At Supercrawl this weekend, Hamilton photographer Jessie Golem brought an interactive, human face to the premature cancellation of the universal basic income pilot project through her photo exhibit Humans of Basic Income.
Ten portraits of individuals whose lives had been radically changed by the premature cancellation stood outside Centre 3 for Print and Media Arts on James Street North. Several recipients of the basic income pilot sat in front of the photo display, sharing with passersby their own personal experiences.
Universal basic income was introduced as an experimental pilot project by the provincial Liberal government in 2017 in order to sustainably reduce poverty. Four thousand eligible people from Hamilton, Brantford, Brant County, Thunder Bay and Lindsay received monthly basic income payments to help cover living expenses and improve quality of life.
Golem started the Humans of Basic Income project to humanize the issues associated with cancelling the project through the power of visual storytelling. Prior to this weekend’s exhibit, the photographs only existed online. Golem used Facebook and Twitter to share the photos.
Part of what made the Supercrawl exhibit unique was the ability to have face-to-face interactions with basic income recipients.
“[It’s about] taking what's a political issue and putting a human face to it and saying, well these are the people that are being affected,” Golem said.
The exhibit explores how basic income gave some people the freedom to pursue other passions and interests. Margie Goold, one of the volunteers at the exhibit, was able to take a digital camera course at Mohawk college, an opportunity she wouldn’t have been able to afford otherwise.
Basic income also allowed Hamilton resident Lance Dingman to pay for his prosthetic leg. This allowed him to save up funds for prosthetics that he will need in the not so distant future. Most importantly, basic income gave Dingman the autonomy to live his life as he chooses.
“Basic income for me has given me the life that I have been striving a long time [for], to make it better, to make it richer, to make it more independent for myself,” explained Dingman.
The original intention was to continue the project on an experimental basis for three years and then assess its effectiveness. However, the Ford government cancelled the pilot program in July and announced that payments will stop at the end of March.
Through the photographs and experiences being shared during the Supercrawl exhibit, the narrative is consistent. A premature cancellation of the pilot project threatens to uproot the lives that it had helped people to build for themselves.
Recipients made life-changing decisions based on the expectation of receiving monthly payments for the entirety of the pilot program. Scraping the income will lock individuals into leases they can’t afford and disrupt their studies at colleges and universities.
Furthermore, recipients that applied for other sources of financial support on the understanding that they would be receiving basic income payments, are now stuck in between assistance programs, with no certainty about where their financial support will come from.
Lynn Ridsdale, another volunteer at the exhibit, notes that high living costs in Hamilton made universal basic income even more important. In particular, basic income helped her to find suitable, accessible housing, despite the steadily increasing cost of rent in Hamilton.
As Hamilton’s arts scene attracts investment and development, living expenses rise and many can no longer afford to live in Hamilton. New cafes, galleries and condominiums wipe away the visual signs of poverty in the city, and the bustle of Supercrawl makes it easy to forget about the consequences that come alongside the city’s development.
#basicincome gives people stability and dignity.
Heartbreaking stories of what the loss of the program means.
Grateful to have heard from Jessie Golem yesterday, who started the Humans of Basic Income project @HumansBasic. pic.twitter.com/FVoHTDLeQ2
— Kevin (@KevinHLam) September 16, 2018
Golem hopes that the project will help continue the conversation about poverty.
“I don’t want this conversation to die down and just become another political issue…I want people to think about the conversation, think about what poverty looks like,” explained Golem.
The Humans of Basic Income exhibit brings Hamiltonians face to face with the reality of what it is like to navigate life in the city while experiencing poverty. The exhibit’s photographs, media reach and real-life interactions at Supercrawl have created a platform for Hamilton residents to share their experiences with the community at large.
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By: Nicole Vasarevic
Do Ho Suh’s art installation, 348 West 22nd St, Apt A, New York, NY 10011 (bathroom) is currently part of the Are You Experienced? exhibit at the Art Gallery Of Hamilton. The first time this piece caught my attention was in my media critique course last week. I am not a contemporary art freak. Going to the AGH to see Do Ho Suh’s installation was the first time I’ve stepped foot in an art exhibit that was not a required class trip.
