At a curatorial talk, Junaid stated that the impetus for this exhibition came from John Akomfrah’s Vertigo Sea (also on display at The Rooms). Akomfrah’s wash of water, sound, and history takes viewers through a constantly moving ocean, asking us to consider the oceanic sublime, a space of wonder and magic, violence, destruction, and death. It’s this wash of contradiction that Junaid locates in this place now called Newfoundland and Labrador: a wash of beauty, connection, and foodways, on the one hand, and silence, violence, and haunting, on the other.

Junaid grew up in St. John’s, and she feels the city and its landscape deep in her bones. One might then reasonably expect that she would have encountered stories of Black life during her childhood. But as she observed during her curatorial talk, such stories never formed part of her girlhood education. St. John’s, and Newfoundland and Labrador more broadly speaking, have instead long been imagined as white spaces shaped by Irish and English (and to a much lesser extent French) histories.

Perhaps it’s unsurprising that the overarching theme of the exhibition is that of silence: the silence of forcibly suppressed stories alongside the silence of lost ones. What Carries Us includes not only a variety of works by artists based in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, and the UK, but also archival materials and archaeological artifacts. Taken together, they invite us to reflect on storytelling and identity, and on how we might imagine things differently.

The theme of silence is told perhaps most hauntingly in the form of the garments worn by a man with the initials W.H., an otherwise anonymous sailor of African heritage whose grave in Labrador emerged in the 1980s as a result of coastal erosion. The garments rest alone in a darkened room, their story a reminder that twenty percent of all British and American sailors in the early nineteenth century were black men. What brought W.H. to these shores? How long was he here? Which parts of this place had he visited? Who did he encounter along the way? How did his voice sound? What were his favourite foods? What did he do in his spare time? These are silences we can’t recover; they remain only in shadows.

Meanwhile, Shelley Miller’s Trade (2020), constructed as a series of seemingly edible blue-and-white tiles made of icing sugar, gelatin, and edible inks and arranged in the form of a patchwork tile mural, offers a material commentary on the ways that the unfree labour of enslaved Africans and their descendants in the Caribbean supported and sustained European wealth. I’ve seen such tiles in many Dutch museums over the years, often decorating fireplaces and kitchen walls. Here, however, they tell a very different story, drawing out the triangle trade that linked Newfoundland and Labrador with Africa and the Caribbean. Perhaps because of my own Dutch family histories on my father’s side (histories that tangle simultaneously with Dutch Caribbean colonial histories of slavery and indenture on my mother’s side), this piece stood out most to me. The stickiness. The sweetness. The sugar that binds oppression and wealth together, all of it captured in innocuous blue and white tiles that you can buy in any cheesy tourist shop in the Netherlands. What was the cost of sugar? asks the title of a novel by Surinamese author Cynthia McLeod. What, indeed.

But silence is not just grief-laden or mournful in this exhibition—it’s also pointed, political, and playful. Camille Turner, whose Afronautic Research Lab featured at the 2019 Bonavista Biennale, returns here, locating histories of enslavement not just in faraway Caribbean colonies but also right here in this place. If the island of Newfoundland is seen, today, as an isolated outpost, its history gestures towards a long imbrication in the Atlantic slave trade. Turner’s immersive research lab, which includes not only film but also a table filled with books, archival materials, and the tools of the archival researcher’s trade (pencils, blank paper, magnifying glasses), chronicles the nineteen slave ships constructed here and reminds us that it’s all too easy to separate ourselves from messy, oppressive histories. It also asks us to consider what it means to take up a violent inheritance.

The work of Sonia Boyce takes a playful carnivalesque approach. In “Crop Over” (2007), a two-channel video installation, she chronicles a Caribbean festival, with all the colours, music, and dancing so common to many Caribbean celebrations. But Boyce’s “Crop Over” is playfully—and pointedly—subversive. Her characters dance not just in the streets but also through houses and landmarks created as a result of the trade in slaves and sugar. Stilt-walking folk figures dressed in sequined outfits romp through formal gardens and clamber around staid sitting room furniture. They plant themselves on stone balconies and peer around corners, their presence a mocking reminder of the unruly, colourful bodies whose unfree labour made these great homes possible in the first place. In many ways, “Crop Over” reminded me of the spoken word poetry of El Jones (“Dear Benedict” in particular): it’s cheeky, spirited, pleasure-filled, parodic, and, at the same time, deeply political.

