation,” said Silverthorne.
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Some of the works of past WAAH members are currently on display in the gallery’s permanent collection. Silverthorne notes that this is an important aspect worth celebrating.
“Even if the woman is no longer with us physically, her work and what she’s contributed should not be forgotten… it’s a chance to bring new life and new exposure to her legacy and not to mention looking to our past and learning from it is always an advantage,” said Silverthorne.
Silverthorne gives special mention to various different women presented in the exhibit but mentions that it’s difficult to mention only a few given the many talented artists that are involved in the WAAH.
“Some artists to celebrate are Maria Sarkany who had a coin design chosen by the Canadian Mint, well-known local artists Sylvia Simpson, Claudette Losier and our award winners Jodi Kitto-Ward, Jodie Hart and Susan Outlaw,” said Silverthorne.
Kitto-Ward, voted “Best in Show” for the exhibit, joined the WAAH in 2009. She currently has two of her pieces featured in the exhibit; “Celebration” and “In the Forest (The Bruce Trail 50th Anniversary)”. Kitto-Ward has a background in accounting and was employed at an accounting firm before her beginning her career as an artist.
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“I always had a love for art and enjoyed drawing and visiting art galleries as a child, but I was very self-critical and didn’t think I had what it took to pursue art on a professional level,” explained Kitto-Ward.
Later in her life, Kitto-Ward decided she wanted to pursue what made her happy; art. As she began taking courses at Sheridan College, she finally started to feel more confident in her work as an artist. Kitto-Ward now balances art, accounting and being a proud mom.
“I have experienced the support and opportunities provided by the WAAH first hand and I am proud to be a member and part of this historical and celebratory exhibition,” said Kitto-Ward.
“It’s important for me to be included in this exhibition… because of what this organization has achieved with women coming together for a common goal of supporting the arts, bringing so much to this city and beyond.”
The Women’s Art Association of Hamilton 125th Anniversary Exhibition: Celebrations! Is currently on display at the Jean & Ross Fischer gallery at the AGH until March 3, 2019. Admission is free and more information on the exhibit, and future WAAH shows, exhibitions and events can be found at www.waah.ca.
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After 27 of walking from Toronto to Hamilton, Abedar Kamgari and her crew of four were overcome by a wave of exhaustion as they dipped their swollen feet in buckets of ice water.
The crew stayed patient and supportive as Abedar silently travelled through concrete jungle, open land and back to the familiar sidewalks of downtown Hamilton. With each step of the journey, Abedar was recalling memories and experiences of being a refugee and immigrant.
Abedar’s 27-hour video, family archives and historical artwork from other Hamilton-based artists make up The Journey West exhibit currently in display at the Art Gallery of Hamilton.
The visual artist and McMaster University fine arts graduate had always been invested in social issues. Art became a way of communicating her ideas, starting conversation and addressing issues around her.
“It’s not necessarily from a desire to share my story, it’s more from a desire to address or [critically] think about things that are happening, that affect me and everyone else, in different ways,” explained Abedar.
“If you go into the gallery during that time, there’s nothing happening, which can be kind of frustrating, but I wanted to be honest in that way and portray the duration of it. I felt like if I put cuts into that video, then people wouldn’t understand the physicality of the duration.”
Abedar Kamgari
Artist
The Journey West is a performance-for-video inspired by Abedar’s two-year experience as a refugee in Turkey after leaving Iran by boat and train with her mother. Abedar wanted to address larger social issues by looking inwards.
“It’s not only heavily influenced by my own memories but my mom also kept thorough diaries from that time, I had to beg her to let me read them. A lot of the narrative that comes through is me embodying my own experiences and hers because I felt like my experience as a refugee was so tied to hers,” explained Abedar.
“I was a kid so everything I was experiencing, I experienced through her lens because I was always looking up to her and she was the only person I had.”
The Journey West is a rendition of the refugee and immigrant narrative with raw emotions, passages and recollections of Abedar’s family history. Abedar wanted to capture the entirety of the journey and even included eight hours of darkness as she slept overnight.
