National Gallery launches first exhibition since start of pandemic.
From the October Crisis to mundane record shops, pandemic-delayed exhibit is an artist’s confession
At the heart of her implied confession is finding out that her father, who was an adviser to former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, was one of the people who recommended invoking the War Measures Act in Quebec
in 1970.
— Lynn Saxberg
On the 50th anniversary of the October Crisis, Mo y ra Dav e y has something to get off her chest.
More than one thing, actually, as we discover in i confess, the intimate, complex and politically charged film that forms the centrepiece of Moyra Davey: The Faithful, the Canadian artist’s first solo exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada. ( More about the film and its confessions in a moment.)
Originally scheduled to open last spring, this is the first new exhibition to open at the gallery since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. It includes 54 photographs and seven films produced over Davey’s four-decade career, along with a selection of works from the gallery’s collection that were chosen by the artist to reflect her influences.
Included in this section is work by the late Canadian artist and filmmaker Joyce Wieland, closing a circle that started when young Moyra was living in Ottawa during her teen years and happened to see Wieland’s exhibition at the National Gallery. The 1971 showcase marked the first time a living female artist was featured in a solo exhibition at the gallery; it was an eye-opener for Davey.
The new exhibition, which opened Oct. 1 and runs until Jan. 3, is likely to elicit a similar response. Configured in thematic groupings rather than a chronological retrospective, it’s designed to feel like you’re walking into an installation, the result of cross- border collaboration between the gallery’s associate curator of photography, Andrea Kunard, and Davey, who lives in New York City. Because of COVID-19, Davey opted against travelling to Ottawa.
Their efforts have resulted in a deeply immersive experience that begins in an octagon- shaped room of photographs of people writing in notebooks on the subway (Subway Writers). It moves past walls dedicated to detailed images of vinyl collectors digging through racks ( The Faithful), jampacked newsstands of New York City ( Newstands), black- and- white portraits of family, friends and animals, and one entire corner plastered with colour- saturated, macro photos of American pennies that show every gouge in the metal ( Copperheads). Many of the photos have been folded, stamped and mailed to their recipients, and still bear the marks of the journey through the postal service.
In today’s climate of social distancing and advanced technology, the photos evoke a bittersweet sense of nostalgia for a time, not that long ago, when people rode public transport without masks, stood shoulder to shoulder with strangers, had pennies jingling in their pockets, wrote letters and listened to
music on vinyl records.
While it’s clear that Davey, 62, has a talent for images that capture a sense of time and place, she also explores the intersection between the political and the personal in her own life. That’s where the film, i confess, comes in, with its non-narrative reflections on race, religion and colonization.
First screened in London, U.K., last year, the 56-minute film finds Davey pacing her apartment, armed with a recorder and earbuds, reciting a script in a flat, monotone voice that carries a disconcerting echo.
At the heart of her implied confession is finding out that her father, who was an adviser to former prime minister Pierre Trudeau ( and whom she prefers not to name), was one of the people who recommended invoking the War Measures Act in Quebec in 1970 in response to two kidnappings by the Front de Libération du Québec (FLQ). (One of the kidnapped, Quebec labour minister Pierre Laporte, was later found murdered.)
The subsequent October Crisis was a tense period by all accounts. Under the terms of the Act, civil liberties were suspended and soldiers patrolled the streets of Ottawa and Montreal. Thousands were searched and hundreds detained without charges.
It seems Davey was shocked about her father’s role because of her fascination with a figure on the opposite side of the political spectrum: Pierre Vallières, the journalist and writer who was considered the intellectual leader of the FLQ. He wrote the controversial 1968 book that compared the historical plight of French- Canadians to that of African- Americans, depicting a colonized and oppressed people primed for armed uprising.
In a time when the N- word is verboten in any language, Davey seems to confess in the film that she had given some serious thought to Vallières’ views. But what brought it to mind for her was the 2016 film, I Am Not Your Negro, based on the work of James Baldwin, the Black writer who was a key figure in the United States Civil Rights movement of the ’60s.
To make sense of these two perspectives on oppression, Davey ultimately turns her camera on Dalie Giroux, the University of Ottawa professor who teaches political theory. Giroux gives Vallières’ theory a convincing smackdown: To appropriate the notion of Black exploitation to describe the position of French- Canadians is disrespectful, offensive and downright racist.
It’s an important moment, and one of many in the exhibit that will resonate with visitors navigating these turbulent times.