What Carries Us is not a large exhibition. And yet it packs a punch. Each element, from the archival materials to the archaeological artifacts to the artworks, offers an opening towards a reimagining and a retelling of Newfoundland and Labrador and the people who have visited its shores and called it home.

In Nova Scotia and elsewhere people are grappling with the issue of what to do with monuments associated with a painful past, and are asking whether the action of tearing down statues like that of Edward Cornwallis in Halifax helps to redress a history of violence, or whether the removal simply hides or disguises what has happened. In thinking through the dilemma posed by this question, we are forced to consider when it is appropriate to remove a monument, what should happen to it when it is taken down, and what to do with the space left behind. I suggest that the artist and the counter-monument movement have a role in reconciling these issues.

Traditionally, monuments have been erected to glorify an event, person, or ideology. However, the intended meaning of a monument is never fixed but changes depending on the socio-political climate and our understanding of history. When we come to recognize the atrocity or violence of the past, the meaning of the monument changes. It is now a signifier of a painful past and its presence symbolizes pain.

Destroying or removing a monument is an act of distinguishing our contemporary values from offensive actions of the past. Removing a monument like the statue of Cornwallis and leaving the empty pedestal in place indicates an absence: one that is a symbol of decolonization and reconciliation. The empty pedestal represents the stories that have been omitted from the dominant discourse. The action of putting something in the statue’s place could continue to silence these missing stories. But is leaving the empty pedestal enough?

It is impossible to discuss memory and commemoration without looking at the work of James E. Young on Holocaust memorials and the idea of the monument and its role in public memory. He introduced the German concept of Gegendenkmal, which translates to “counter-monument.”

The counter-monument movement emerged in Germany following World War II, as the country was grappling with how to commemorate the atrocities of the Holocaust and its devastating loss. People began to reject traditional monuments and their implied values. They argued that public memorial art and monuments were being built as substitutes for remembering the events, and that the lack of engagement with the monument once built, was in actuality, a way to forget.

Counter-monuments are difficult to define, but, in general, they disrupt dominant narratives through action, performance, or installation in a way that critically draws on the principles of the traditional monument form and its language and values. Despite their connection to traditional monuments, counter-monuments do not always have monumental qualities, according to Young. Rather, he defines them as “brazen, painfully self-conscious memorial spaces conceived to challenge the very premises of their being.”^[1]

Academics, architects, and artists have been deeply engaged with questions regarding how to commemorate the absence of a people as happened in the Holocaust, and also, how such ideas about commemoration can be applied to other complex memorial spaces around the world. Contemporary approaches explore themes of inversion and absence. Prominent forms of these themes might include a focus on site-specificity, abstraction, transparency, reflectivity – often through the use of polished surfaces, the removal of pedestals to bring monuments closer to the ground or even into the ground, and the use of plaques. These contemporary memorial spaces and counter-monuments serve to engage and bring the viewer into the space where they have to make an effort to interpret the multiple meanings of the memorial.^[2]

A significant example of a counter-monument is Horst Hoheisel’s “Aschrott Fountain” in Kassel, Germany. In 1939, at the outbreak of WWII, a fountain designed for the city by architect Karl Roth in 1908 and funded by Jewish entrepreneur Sigmund Aschrott was demolished by local Nazis. In the years following, over 3000 Jews were deported from Kassel and killed. After the war, the fountain was temporarily filled with dirt and flowers planted. Locals called it “Aschrott’s Grave.” In 1984, the city of Kassel invited artists to restore the Aschrott Brunnen Fountain. Hoheisel disagreed with the city’s decision to restore the fountain. In his proposal, he stated that by reconstructing the Aschrott fountain, people in the city would forget why it had been destroyed in the first place, thereby erasing the awful violence. Already, people in Kassel assumed it had been destroyed by British air raids during the war. Instead of rebuilding the fountain, Hoheisel proposed a negative-form monument by inverting a hollow concrete structure of the original fountain’s form into the ground. Viewers engage with the monument by standing on the glass covering the void, looking down through their own reflection into the fountain’s internal structure as ground water runs through it. Young discusses the Aschrott Fountain in Memory and Counter-Memory, asking, “How does one commemorate an absence?” He answers his own question, “In this case, by reproducing it… Hoheisel has left nothing but the visitors themselves standing in remembrance, left to look inward for memory.”^[3]