“If you go into the gallery during that time, there’s nothing happening, which can be kind of frustrating, but I wanted to be honest in that way and portray the duration of it. I felt like if I put cuts into that video, then people wouldn’t understand the physicality of the duration,” said Abedar.
The journey was physically exhausting, but Abedar also carried the emotional weight of loneliness and fear that refugees often feel, with every step of the way. She recalled that at the time she was in Turkey, her experience felt like a drawn out period of anxiously waiting.
“There were a couple diary entries by mom where she’s talking about her friends in Turkey, and when we were leaving she felt like she didn’t have any genuine connections to anyone and she felt very alone,” said Abedar.
“I was really interested in thinking about that as I was walking, so I wasn’t communicating with anyone, it was just all me walking in that space.”
Abedar choose to put herself in a vulnerable space in order to explore her interest in diaspora, displacement and evolving notions of shared culture heritage. Art is her tool in making connections to not only her own legacy, but the formative issues that impact others around her.
The Journey West will be on display at the Art Gallery of Hamilton until Mar. 18, 2018.
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By: Michael Dennis
“I think I have seen a light shining strong across the river, the day will slowly overcome this cold… I keep paddling firmly, and deep within I smile… there is a voice calling me, ‘keep rowing, keep going!’”
These are the words that open Izad Etemadi’s play We Are Not the Others, a play that aims to explore immigrant struggles through the real stories of immigrant women in Hamilton.
The performance was held at the Art Gallery of Hamilton from Nov. 11 to 13, and is the result of months of collaboration between students of McMaster’s School of Social Work, members of Hamilton’s Immigrant Working Center and writer/director Izad Etemadi.
Many of the stories presented in the play were collected from the research conducted by Prof. Mirna Carranza from McMaster’s School of Social Work.
“The show is based off of research. Everything in this show has happened to someone in this city, which I think is the coolest part of it,” explained Etemadi.
“I have tried really hard to keep their words as close to what they said in the interviews.”
Through a display of monologue, song and poetry, the play provides a multifaceted view into the lives of immigrants and the struggles they have to endure in order to live a normal life.
“People are not fully aware of the systems in place for immigrants in Canada. Sometimes it’s really set up for failure,” said Etemadi.
“We want to showcase the real struggles that these women have to go through. Not only taking care of their children, supporting their husbands and getting recertified in whatever field they studied back home, but also working 12 hours a day in a job that is hard on their bodies, and trying to navigate this new world in a system that is sometimes unhelpful.”
The play explores many of the barriers that prevent a smooth transition to Canada, such as language.
From being unable to make friends on the playground to not being able to find fulfilling work, without being fluent in English, many immigrants find themselves alone in an unforgiving society.
“We want people to feel those struggles,” said Etemadi.
“Maybe when they are in a grocery store and someone can’t speak English very well, instead of jumping to judging them in a negative way… maybe think ‘what has this person had to go through just to get here’ and ‘why can’t they speak English?’… There is one story that we have… of a woman who says, ‘I never had the privilege to learn the language, because I had to work whatever job I could.’”
Yet, as Etemadi explained, theatre allows us to develop deep and personal connections to individuals we would otherwise never meet, it allows us to move past labeling someone as “the other.”
For example, a woman from Mexico comes to Canada and finds love, only to be confronted with a number of challenges. She struggles to provide for a husband with a progressing illness, and to pay the mounting bills while her husband is unable to work.
It is through the work of a compassionate social worker, however, that she is able to start caring for herself and find a community where she had none.
The play closes the same way it opened, with poetry. “We are not the others, we are just like you, we may have not been born here, but we belong here too.”
The play reminds us to reconsider what we call ‘the other’ and to listen and empathize rather than judge.
Moving forward, Etemadi and Carranza hope to use this performance as an education tool and to make it freely available through the School of Social Work’s website so that all students can listen and learn.
The Art Gallery of Hamilton’s annual film festival is back for its eighth year and is featuring dozens of remarkable and decorated films from across the world. Check out some films in this year’s line-up that the Silhouette is most excited for and that you definitely do you want to miss.
