EMPOWERING ART URGES REFLECTION
Combined AGW exhibit embraces social change
Prepare to be stared down by painter Arthur Shilling as you walk into the Art Gallery of Windsor’s third-floor exhibition space.
What the large, bold-coloured, abstract expressionist portraits of the artist do on canvas is what the member of the Chippewas of Rama First Nation felt he couldn’t do on the street in real life — look nonnative folks in the eye.
“His is a fascinating story,” said Jaclyn Meloche, the AGW’s curator of contemporary art.
Living at a time when many Indigenous people in Ontario lacked social self-confidence outside their own communities, Shilling ’s paintings defiantly look the observer squarely in the face.
“These are portraits of empowerment — he’s staring at you, and that, for him, was empowerment,” said Meloche.
“He was very much a visionary, working toward Indigenous human rights.”
Arthur Shilling: The Final Works is very topical at this moment in Canadian history, with First Peoples communities and their non-native supporters rallying for rights and justice and against marginalization.
The 27 works on display in Windsor from Saturday to May 13 — 10 of them self-portraits — were all painted during a creative burst that followed Shilling ’s diagnosis of a heart condition in 1976 at age 35 that doctors said would kill him. Surgery extended his life by a decade, but during that period, “he painted with urgency, (using) colours that are incredibly powerful and vibrant,” said Meloche.
All three artist projects being featured as part of the AGW’s winter/spring program bridge ideas of cultural, familial and political empowerment.
In her first solo exhibition in Windsor, Philadelphia-based Leah Modigliani uses sculptures and installations reflecting global history, protests and political activism.
A Nov. 6, 1982, newspaper photo of a UAW autoworkers’ strike forms the basis of a Windsor-specific piece in which Modigliani turns into art the objects used by protesters to get their message across. The photo is from the second day of a five-week strike that ended with Chrysler agreeing to workers’ cost of living allowance demands.
“They weren’t considered art at the time, but they’re lost relics of an important culture,” Modigliani said Thursday. A professional art historian, she said those union gains “seem later like a small social change,” but at the time, it would have taken a large number of people working together to win them.
In another Modigliani installation, a group of ghost-masked figures huddle in the centre of a room. She said it’s based on a photo of a public protest in Basel, Switzerland, showing cloaked figures demonstrating against a city ordinance “that banned noise, basically.”
Part of Modigliani’s artistic focus is on social dissent and political critique. Donald Trump’s election, she said, was “the worst political moment I’ve lived through in my lifetime” and that it was “a wakeup call for people on the left side of the political spectrum.”
One of the challenges she sees with today’s technology is that young people are “constantly being turned on to what’s happening around them ... our time is very much dictated by the fast flow of social media.” One of the aims of her work and its art gallery setting, said Modigliani, is to afford people the time and space to pause and reflect.
Young people who want to be engaged “need a creative process ... they need to be able to sit and spend time.”
A third show that opens this week, Hind vs. Hind, is Brant ford based artist Dave Hind connecting with his 19th century great-greatgreat uncle William G.R. Hind, whose landscape sketches form part of the AGW’s permanent collection.
The modern-age Hind uses repurposed painted metals to create large and striking aluminum collages, including one depicting the Ambassador Bridge.
These are portraits of empowerment.… He was very much a visionary, working towards Indigenous human rights.