The intention of the “Aschrott Fountain” is for viewers to engage with the memorial space and to encounter feelings of loss and displacement: to be reminded of the original destruction and devastating void of the Holocaust. This work provides great insight into how contemporary memorial spaces and counter-monuments can help communities decide when it is appropriate to remove a monument or, instead, when to invite artists to find alternative ways to engage viewers with memorial spaces, acknowledge outdated values, and disrupt the invisibility of omitted narratives from dominant discourses of the past.

In 2017, Grade 6-8 students at The Booker School in Port Williams, Nova Scotia, participated in an inquiry-based project surrounding the controversy of the Cornwallis statue. Their teacher, Ms Temma Frecker, was awarded the 2018 Governor General’s Award for Teaching Excellence in History for developing the interdisciplinary project.

The students are regularly encouraged to look at reconciliation issues in Canada. For this project, they learned about the complicated legacy of Edward Cornwallis. They recognized his contributions to history, while also acknowledging that Mi’kmaq peoples have been here for 14,000 years and have suffered directly from his scalping proclamation. A large portion of their work focused on understanding the relationships between Nova Scotia’s British and French settlers and the Mi’kmaq peoples.

Through a holistic approach, the students examined the socio-historical context of the statue by looking at multiple perspectives. This process led them to better understand the reasons why many contemporary groups wanted the statue removed. Though they agreed with this action, the students came up with their own proposal titled, “The Conversation.” The students proposed to remove the statue of Cornwallis from the pedestal and place it on the ground, standing among three additional statues who represent African Nova Scotians, Acadian, and Mi’kmaq histories.

The statues would be accompanied by plaques noting both positive and negative aspects of our history. They chose Grand Chief John Denny Jr. (1841-1918), Viola Desmond (1914-1965), and Noel and Marie Doiron with a child (1684-1758) to join Cornwallis – all facing one another in conversation. The students recognized that each of these figures have something to teach us about Nova Scotian values and important ideas. The interactive space and informational plaques would enable people to learn from and critically question the past and engage with the memorial space.

Projects like this provide an opportunity for real change through discussion and listening to multiple perspectives. In Counter-Memorial Aesthetics, Veronica Tello confirms that “[d]ifferential knowledge is what allows history and counter-memory to perform its critical work: to critique the notion of the singular monument born of a single origin.”^[4] Through critique, the Booker School students came to understand how, together, triumphs, failings, loss, and hardship shape our current realities. Their project and final proposal show how we can approach reconciliation (or reconcili-action) and decolonization through education by looking to counter-monuments as a way to commemorate and include diverse narratives of the past.

Given the removal of the Cornwallis statue and other monuments to Canada’s colonial heritage, we cannot ignore the interesting parallels between the decolonization of Canada and the decommunization of post-Soviet countries in Europe. The removal of monuments and iconography is a central pillar of change in both.

Post-Soviet countries have destroyed or removed statues of Stalin and Lenin and other Soviet iconography from public spaces. Streets, parks, and cultural buildings named after Lenin have been renamed. Thousands of empty pedestals where Lenin once stood are left in place, many with his name still etched in the stone. These monuments represent dependence on and oppression by the former Soviet Union, and their removal is an active symbol of independence through decommunization.

Similarly, the removal of the Cornwallis statue can be seen as a step towards healing, reconciliation, and most of all, action. The physical act of removing this figure shows that the municipality of Halifax recognizes and acknowledges its painful past. It is an action that included Indigenous and non-Indigenous voices together in the process of advancing Canadian reconciliation through decolonization. Across Canada, Indigenous names of place are being recognized and reclaimed. In both cases, though, in post-Soviet decommunization and Canadian decolonization, we must ensure that we are not left with only empty pedestals and debate and no action.

