One person’s art is another’s trash
City workers in St. John’s accidentally dispose of public art exhibit that paid tribute to hardships of aboriginal children
Officials in St. John’s, Newfoundland, are facing the wrath of the local artistic community after city crews threw away a publicly funded art installation that they mistook for garbage.
Resurfacing, by St. John’s artist Pepa Chan, consisted of sculptures fashioned from discarded toys and placed along a municipal hiking trail. Installed by Chan on Nov. 14, it was removed last week following a public complaint.
Parks staff were “unaware what it was,” said a statement by Lynnann Winsor, deputy city manager of public works.
“At first they couldn’t tell me what they did with it, but the next day I got a confirmation that it was thrown in the dump,” Chan said by email.
“The issue was not that they took it down … but that they threw it out without any warning.”
Resurfacing involved the “deconstruction of discarded dolls, stuffed animals, musical toys and other found materials to create twelve reconstructed sculptures,” according to a statement on Chan’s website.
Sculptures included a doll head equipped with donkey ears and attached to a bicycle wheel. Another was a doll given a drum for a head and placed on a trailside bench. Several sculptures consisted of empty children’s costumes attached to trees.
The idea was to evoke the “f orgotten i dentities and traumas of aboriginal children,” wrote Chan. The sculptures stood for three weeks along the Quidi Vidi Lake Trail, a 3.8-kilometre walking path a short distance from downtown St. John’s.
For casual walkers, the only indication that the snowcovered dolls were part of a planned art installation would have been a framed artist’s statement hung from a tree.
Said Chan, “if the visitor was paying attention, ( they) shouldn’t have missed the sign.”
Following the removal, an online petition by Chan supporters have since called the city’s actions an “act of violence.”
“Why are advertisers free to sell to us every day without our consent … while an artist like Pepa is denied similar rights while offering her publicly-funded vision in a public space?” read the Change. org petition, which had attracted 266 signatures as of Sunday afternoon.
The appeal, directed at St. Johns’ mayor and councillors, demands a public apology and the city to “consider monetary compensation.”
Ironically, Resur f acing was funded in part by a 2104 City of St. John’s arts grant. The installation also received moneys from ArtsNL. Chan did not disclose the monetary amount provided, saying it was “not relevant at this point.”
The City of St. John’s has noted that while it had indeed approved public funds for the project, Chan’s application did not indicate it would be placed on city property, or that it would be installed without a permit.
“The art was placed on City property without permission,” said Winsor.
Chan confirmed that she did not obtain a permit.
“I thought the grants were enough proof and I also have had a bad experience in the past with other of my installations so I took the risk, but I honestly never thought they were going to throw the work in the dump,” she said in an email.
The “bad experience” involved a similar installation by Chan, With Eyes That Close, that hung sculptures fashioned from discarded dolls in a forested area on St. Johns’ Signal Hill.
The “reconstructed” dolls were meant to commemorate the “missing and murdered aboriginal women of Newfoundland and Labrador.”
But Chan said the city parks department turned down her request for a permit because the “work wasn’t family- oriented and that it could scare people and that people could vandalize it.”
In response to the outcry over the removal, Chan said she is scheduled to meet St. John’s’ deputy mayor on Monday.