The piece is a life scale model of the bathroom where Do Ho Suh grew up and is part of a larger installation of the whole apartment 348 West 22nd St, Apt A, New York, NY 10011. I have never stepped foot in this said apartment, however the reasoning behind his installation is all too familiar.
Moving away from home is a shock, whether your home is four hours away or, as in my case, 45 minutes. You leave behind your place of childhood and transition into a new “adult” life. Moving out means leaving behind that security blanket that is being a child. The idea that your actions are thoughts do not have a permanent effect on your future has been left behind.
Do Ho Suh’s installation leaves you feeling empty and unprepared. The blueish transparent walls allow you to look into the most private room of a home. The piece stirs the nostalgic and uncomfortable feelings that come when thinking about childhood. The quiet and stillness of the art exhibit amplifies that uncomfortable feeling that resonates off the piece.
I felt as though I shouldn’t have been looking at this bathroom – I was peering into someone’s private thoughts. A bathroom is so much more that just a small space with a toilet and a bathroom. It is the only place while growing up where you are completely yourself, by yourself. The bathroom is where you can hide and be alone with your thoughts.
Do Ho Suh’s piece turns an everyday space into a case of loneliness, nostalgia and the unsettling truth that you are not a child anymore.
Radiation and art history are typically not disciplines that feed off one another, but a new exhibit at the McMaster Museum of Art does just that.
The Unvarnished Truth, which opened on Sept. 5, seeks to find the hidden secrets of renaissance paintings. The exhibit uses modern screening and radiation technologies to examine painting technique, materials and even the hidden works of art under the famous paintings.
Nearly 30 researchers were involved with the project, from engineers to historians. Brandi Lee MacDonald is one of these researchers.
MacDonald conceived the idea for the exhibit in 2010. She studied anthropology throughout her undergraduate and graduate degrees at McMaster, eventually focusing on pigment and its use throughout human history.
Over the course of her work on the exhibit, she was also able to work with radiation. By combining radiation with anthropology and art history, she was able to discover the secrets of paintings within McMaster’s collection. MacDonald began working in the university’s nuclear reactor during her undergrad, and was excited to put that experience to use.
Through the exhibit, her painstaking research has finally come to life. The nine paintings in the exhibit all yield exciting new information about the work and the artist. MacDonald’s personal favourite is a Van Gogh painting which, when scrutinized using radiation, showed an earlier, incomplete portrait. “It was obvious he had scrapped [the portrait] and painted the landscape over top,” MacDonald said.
While the hidden treasures have been rewarding, MacDonald has also enjoyed seeing the real world applications of research techniques she was taught. She believes her research is important in the way it makes this newfound information accessible to the masses.
The Unvarnished Truth will remain in the McMaster Museum of Art until Dec. 19, after which it will tour other galleries across the country. While it remains in Hamilton, there will be numerous events focusing on the initiative, from tours to guest lectures to panel discussions, many of which will be lead by MacDonald.
Photo Credit: Jon White/Photo Editor
The Museum hours are as follows:
By: Alex Florescu
This past Saturday, Nov. 1 marked the opening of The World is an Apple at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, an exhibit dedicated to nineteenth century French painter Paul Cézanne.
Benedict Leca, the exhibit curator, has studied Cézanne for years and said the artist “has got this kind of power that is very hard to put your finger on. Even the Impressionists right from the get-go when he arrived in Paris in the 1860s were [thinking that] this guy [was] packing something.”
While avant-garde artists like Picasso, Monet and Matisse revered his talent, the general public was not of the same opinion. Leca recounted how “even in 1906, he was big enough by that time that people were talking about the need to include his still lives in the French national collections and they were still all sorts of heavy museum people in France who were like ‘over my dead body.’”
Looking at Cézanne’s Apples and cakes (Pommes et gateaux) hanging on the wall, it is clear to see that his method of painting wasn’t exactly conventional.