I believe that the counter-monument movement in Europe and the decommunization of post-Soviet countries can be analyzed and applied to our Canadian context. This approach can help us begin to reconcile monuments with a painful past and decide when it is appropriate to remove a statue or monument and what happens when it is taken down.

Rather than erasing Canada’s violent history, I propose that we place it within its historical context through counter-monuments and education. When decisions are made to build or remove monuments and memorial spaces, we need to critically examine their socio-historical context, the current context, what these actions symbolize, and what they may symbolize for future generations (given the ever-changing nature of monuments). When looking at whose history is being commemorated, we also need to recognize the voices of those whose history has been or is being omitted because of our actions.

Counter-monuments and their function as memorials are a site of constant struggle as their meaning and their socio-historic and aesthetic contexts are ever changing. This struggle to memorialize is often embodied in the temporal and ephemeral qualities of counter-monuments, their very temporality reflecting the fleeting nature of memory and the need for it to be continuously revisited.

As suggested by Sue-Anne Ware in Anti-Memorials and the Art of Forgetting, “In this way the design outcomes become physical catalysts for social change.”^[5] For this reason, I see real purpose in not only creating counter-monuments, but also building the components for recognition and reflection into our education system to be revisited over and over again.

Finally, it is important to remember that it is difficult to create a counter-monument without the context of the original. As is the case with the Cornwallis statue, once a monument is removed, the empty pedestal may become a vessel by which we can acknowledge the atrocities of our history.

However, this space must be available for artists and the community to explore. These colonial spaces provide opportunities for dialogue about our national history and how we can take action and move forward as a culture.

^[1] James E. Young, At Memory’s Edge: After-Images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture. (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 2000), 11.

^[2] Quentin Stevens and Karen A. Franck. Memorials As Spaces of Engagement: Design, Use and Meaning. (New York, London: Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group, 2016), 43.

^[3] Young, “Memory and Counter-Memory,” Harvard Design Magazine, Vol. 9, Constructions of Memory: on Monuments Old and New (February 1999, n.p.). (no page number).http://www.harvarddesignmagazine.org/issues/9/memory-and-counter-memory (accessed 21 Feb. 2019).

^[4] Veronica Tello. Counter-Memorial Aesthetics: Refugee Histories and the Politics of Contemporary Art. (London, Oxford, New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), 15.

^[5] Sue-Anne Ware. Anti-Memorials and the Art of Forgetting: Critical Reflections on a Memorial Design Practice. Public History Review, No 1. (UTS ePress and the author, 2008), 75.

Above and below: Mario Doucette, “La dispersion des Acadiens (after Henri Beau),” 91 x 152 cm, oil on wood 2015-2016.

In the summer of 2004, I worked in the gift shop at the beautiful Grand-Pré historic site in the Annapolis Valley, where visitors learn about the history of the Acadian people and their expulsion from their homeland at the hands of the British Army. I had been politely let go from my previous job at a café, due, I suspect, to my penchant for listening to music and daydreaming rather than polishing glassware or serving customers. At the Boutique de Grand- Pré, I was free to play what I wanted from the selection of Acadian music for sale. My go-to was Madame Butlerfly, Edith Butler’s little-known foray into New Age music. Sitting nestled amongst Acadian stoneware pottery and hooked rugs, listening to a rendition of Grain de Mil that featured backing vocals sung in what I believe to be Mandarin, I had a clear view of historical murals of Acadians building dykes and tilling the reclaimed soil in bonnets and aprons or breeches and high socks. Artist Mario Doucette has never liked these depictions.

“It always bothered me. I tried to research the clothing of the time, but in my art it never looked right.”

He remembers being introduced to similar images as a teenager. In his earlier series, Histoires and Bagarres, Doucette uses line drawing and a naive painting style as a child’s lens in an attempt to go back to the romanticized, mythologized version of Acadian history he learned as a kid and imagine it differently. In his vibrant, unaffected yet fantastical drawings and paintings from these series, you can sense the teenage urge to embellish the margins of the quaint, folkloric depictions found in interpretive centres and textbooks.