Thursday, October 20, 2016
1. Sing Street
4:00 pm at Cineplex Cinemas Ancaster
An official selection for the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival, 2015 London Film Festival and 2016 Sundance Film Festival, the John Carney directed Sing Street follows a teenager in 1985 Dublin who attempts to balance being the new kid at school, discord at home and a bright-eyed dream of becoming one of the most iconic rock stars of his era. We take a look at how the fledgling musician begins to write songs and make DIY videos to how his confidence grows to fulfill his big dreams.
2. Ixcanul
9:00 pm at AGH Annex
Director Jayro Bustamante takes audiences on a glorious ride in this stunning drama that expertly intertwines documentary and fable. An official selection of the 2015 Berlin International Film Festival and the 2015 Toronto International Film festival, this film features two young Mayan lovers who attempt to escape from a remote Guatemalan coffee plantation to live their lives in the United States, a land they believe where dreams come true.
Friday, October 21, 2016
1. Driving with Selvi
7:00 pm at AGH Joey and Tanenbaum Pavillion
Driving with Selvi dives deep into India’s patriarchal culture with a former child bride named Selvi who found herself married into a violent and abusive marriage. One day, she chooses to escape and soon becomes South India’s first female taxi driver. Directed by Elisa Paloschi, this documentary follows Selvi’s incredible transformation from a timid, soft-spoken runway to the founder of a taxi company and an educator for women in India.
Saturday, October 22, 2016
1. The Measure of a Man
7:00 pm at the AGH Annex
Stéphane Brizé’s drama feature is perhaps one of the most highly-anticipated films at this year’s festival. Vincent Lindon, who plays the film’s titular character Thierry, won the Best Actor Award at both the renowned 2015 Cannes Film Festival and 2016 César Awards. After being unemployed for 18 months having lost his job as a factory worker, Thierry begins a new job as a security guard in a supermarket at the age of 51. In the job, he finds himself faced with a moral dilemma and must decide whether his job is worth it.
2. Dheepan
9:00 pm at the AGH Annex
Winner of the prestigious Palme d’Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, Dheepan is a tour-de-force saga from acclaimed director Jacques Audiard that stars three strangers who find themselves united by circumstance and common struggle. In order to escape the civil war in Sri Lanka, a former soldier, a young woman and an little girl pose as a family and end up in France. On the streets of Paris, this makeshift family deals with another kind of violence and powerfully embodies the immigrant experience.
Sunday, October 23, 2016
1. Boy & the World
1:00 pm at the AGH Annex
Directed by Alê Abreu, Boy & the World is a 2016 Academy Award Nominee in the Best Animated Feature Film category and has racked up over forty accolades in various film festivals. Hailed as one of the most brilliant animations to have graced the silver screen in recent years, this film is a cautionary tale of globalization and discusses the dangers of massification of the economy, of the mind and of the soul through the lens of eclectic imagery.
2. Calling Occupants
4:00 pm or 5:30 pm at the AGH Annex
Q&A with director Mitch Fillion to follow the screenings
This screening will mark the World Premiere of Mitch Fillion’s sci-fi drama, where a young man and his friends attempt to contact and establish a peaceful relationship with extra-terrestrial beings. The film follows the group of friends as they embark on their quest for the truth as they interview the world’s top UFO researchers, abductees and lobbyists.
If Xavier Dolan’s past films immersed you in an atmosphere of tense cacophony, It’s Only The End of The World drowns you in it. Nabbing the Grand Prix at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, Dolan’s newest film was featured in film festivals across the globe. In fact, it most recently graced the silver screen at the Art Gallery of Hamilton’s annual Film Fest, bringing the French-Canadian director’s “most proudest work” back a little closer to home. It’s Only the End of the World is oppressive and relishes in the madness of it’s characters. It induces a sense of claustrophobia that makes the viewer feel as though the entire world is closing in on them, only to realize that every argument and disaster comes to an eventual, cathartic end.
