Creative Insecurity: A SAVAC Investigative Exhibition
Fariba Samsami, Wall, 2003, foam bricks covered in veil, chador, and manto textiles.
Friday, 6 August – Sunday, August 8, 2004
Marilyn Brewer Gallery, Harbourfront Centre, Toronto, Canada
In partnership with Masala! Mehndi! Masti! festival
Creative insecurity is an investigative exhibition by SAVAC Members which seeks to delve into the sources of and responses to our sense of security. What does it mean to be secure in the world? With the dawn of the 21st century, new technologies and terrorist threats provide fertile ground for creating Creative insecurity. Some of the strategies for successful Creative Insecurity are:
- The division of the world into the axis of good and evil.
- A policy of automatic detention of so-called terrorists which ignores the criminal-law principle “innocent unless proven guilty.”
- Support of an Immigration Act and other policies that rely on the “guilty unless proven innocent” principle.
- The insistent, simple, yet sinister request “where do you come from?”
- An increase in covert and overt surveillance of our private lives from insidious data collection through credit card rewards programs to photo radar on our daily commute.
- The proliferation of identity thieves on the internet and spying software on anyone’s hard drive.
The list goes on. Local and international artists explore how we as individuals, a community, and a nation respond and react to these challenges. Artists critique, reflect upon, undermine, and re-interpret the strategies of Creative insecurity and its impact on our sense of security.
Hamra Abbas (Berlin/Lahore) – All Rights Reserved, 2004 (digital C-prints) – examines the structures of power and authorization by appropriating a Mughal miniature book cover of “Padshahnama – King of the World” and splitting the people from their possessions.
Heath Fashina (Guelph) – Peter Mansbridge Sings the Blues, 2003 (video, 2 min.) – is a humourous critique of the mass media. Using various headlines from the CBC’s “The National”, the work constructs a blues-like composition that exploits sound-bite culture to create a song that is catchy, yet devoid of detail.
Kelly Jazvac (Toronto) – Mobile Satellite Command Centre, 2004 (Vinyl drawing installation) – negotiates notions of high and low technology, the dichotomies of excess and necessity, paranoia and fear and the permanence and casual proliferation of such. These themes are explored through an installation based on instructional advice from the United States Naval Academy website on how to mount a satellite antenna on your car.
Sarina Khan Reddy (Boston) – With Us or Against Us, 2001 (video, 5.5 min.) – examines the blurred boundaries between entertainment and the news and the relationship between militarization and corporate globalization. Shifting between footage of Rambo III and Ronald Regan’s meeting with Afghan “freedom fighters”, the video raises questions of how history is deliberately forgotten.
Afshin Matlabi (Montreal) – Terrorism, Democracy, Leisure, 2003 (painting series) – reflects on leisure in a democratic society amid the threats of terrorism and violence, a dislocation between a secure and comfortable life and the realities of a fragile existence.
Amin Rehman (Toronto) – Black Gold, 2004 (mixed media) – responds to the war on Iraq and the USA’s self-given mandate, contrary to the United Nations, as an occupying power in the name of security. Rehman comments on America’s indefinite presence in Iraq as an attempt to control its natural resources, people and their human rights.
Fariba Samsami (Montreal) – Wall, 2003 (installation) – responds to political events and social realities in Iran and the expansion of Islamic culture in North America and Europe. Wall symbolizes alienation and separation caused by social convention or tradition that encourages women to be passive, voiceless and submissive.
Ho Tam (Toronto) – Approaching Abjection, 2003 (video, 6min.) – addresses the SARS scare and how Toronto and ultimately Canada as a whole handled a crisis. The use of static, or the video equivalent of film grain, reflects the historical nature of the event and how history will remember the actions taken and those impacted.
Alia Toor (Toronto) – 99 pieces of ‘aman’, 2004 (installation of facemasks) – 99 individual facemasks embroidered with the 99 names of Allah symbolizes an insecure security. In this climate of SARS, bio-terrorism and terrorism, the facemask gives us a sense of false security by promising to protect us against “unseen enemies”. Is the mask self-protection or an unconscious oppression of ourselves, mirroring issues of veiling?
Bill Wrigley (Toronto) – USA Wagon #1, 2004, (sculpture) – Wagons are about America, its frontier spirit, its innocence and its predisposition with mobility. This work explores America’s ideology of good vs. evil where self-righteousness and implied innocence is pitted against the barbaric forces of terrorism.