Basing his paintings on extensive research, Doucette promotes aspects of Acadian history that have been obscured in popular portrayals inspired by works like Longfellow’s epic poem Evangeline, where Acadians are presented as tragic figures and passive victims. “In my paintings I highlight heroes that people should know who we don’t learn about in school. We didn’t know that there was an Acadian resistance, we didn’t know that there were people like [resistance leaders] Father Le-Loutre and Joseph Broussard.”

“We only have one perspective of our history, the perspective of the British. The histories were written based on their accounts.” —MARIO DOUCETTE

However, there is a question mark hanging over Doucette’s work. In his paintings, Acadians do not wear the folkloric costumes I remember from the Grand-Pré historic site; instead, they are depicted as translucent figures, or their bodies are scribbled over, or they are naked. More recently, in Harias, they are shown wearing classical robes. These choices underscore a key issue in Doucette’s project: the absence of a historical record that reflects the Acadian perspective.

“It’s a people that existed, but we don’t know a lot of details of how they lived … We only have one perspective of our history, the perspective of the British. The histories were written based on their accounts.”

Faced with the impossibility of a truly accurate version of Acadian history, Doucette has accepted that he cannot go around the traditional narrative, but must go through. Rather than feel limited by the lack of alternatives to the historical tradition, he chooses to see the freedom that his playful approach to historical narrative and his outsiders’ perspective afford him. “I have an incredible liberty to play with these ideas and imagine what it was like in Acadia because we really don’t know.”

Mario Doucette, “Boishébert fut blessé à la jambe – colour study,” 30 x 40 cm, Ink and coloured pencils on paper, 2017.

Above and below: Mario Doucette, “Les Acadiens de la Nouvelle-Écosse (régime anglais) – colour study,” 27 x 40 cm, Ink and coloured pencils on paper, 2017.

If Doucette’s work from his first series strongly recalls the aesthetics of outsider art, it is not by accident. Doucette has a strong admiration for self-taught artists like Henry Darger and appreciates the freedom afforded by operating entirely outside the system. The marginal role that Acadians have had in telling their own history makes them outsiders too.

Including anachronisms and mixing his own inventions with historical symbols, Doucette creates parallels between his own fantastical choices and those of historical artists. Symbols like the British lion and Superman, American myth par excellence, confront each other in his art and reveal the absurdity inherent in imposed external narratives. In this historical world of toppled idols, Doucette is free to dress his Acadians how he wants. “I thought if we have no stories of Acadians from their lifetime, then they kind of exist of out of time. So I continued drawing them nude, and now I put them in Roman robes, which ties in with the neoclassical style I’m attempting.”

At first glance, the meticulous neoclassical oil paintings of Harias are a major departure from the playful outsider aesthetic of Doucette’s earlier art, but they can almost be seen as parts of a larger installation. In his exhibitions, he decorates the gallery to recreate a salon or a history museum and viewers enter another world. “The message of propaganda is transmitted in multiple ways, including through the context the work is presented in.” He calls his work propaganda art and it’s clear that this is how he looks at all historical art. Doucette appropriates the trappings of official, noble art, from the robes to the gallery walls, to give weight to his new versions of Acadian history.

“People behave differently in this kind of space. They tend to whisper.” The alternate history first imagined in the naive style of a child’s drawing now comes alive and we are able to step into it. Doucette recognizes that his subject and his audience are very localized—he says that he has Acadian viewers in mind as he creates his work—and yet he hopes everyone who sees his work will appreciate the global appeal. His engagement with historical absence has lead him to engage with universal questions about historiography, the political role of historical art, and what possibilities there are to move beyond received identities and narratives. Like a daydreamer in the midst of a history lesson, Mario Doucette is immersed in tradition, looking for freedom, for his art and for the Acadian identity.

Jordan Bennett, “Sky Container,” 9 in x 12 in. Courtesy of the artist.

ERYN FOSTER: You were in Venice this summer representing Newfoundland (along with Anne Troake) at the Biennale. How was that experience? What was the response to your installation Ice Fishing?

JORDAN BENNETT: The opportunity to exhibit Ice Fishing at the Venice Biennale was great. It has been very well received throughout the past few months with a large number of visitors interested in both Anne’s work and mine. Venice is an amazing and unique city and being part of such a grand event is something I will not soon forget. It was exciting to see so many viewers come into the exhibition and interact with the installation. The curator of the exhibition, Chris Clark, did an amazing job choosing the works to be part of the show. Anne’s work really gives the viewer a sense of Newfoundland in spring and summer. It’s very poetic in nature. I feel that my work gives a glimpse into the ways of being and existing on the land and water during the long Newfoundland winter months.