“He paints this apple in rough strokes and he paints the background, the wallpaper, in the same way. Usually a regular painter would paint this dish with a tiny brush so that the surface becomes smooth like ceramic.” Back then, this kind of rule-breaking left “people absolutely shocked…they were thinking that this guy is crazy and needs to be locked up.”
Even today, Cézanne is “an acquired taste, he is not as immediately beautiful as say, Monet’s Water Lilies.” This is exactly what makes him so idiosyncratic. Leca would argue that “he communicates a rich imagination and intuition that people still respond to.” With Cézanne, the details of each painting are as important as the painting as a whole.
“Every single touch that he puts down means [something], it’s not just random.”
When asked what the one message he would want people to take away from the exhibit is, Leca responded by saying that “[Cézanne] is a really imaginative guy. I have taught college classes before where students have said they see the face in the clouds, and with any other artist I would [have to tell them] no, there are no portraits in the clouds.”
With Cézanne it’s different, “he allows you to do that, whatever you see is like poetry.”
Leca recognizes that it might be hard for university students to relate to Cézanne’s work, recounting how he wasn’t into art history as an undergrad and would skip classes as a result of that.
The exhibit is open to the public until Feb. 8, 2015. A trip to see Cézanne’s exhibit between now and then would engage the imagination of even those who don’t consider themselves into art.
By: Alex Florescu
If you were an art museum director and you were deciding on an exhibit theme, what would you pick to be your display? Of all the options under consideration, would books be one of them? Probably not.
The McMaster Museum of Art strays from the norm, having an entire exhibit dubbed The Art of the Book. All of the books come entirely from one source – Rabbi Baskin, a generous benefactor who donated over 1,000 volumes to the university museum. It is entirely because of his contributions that visitors to the museum can view the 16th-century Spanish imprints that cover the exhibit walls, or be close enough to touch an 1876 edition of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Adding to the collection are prints by private press editor Leonard Baskin, the Rabbi’s brother.
It is these prints by Baskin that seem to be a dominant and reoccurring presence in the exhibit. Two of his prints stood out to me, with the first one being a simplistic ink drawing of a flower with detailing around it. What I loved about the piece is that the details have not been drawn on. Instead, the background has been inked in black, while the flower and other parts of the “drawing” are starch white, unchanged from the original piece of paper.
The second of these pieces is a large mural of a man, created solely by overlapping black lines. What is remarkable is that when looking at this mural, it seems as if the pen was never lifted from the paper. Rather, it appears as if the entire piece was created in one continuous motion. While it is essentially just an outline, the man portrayed has impressive form and three-dimensionality. The varying thickness and repetition of black inked lines make the man’s calf muscles look as if they are bulging and his face appear to be hiding half in the shadows.
The books themselves were interesting, mostly because they are incredibly antique. The careful detail that went into the calligraphy and penmanship of these volumes is evident, and the illustrations are simplistic but beautifully done. While they are encased behind glass and cannot be reached, you get the sense that they are so old that they could crumble the second you touched them.
While there were prints and books that I found fascinating, there were also other pieces of the exhibit that did not impress me as much. Many of the prints featured grotesque half-animal, half-human composites that were slightly too morbid for my taste. Some of them had deformed faces, with misplaced eyes and mouths. Others were entire bird bodies that also happened to feature human anatomical parts. While they weren’t necessarily pieces of art I would put up in my own home, I could definitely recognize that to others, the pieces would have meant a lot more.
While The Art of the Book isn’t exactly my favourite exhibit, it features many interesting pieces – especially for a literary nerd fascinated by old copies of classic novels. On the other hand, the prints that hang on the wall definitely offer something for those into modern art; and if none of the above interests you, then it wouldn’t make for a bad place to curl up and do your readings for the day.
By: Alexandra Florescu
Your thin fall jacket is no match for the whipping wind, the crowd is a tide of people standing shoulder-to-shoulder and your head has started to ache from the pounding music.
