Conversations on inspiration and the public role of artists
Being an exec for the Trinity Art Show has its perks. I get to take part in the hype leading up to the show, and I get to see it come together piece by piece. The show opens on Friday, March 29 and runs until Sunday, March 31.
The focus of this year’s show is statements on contemporary society, and the show features the work of current students at the University of Toronto.
As the show’s Communications Coordinator, I got a preview of the art selected for the exhibition, and I wanted to find out more about the powerful artworks—so I set out to interview the ten artists who made them.
Here are just a few of their stories.
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The first artist I spoke to was Eugenia Wong, who had just received a Student Engagement in the Arts Award for her leadership and contribution to the wider arts community at the University of Toronto.
I caught up with Wong following a student leaders’ reception at Hart House as she left with a glass of club soda in hand. We sat down at a wooden table in a brick-lined alcove, and she pulled a coaster out of her pocket and set the glass down on it. A lime slice bobbed about in the glass, floating with the clinking ice cubes.
We spoke about Under Restraint, the eerily haunting photo series she had submitted to the Trinity Art Show, and the inspiration behind it. As a fourth-year student in the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, Wong is pursuing a double major in architectural and visual studies, and this interest in built spaces informs her artistic practice. She is inspired by abandoned spaces.
Wong’s exploration of hidden spaces began at a young age and originated in the desire to avoid people. Her photo series is set in a stark tiled space, a location which she refuses to disclose. It is supposedly a publicly accessible space in Toronto.
“Why aren’t there people there when it was designed for people?” she questions. Wong hypothesizes that these empty places once had glory days, when they were alive and in use. She repopulates these abandoned spaces with original characters from an imagined world.
Her tableaus are uncanny—the closer you look and the more you know about the scenario, the more you realize there is something not quite right with the arrangement. A particular scenario pictured in Under Restraint depicts a doctor performing a blood transfusion on patients.
Except: the blood in the blood bag is black, the transfusion doesn’t take place in a hospital, and something just seems off. The patients sit slumped, prostrate, faces concealed. “Anonymity is part of the statement,” says Wong.
The elements add up to an uneasy tableau, and it is hauntingly sinister. Wong is drawn to the aesthetics of the medical world and admits it is a pseudo-environment contrived from objects that are not actually for medical use. (The blood bag is a sculpture from a past project. Wong creates series of sculptures, and these sometimes inspire a series of photographs.)
Wong says that the doctor embodies the public, imposing black blood transfers on the unwilling public, the patients. The black blood is a metaphoric representation of the restraints of public surveillance, constraining the patients’ self-expressions. Issues of identity and expression are at play here.
“We’re all part of the public, but there’s a line between who’s watching and who’s being watched,” says Wong. I realize it gets kind of meta—the doctor is supposed to be the watcher over the patients, but the viewer of the art is the ultimate watcher of the photo series. What does that say about our role in society?
Over the course of the following days, I spoke to each artist and learned more about the inspirations behind their work, the motives that prompted them to create.
On a sunny Sunday afternoon in Seeley Hall, where the Trinity Art Show takes place annually, I spoke to James Legaspi. He had just dropped off his newly published art book, Red on Top, for display at the show. It is a small volume containing found text and found art, threaded together to convey a story, a feeling, a statement. When I congratulated him on the publication of his book, Legaspi humbly brushed it off, saying that it was self-published.
Legaspi is a third-year student specializing in art and art history in the joint program with UofT Mississauga and Sheridan College. He makes multidisciplinary pieces, working with design and video and drawings.
“Someone that I look up to a lot is Bruce Conner—he was always doing something different, always trying not to be put in a box, and I guess I can kind of relate to that. So that’s why there’s a video and a book, and a bunch of other stuff I’m working on.”
Two of his works are featured in this year’s Trinity Art Show: the aforementioned book and a short film entitled Landscape Painting. Both address the marginalized East and Southeast Asian experience in North America and are informed by his own Filipino identity.
“I think I like the theme statements, because when I think of art-making and the kind of art I’m drawn to, I tend to avoid the kind of art that exists just as objects of art,” says Legaspi.
Landscape Painting satirizes the concept of creating landscape paintings, with its footage of white paint being applied onto snow. It alludes to whitewashing in mass media as well as to white worship and colourism in Southeast Asian countries.
Legaspi spoke haltingly about identifying as an artist: “It’s not something that I choose to do really, it’s something that just comes out of me. People ask me what I do and then I end up saying “artist,” but I don’t think I’m really an artist. I just make things and people call it art.”
As for next projects, he is working on another book, inspired by writer, scholar, and poet Claudia Rankine. Her book Don’t Let Me Be Lonely grapples with life in contemporary America. “That book really resonated with me, so I felt like I wanted to make something inspired by it,” says Legaspi.
I phoned another artist, Sadat Anwar, that same afternoon, to chat a little and to hear his thoughts about the theme of “Statements.” For Anwar, “art is a very important language.
“Sometimes people cannot even speak what they want to say, what they have in their mind, but they can really express those through paper and a pen, or paint, or any other form of art,” says Anwar.
As a first-year international student majoring in architectural studies at Daniels, Anwar sought to maintain his close relationship with art by seeking out opportunities to get involved in Toronto.
“Painting keeps me happy,” he says, as creating art is an integral part of his life. Anwar was very involved in arts communities in his native country of Bangladesh and wanted to find the same sense of belonging in the arts community here.
Anwar recently participated in a live art competition on March 19 held by Art Battle International. Art Battle is an organization that hosts painting tournaments, sometimes to support charity fundraising efforts. Having survived a number of elimination rounds against other artists, Anwar’s final painting of two roosters, completed in just 20 minutes, was voted into first place by the Toronto audience.
He likes live art competitions and likes that Torontonians are receptive to his art. Anwar recalls winning the first art competition he entered as a child and how that encouraged his continued pursuit of creating art.
While many parents prefer their children to take interest in academic activities, Anwar says his mother supported his early interest in art and took him to see an art show—the rest is history.
Anwar wants to do good for society with art. Just last year, he played a part in founding and curating a charity art exhibition at home in Dhaka, Bangladesh, called Art for Cause, to raise money and awareness for Rohingya refugees. The fear and hope of displaced families are depicted in his painting Anticipation, on display at the Trinity Art Show.
Planning for his next charity exhibition is under way—this time, to raise money for a drug rehabilitation centre. Anwar hopes to reach out to more university artists in Dhaka to provide more opportunities for emerging artists. “Everybody gets something out of this exhibition: the artists, the people,” he says.
In a way, that outcome is the aim of this year’s Trinity Art Show. We want all parties to benefit from this exhibition.
The Trinity Art Show is an opportunity for the artists to share their statements. The diverse pieces were curated to spark thought and discussion—the myriad perspectives can enrich our lives and open avenues of dialogue.
The exhibition is also an opportunity for viewers to engage critically with the works, seeing each piece through their own lens, informed by their personal encyclopedias of knowledge from their life experiences.
This show also helps us engage with one another through interactive installations designed by the curatorial team. Make your mark, and make your statement seen.
Let’s have a conversation.
Trinity Art Show 2019: Statements
Featured artists:
Jasaña Alleyne
Sadat Anwar
James Legaspi
Rohini Natarajan
Mariam Radwan
Kay Rose
Aira Sugiura
Hunt Teng
Nicholas Tsangarides
Eugenia Wong
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/2289642637968146
Art Show Co-Curators: Jenny Qian and Ally Lu
Curated with assistance from the 2019 executive: Samantha Arpas, Angela Gu, Sophie Srebot, Sarina Wong, Wend Yasen, and Vail Zerr.