EF: Did you feel any stress or pressure in preparing for your show in Venice? Or did you approach the opportunity as you would with any other exhibition? 

JB: I approached it with the same mindset as I would have with any other exhibition. The only difference was ensuring the work was securely protected in rugged crates to withstand the long trek. It was truly an honour to be included in the official programming of the Venice Biennale.

Jordan Bennett, “Double Rainbow,” acrylic on wood, 12 in x 16 in. Courtesy of the artist.

EF: You are now in the second year of your MFA at UBC Okanogan. What is it like for you living on the other side of the country? Do you feel that the experience of living out West has influenced the way you make and think about art?

JB: Living in the Okanagan is quite a beautiful experience. Being in a MFA program is definitely a change of speed, as now I am balancing both my ongoing art practice and completing a thesis and exhibition. Being out West has really allowed me to explore new ideas, materials, and methodologies within my practice.  [In September] I was at a conference, Performing Turtle Island, in Regina. During his presentation, the academic and actor Michael Greyeyes said, “Being so far from home allows the lenses in your eyes to refocus on it.” This resonated with me, as this is precisely how I feel about being out West.

EF: Can you tell me a little bit about your MFA thesis project? From what I understand, you are looking at the parallels and similarities between the visual cultures of the Beothuk and the Mi’kmaq? What brought you to this research?

JB: Yes that is correct. My thesis work is re-imagining the traditional art forms of the Beothuk and Mi’kmaq into a contemporary art discourse. Through this new work I am making a series of carvings accompanied by sound to create an immersive and interactive environment.  My ongoing research came from thinking about the shared history of the traditional people of Newfoundland— the Beothuk and Mi’kmaq—and how centuries of their shared history have been reduced to vague one-liners and inaccurate interpretations, assumptions, and statements by European explorers and settlers on the island. Through creating this new work, I am bringing an Indigenous perspective to the assumptions and myths regarding the historical, physical, and cultural erasure of the Beothuk by European settlers. This is exemplified by the death of Shanawdithit in 1829, who is believed to be the last of her people.  In Shanawdithit’s testimony, recorded in the 1827 diary of Bishop Inglis, she recalls that “the Beothuk and Mi’kmaq held relations and had a partial oral understanding of one another for centuries, but in the last 150 years this relationship turned for the worse.” This statement has been one of the factors that has driven me to create artworks rooted in re-imagining a space for both nations to coexist again.

EF: And how has this research informed your creative practice?

JB: Through this research I’ve been employing mediums that I have not explored in a long time such as drawing, painting, and I’ve also been learning wood-carving. Recently, I had the amazing opportunity to visit and learn from fellow artists Dean Hunt, Shawn Hunt, and their father Bradley Hunt of the Heiltsuk Nation. Bradley and his sons are very well known for their mastery in carving amazing cedar panels and totem poles, pushing the limits of both material and visual. I had the honour of spending two weeks with them in their studio, learning techniques of which I am employing in this new body of work. Through researching Beothuk and Mi’kmaq visual culture, I have been creating new drawings based on Porcupine quill designs from the turn of the 19th century along with the drawings of Shanawdithit and Beothuk items and articles found throughout Newfoundland archaeological digs. These new drawings are the basis for my new carvings.

EF: Having grown up in rural Newfoundland, do you feel the landscape and the culture of the island has influenced you as an artist in any particular way?

JB I grew up in the town of Stephenville Crossing on the west coast of the island. I believe that the whole reason I am an artist is based on the landscape and culture of this place. The landscape is both beautiful and brutal, growing up only a rock’s throw from the Atlantic Ocean really makes you appreciate the power of where you come from. My ancestors have lived in this area off the island for countless generations and I think that through a tie like this, you are born with an inherent connection to the land. In our community, as with many other communities in Newfoundland, we still greatly depend on the land for sustenance, be it food or spiritual.

EF: Once you have finished your MFA, do you think you will you move back East? Or do you have some other ideas as to where you might go next?