For those who attended Hamilton’s annual festival called Supercrawl, the previous description might have applied to you. At the very least, it applied to me. I had gone on a mission over to James Street North with a couple of friends on Sept. 12 to enjoy the live music, art and food vendors. However, after a few hours of admiring the attractions, we decided to pick an indoor art exhibit at random and explore it away from the cold and bustle of the street.
We happened upon an exhibit named Art Forms Youth Art Studio. After walking through a brick-walled corridor, we came upon a cavernous room whose white walls were covered with art. Initially, there was nothing that quite caught my eye. The wall to the left had an array of hanging photographs, in the back there was a video projection and in the center of the room there was a geometric art installation. Walking around the dimly lit room, I happened to stop in front of an informational poster on the exhibit.
As it turns out, we had unknowingly walked into an exhibit put on by Art Forms, a youth arts organization that provides free weekly visual arts sessions, acting classes and dance programs to 16 to 25-year- olds of the Hamilton community, specifically targeting at-risk youth. What I had previously believed to be just another Supercrawl art exhibit turned out to be unlike all the rest in one key factor – this exhibit was created with the artists, not the audience, in mind. With a renewed understanding, I turned back to the pieces I had already seen in order to truly acknowledge them for what they were.
To the left was a wall adorned with photographs of the youth that had participated in the program and poems or stories they had written. While the poems painted a dark image of what life for these troubled teens looked like, the photographs were what struck me. Some featured people laughing, others had people singing, and in some they were playing musical instruments. Moreover, their smiles bore no traces of a difficult life, their demeanor light and jubilant. Through something as simple as a photograph, it was clear to see that Art Forms had given them the chance at life without addiction, or homelessness, or illness.
To the right of the wall, in the center of the room, there was an art installation made of a wood frame draped in a tapestry of bright, mismatched cloth. The shape and size of a small tent, it was impossible to miss. The wooden frame supported what seemed to be a shelter; its duality was apparent in its role as both an art piece and a comment on homelessness. Despite all this, the installation seemed hopeful. Strings of lights within the tent caused it to glow from the inside, the warm-yellow light filtering through the cloth as if it were a giant lantern. At points throughout the structure, the cloth was not secured to the wooden posts. Rather, it was left to trail out as if it were billowing in the wind. In other parts, cloth was interjected with pieces of paper scribed in black writing.
As I studied the vibrant reds and purples of the cloth, I noticed a crowd growing towards the back corner of the exhibit. The object of their fixation was, what I discovered to be, not quite an art piece. On the wall there was a long piece of white paper with only the outline of a large, sideways triangle and the title “Tell Me a Story… (True or False)” displayed across the top.
Underneath the poster was a box of coloured crayons that people could use contribute whatever they wished to the piece. Some lines people chose to write were inspirational, others comedic, and others confessional. What was clear, however, was that every person that walked by took the time to read the wall before making his or her own contribution. Starting at first with a few lines like “A life without reflections is not worth living” to “It all happened because I went in the labyrinth,” the mural soon became cluttered with each person’s distinct scrawl. Incredibly imaginative and well executed, the wall got a plethora of praises for its ingenuity and interactive nature. Yet this mural was not the only piece to which the public could contribute.
A table bearing the sign “Create Your Own Hamilton” had been located outside the venue all night, but as the night drew to a close, it was brought inside. The piece consisted of a metal wire frame draped in long rectangular pieces of fabric. As they had walked by, people had been beckoned to write one thing that would improve the city of Hamilton on his or her own piece of fabric. Upon completion, their piece of fabric would be added to the collage already building on top of the metal frame. The finished product resembled a pile of trash, but the vibrant colours of the fabric draped over the structure symbolized the hope for a better Hamilton and the hope for at risk youth to rise out of the rubble into a better future.
Unfortunately, having been so wrapped up in the exhibit, I noticed too late that the crowd had left and the doors were being locked. My visit cut shorter than I wished, I left Art Forms with an inexplicable feeling of having discovered a gem underneath the rubble and I vowed to return.
