Ethnocultural Art Histories Research Group: Exhibition Review

Territorial Re-Marks

This year’s Montreal-Brooklyn has made possible the first encounter between two vibrant East Coast contemporary art scenes involving a total of 16 institutions and 40 artists across both cities. As part this collaborative project the gallery Articule presented an exhibition entitled: Territorial Re-Marks (October 19 – November 25, 2012) which showcases two artists from Montreal: Jérome Havre and Michelle Lacombe and two artists from Brooklyn: Emily Roz and Patricia Smith. The works displayed within Articule’s space explore different meanings of the term ‘territory,’ including the cultural, political, physical and natural. I thought it would be interesting and relevant to write about the production of Jérome Havre, whose art production deals with subjects pertinent to the realm of ethnocultural arts discourses such as stereotypes, identity and ethnocentrism.

Notions of territorial limitations are deeply entrenched within post-colonial and racial theory discourses. Nikos Papastergiadis observed that since the 80’s the term ‘territories’ has offered the dual sense of the horizon toward and the ground upon which identities and social rights can be situated.[i] Jerome Havre’s aesthetic draws upon his own cultural heritage ( Havre was born in France and is of Caribbean descent) as well as other cultures. His body of work transcends physical and geographical boundaries by means of adaptation, transnationalism, and hybridity. Through his creative mise en scene he demonstrates that racialized conversations are not bound by nations but also span across communities which that create a space in-between home and place of origin. Arjen Mulder once suggested that no one has a single culture any longer everyone participates in a multiplicity of ‘culture.’[ii]

We see this concept embodied in Havre’s Object de travail, presented in Territorial Re-marks. The work is a sculpture where fiber is intertwined with an utilitarian object and form a hybrid cross-referential piece that offers multiple points of entry into a socio-cultural dialogue. A vertically standing paddle is wrapped with colorful and sculptural shaped fabric. The paddle seems to refer to different stage of mobility since the tool embodies departure as well as arrival. The patch work fabric forms warm and colorful patterns that recall an aerial landscape view but also calls to mind 19th century Dutch wax print, commonly known as ‘African fabric.’ The object is thus charged with both colonialist history and cultural appropriation, and both social phenomenons are related to migration experience. Colonial powers, particularly the Dutch and the English, played heavy roles in industrializing the batik production techniques and popularizing the resulting textiles in foreign markets.[iii] By evoking the Dutch Wax print’s socio-political history of production Havre subverts physical territorial boundaries. His sculpture becomes symbolic territory by displacement and cultural inheritance. This parallel could be also transposed on the paddle which is an utilitarian object made to relocate one’s self, but on this occasion, the object is standing in the gallery as a symbol of the act of mobility, its displacement enriching its meaning.

Next to the sculpture, a photographic piece called Anthropologie de l’image evokes venture tourism, an activity with a long history going back to the Victorian era. Missionaries, anthropologists or curious entrepreneurs undertook expeditions in foreign lands to encounter the “other”, “the primitive” and perhaps civilise them. In this case, a small group composed of westerners is depicted in a pirogue in a tropical setting, but Havre uses this familiar imagery to challenge the viewer by intentionally applying coloured dots over the tourists’ faces. By strategically blurring the tourists’ identities Havre disrupts the Western-centric narrative of discovery and colonization. His visual superposition challenges this discourse by transforming the tourists into the strange “other,” displacing the dismissive practice of “othering” as well as challenging established imperialistic social strata or what can also be designated as social ‘territories’.

To conclude this short article, I would say that in a whole I have found the thematic exploration of Territorial Re-Marks is a bit scattered and nebulous. There was a presence of the concept but in a vast conceptual manner. Actually, there was an obvious aesthetic pairing between Montreal and Brooklyn artists, so we can denote that the curator did want to contrast similar aesthetics alongside dissimilarities in practices, but it still at some point felt a bit disjointed. I believed that the pairing of the artist Michelle Lacombe and Emily Ross was relevant since they both have an imaginative approach relating to conscious ways of mapping social and communal territories by drawing lines. As for Jerôme Havre and Patricia Smith, I thought that the pairing was more focused on the presence of a borrowed African aesthetic than the discourse behind their art. Articule presented great works, but I did not personally think that the selection was harmonious.

[i] Nikos Papastergiadis, The Complicities of Culture :Hibridity and ‘New Internationalism’, (Manchester: Conerhouse, 1994), 89

[ii] Arjen Mulder , Transurbanism" V2 Publishing (2002): 8.

[iii] Eccentric Yoruba " “African Fabrics”: The History of Dutch Wax Prints " Beyond Victoriana a Multicultural Perspective on Steampunk, Apr.. 10, 2011 (http://beyondvictoriana.com/2011/04/10/african-fabrics-the-history-of-dutch-wax-prints-guest-blog-by-eccentric-yoruba/)