JB: I would love to move back home. If the opportunity arises, I would be back in a minute, the east coast holds a very special place in my heart. I am also not against going somewhere new that might hold exciting new opportunities.

Installation view of Séripop’s “The Face Stayed East , the Mouth Went West” at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery.
Photo : Yannick Desranleau

Though some mark 50th anniversaries with gold, Séripop’s The Face Stayed East, the Mouth Went West marks the 50th anniversary of Charlottetown’s Confederation Centre by opening with more striking elements.

Interested in exploring entropy in bright colours and on a grand scale, Séripop—who are Montreal-based duo Chloe Lum and Yannick Desranleau—inject a measure of disorder into the glassed-in exhibition room that serves as a subterranean entrance to the Confederation Centre Art Gallery.

While I was visiting, another gallery visitor asked, “Can I walk through this?” It’s a fair question, as the installation appears at first blush as a tangled and unfurling construction zone made up of a giddy and gaudy palette reflecting pop and mod aesthetics that appropriately recall 1964, the Centre’s inaugural year. A cartoonishly oversized and bent styrofoam dumbbell greets new arrivals, sitting in front of swathes of Tyvek, rope, and vinyl tarpaulin draped over scaffolding stretching nearly the full length of the gallery room.

Installation view of Séripop’s “The Face Stayed East , the Mouth Went West” at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery.
Photo : Yannick Desranleau

Three lightboxes propped up by beanbag chairs—one hot pink and protruding tongue-like from under the lightbox’s weight—display overlaid theatrical scenes in which the players are packages of wrapped materials falling into place in a Photoshop-reimagined version of the Centre’s gallery rooms. The extension cords that power the lightboxes—intentionally bright orange—hang loose as further interventions into the pedestrian traffic lanes.

“You’re not entering a room full of artworks, you’re entering the artwork itself,” Confederation Centre Art Gallery curator Pan Wendt comments on The Face Stayed East, the Mouth Went West and installation art more generally. “And this building didn’t anticipate it.”

Séripop’s installation reacts in large part to the artists’ impression of the Centre, and Wendt suggests that the difficulty of navigating the installation plays on the difficulty of finding one’s way around the Centre itself.

Desranleau and Lum conducted in-depth research about the
building in Montreal at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, whose archives house the storied history of the Confederation Centre’s genesis from its designers’ initial modernist hope for a Brutalist building that was “complete unto itself,” says Wendt, to a lawsuit that developed with an allegedly incompetent construction company, eventually resulting in the architecture firm pulling out of the project completely. The building’s use has veered from its architect’s original vision of concrete perfection to one that has come to include gardens and marble, among many other unforeseen features. Séripop comment on the building’s history with an installation that parallels the pop-influenced installation aesthetics of artists like Jessica Stockholder and Davis Rhodes.

Desranleau explains the duo work with “flexible, friable” materials, using “actions like scattering, instability, and weathering.” He says, “Usually, the more flexible the
material we play with, the harder it will be to plan its reactions, whatever the conditions are.”

Lum and Desranleau are formerly of the avant-garde noiserock band AIDS Wolf, and earned their stripes plastering Montreal in show posters in the face of anti-postering bylaws, eventually expanding to larger outdoor installations. Desranleau says, “Our departure as installation artists came from what we felt was a critique of institutional control of that space, although in a very oblique way.”

Séripop’s Confederation Centre installation playfully critiques the surprising amount of change that has gone on within the Centre’s bulky fortress-like walls.

“Our installation in the entrance gallery wants to evoke this notion of history that gets recorded within the materials, and is meant to be a reference to the evolution of the material aspect of the centre itself,” says Desranleau. “By putting these objects in action,
documenting them, and then re-configuring them again within the installation, we were re-enacting a similar narrative to the one the material of the building has lived in the past 50 years.”

Despite some imperfections now showing in its concrete, one hopes the Confederation Centre’s level of entropy will stay well on the safer side of chaos in its next 50 years. But in a Centre whose theatre mainstay ends on the hopeful line “Anne of Green Gables, never change,” Séripop’s work is a timely reminder to Prince Edward Islanders that things are always in a state of flux and change is the only constant.