The film centres around Louis (Gaspard Ulliel), a terminally-ill playwright who returns home after his 12 year absence to deliver a difficult message to his family: his impending death. His absence – reasons unknown to the audience – has resulted in boundless pain to an already dysfunctional family, a pain that is only exacerbated by his return to loved ones so conflicted about their feelings for him. There is both pride — his mother’s (Nathalie Baye) clippings of his achievements as a playwright in the big city — and intense spasmodic resentment that arises when his siblings, Suzanne (Léa Seydoux) and Antoine (Vincent Cassel), are reminded of what it meant to have no contact with one of their own for so long, to be abandoned. This uncomfortable family reunion is a pressure cooker of anxiety, and marks the first time Louis meets Antoine’s wife, Catherine (Marion Cotillard). It is ironic, because each character’s pain masks them to Louis’ obvious state of turmoil. They consider his palpable anxiety to spawn from a desire to be gone from them, missing that he is uncomfortable because he cannot get a word in to tell them he is dying amidst all the screaming and dysfunction.
With its plot surrounding a very common theme – the dramatic reunion of a deeply broken family – the film could’ve very easily fallen flat. However, Dolan assembled an A-list French cast that carried the film through with immersive intensity. Perhaps, then, the most successful part of this film is its casting. In particular, Cotillard is captivating as Antoine’s submissive wife, Catherine. She seems to understand what Louis had travelled all this way to say without the exchange of a single word, and is sensitive to the brash dynamics of the family. It doesn’t take long for the audience to see the family through her doe eyes, and we can’t help but empathize for this soft soul thrust into a cataclysmic situation. Seydoux stuns as the epitome of an ambition-less stoner as Suzanne, Louis’ youngest sister. She both respects and resents Louis, admiring him for his achievements but loathing him for not taking her along with him. Capping off the impressive roster of performances is Baye, who plays Louis flamboyant, widowed mother with a dramatic tour-de-force and a blue eyeshadow that matches the shade of her cobalt necklace and ostentatious personality.
Although It’s Only the End of the World is not Dolan’s best work (it can sometimes feel overly theatrical and drag on), it still conveys the captivating, spine-tingling discomfort that is so unique to his other films. The insufferable loneliness that each character experiences is so palpable that it feels like a sustained assault on the viewer. The palette is dim and oppressive throughout the film, until the final argument climaxes to a bright, orange cathartic sunset. Louis looks ill for the entire 1 hour and 37 minutes, but a different kind of malaise permeates throughout. However, the darkness of the plot is balanced with Louis’ flashbacks of less distressing times, where the sudden influx of cooler tones and happier images feel like an injection of euphoria into a family reunion that is filled with equal measures love and hate; pain and joy; piercing screams of frustration and hushed words of eternal, unconditional adoration.
Mary Anderson, who earned her PhD at McMaster, was given an award for her extensive community work.
He built a bridge in Hamilton, and three connecting Canada to the United States. He opened the Royal Botanical Gardens. And most significantly to students, he spearheaded McMaster’s move from Toronto to Hamilton. And yet now, 84 years after his death, Thomas Baker McQuesten is largely forgotten by the city he helped to shape.
Mary Anderson is hoping to change that.
“It’s wonderful to be able to tell the world what [Thomas McQuesten] did,” she said in an interview last week.
Anderson, who holds a PhD from McMaster in English, has dedicated her work to bringing the story of the McQuesten family back into the spotlight. She has written two books and three plays on the subject, and was presented a McMaster Alumni Hamilton Community Impact Award on Sept. 25 for her efforts.
The inspiration for this work came from a visit to Whitehern, the former McQuesten estate that has since been converted into a museum. Upon reading a sample of the letters the family had written, Anderson changed her focus of study from Irish poetry to the McQuesten family’s writings.
“[I was] entranced by them for their literary quality, for their depth of knowledge of history and science and city, Ontario politics, everything.”
With the help of a dozen students, she worked to digitize the 4000 letters the family had written. The content of the letters is now available online, along with a some photos from Whitehern’s collection.
