Detail from Barbara Greene Mann's I lived In La La Land and now I live in Canada.David Sweeney
Being Scene
- At Hart House at the University of Toronto
There is no more tiresome, circular or pointless question than What is Art? Worse yet is the corollary question, Is this or that Art? In the postpostmodern info-stream relativist image flux we now live in, the only reasonable answers are: nothing, everything, and always.
The distinctions between art and not-art have been so thoroughly blurred, for decades now, that the only real question of interest is not what constitutes art but rather who gets to decide what constitutes art. At the core of any question about the validity or invalidity of a work is a power dynamic fuelled by class, access to education, venue status, and, of course, money.
Being Scene, an exhibition of works by artists who have experience with mental health or addiction issues, is a perfect example of how the above dynamics inform and distort our perception of art vs. less-than-art. Now in its 10th year, Being Scene mixes works from schooled and unschooled sources, by seasoned artists and emerging artists, and by artists who identify as "outsider" artists and those who do not, as well as many artists who care for no definition at all.
The wide variety of works, varying in accomplishment as much as any group show, are not positioned via any hierarchical system, and, by this very fluidity in presentation, put the lie to the notion that art can honestly be codified by anything more reliable than self-designation.
In essence, if you were not told Being Scene was a show of works by mental health/addiction clients, and that the works therefore were created by both self-taught and trained artists (mental health/addiction issues cross all education boundaries), you would not be able to tell the show apart from any other collection. And that says a lot about how, and by whom, the conditions in which we perceive art to be present, or not, are manufactured.
Chris Mitchell, visual-arts manager with Workman Arts, the organization that produces Being Scene in co-operation with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, describes the exhibition as "not themed to mental health issues." She notes that "Workman Arts works with both aspiring and professional artists. They are not all necessarily 'outsider' artists. There are no boundaries around who is an artist - the exhibition is open to anyone who identifies as an artist and a mental health client."
"Workman Arts does an open call, through CAMH, and the artists actually physically bring in their works," Mitchell says, "and then we bring in a jury, and they go through the submissions. We had over 300 pieces submitted this year. The jury is made up of two outside arts professionals and our own artist-in-residence. They select the work from the actual physical pieces, because access to digital technology or slides, to documentation, is a big barrier to many of our artists."
For artists who work completely apart from established art systems, Mitchell says, "this show gives them an incredible boost. They are absolutely beaming when they are accepted. And I personally call the artists and discuss with them whether their art is accepted or not, and I think that's a good process, a respectful way to handle the rejections."
Lisa Walter, a Toronto-based artist with three mixed media works in Being Scene, finds herself "somewhere in the middle" of the exhibition's mix of taught and self-taught. "I've never been to art school, but I've made art all my life. I guess, for me, what the parameters of the exhibition allow me to do, when I look at the various kinds of artworks, is to be part of an exhibition where the artists are reaching for something inside. In this kind of exhibition, that is what is most important. I find that liberating."
Walter's work is both delicate and unsparing. In one ghostly oil pastel image, a seated figure is tormented by mouths that appear to be erupting from the figure's flesh, white teeth jagged and gleaming. In another drawing, a woman with no hands crawls across a void, her body marked by hundreds of tiny pencil lines, lines that look like day count marks from prison walls. The drawing is alarming, even horrific, but Walter's touch is airy, her ink and oil pastel strokes feather-light - and thus all the more eerie.
Walter is quick to question any identity label applied to herself, or to Being Scene in general.
"There is room in this exhibition for people who are both speaking with the language of professional arts and for people who are speaking with a more personal language, and I really like that. I continue to puzzle over identity questions - is it more important to just be an artist, and does the positioning of this show limit me?
"But I have to tell you, it's not weighing on me very heavily. Perhaps there's a part of me that would like to say, I'm simply an artist in my own right - but that's balanced, because neither do I want to disassociate myself from other people [in the mental health community] nor from what has been a very important experience to me.
"To me, showing art by people who produce art because they feel something strongly is just as powerful as dividing art by high and low, inside and outside."
Being Scene was at the University of Toronto until July 25 and relocates to the Gladstone Hotel, 1214 Queen St. W., Toronto, from Aug. 5 to Sept. 19. (For details, visit www.workmanarts.com/VisualArts/beingScene.cfm.)