Her most recent book, Tragedy & Triumph: Ruby & Thomas B. McQuesten, released in 2011, takes the content of those letters and tells the tale of the McQuestens’ lives, from the family bankruptcy, to Ruby’s premature death, to Tom’s political career.
She said the book wrote itself and described it as a “labour of love.”
While dramatic, Anderson feels the story of the McQuestens is also significant to the city. In recognizing Thomas as the “forgotten builder,” she feels Hamilton can solidify its sense of identity.
“Hamilton is so resistant to promoting Hamilton…[it] doesn’t know it’s important,” she said. But Anderson and McQuesten agree that the city is important, and that McMaster is a major part of that.
“Our whole development has been along mechanics lines,” McQuesten wrote in a letter, as found in Anderson’s book. “Hamilton has become too much a factory town. [McMaster] is the first break toward a broader culture and higher educational development.”
As a proponent of the “city beautiful” philosophy, Thomas McQuesten also aimed to improve the appearance of Hamilton through the establishment of parks, believing that if people were surrounded by natural beauty, it would inspire morality, making them better citizens.
Anderson is happy to be receiving an award for her work, but explains she would be involved in the community no matter what.
“It’s what I do,” she said of her community outreach. She is a member of the Hamilton Historical Board, Hamilton Arts Council, and the Tower Poetry Society.
Her Alumni Hamilton Community Impact Award is one of three awarded this year, presented at the Art Gallery of Hamilton on Sept. 25.
The other recipients were Dr. Jean Clinton, for her work in public and non-profit health intiatives, and Laurie Kennedy and Dr. Dyanne Semogas from the School of Nursing, for their leadership in the McMaster Student Outreach Collaborative.
On July 7, the Art Gallery of Hamilton opened the Design Annex on James Street North. Located in the same building as CBC Hamilton, the Design Annex is thoroughly slick, with warm lighting, exposed brick walls and restored ceiling tiles from the 1920s.
The Design Annex sells art, furniture and other home-related items from Canadian artists and designers.
“We found that we were losing a lot of social, cultural and economic impact of the design industry from people who were interested in these products having to go out of Hamilton,” said Mark Stewart, the AGH’s Director of Commercial Activities.
The back of the Design Annex can be rented and will also be used for music performances, and the space allows the AGH to be more diverse in its featured artists.
“At the AGH, we’re what’s considered a category ‘A’ gallery, which means that we can host and show exhibitions from any gallery in the world. In order to do that, we have to meet very strict international requirements related to security, humidity and temperature. But we don’t have those qualifications in place at the Annex,” said Stewart.
The diversity of the art at the Design Annex makes it seem like a place that would appeal to many different kinds of people, and this diversity is important for the kind of vibrant street that Jane Jacobs imagined.
She writes in the seminal Death and Life of Great American Cities that city districts must serve multiple purposes so that people are drawn to a street at all times, and ideally the afternoon furniture shoppers at the Design Annex would be replaced by evening restaurant customers, then followed by the late-night bar crowd.
It’s clear that James Street North is changing, but what is less certain is how these changes can benefit everyone.
“Instead of initiating an operation that emphasizes the social and economic disparity that exists in Hamilton, the AGH could have given thought to programs that help people to understand and appreciate the value of art and what artists do,” said Bryce Kanbara, who helped found Hamilton Artists Inc. in 1975 and owns of the You Me gallery on James North.
“The on-the-street location could have created possibilities for on-the-street involvement”.
Given that one third of the Art Gallery of Hamilton’s annual budget comes from federal, provincial and municipal public funds, it seems reasonable to think that the AGH could reach out to more of the community.
“I have often thought that AGH could designate itself a cooling centre in the summer,” said Kanbara. “It has terrific AC. Folks at Jackson Square need only to cross King Street”.
“For us, there was certainly a conversation of how to best integrate into the street, respect what’s going on here and help do things that are for the benefit of everybody involved,” said Mark Stewart.
While the AGH and the Design Annex have good intentions with their involvement in James North, it will be important that the conversation between the James North community and the AGH continues so that by telling one story about the street, another isn’t overlooked.
