hearts from a montreal gallery
Last weekend I visited Tessa in Montréal for her birthday and we spent some delightful time romping through the city and attending various functions while trudging through 50 cm of snow. This part of the country just got the largest snowstorm I’ve seen in years, and it certainly made for quite the voyage home (I spent 12 hours sitting at Gare Centrale).
As a refuge from the snow, Tessa pulled me over to the Musée des beaux-arts to see the new Joyce Wieland exhibit entitled “Heart On.” It’s a retrospective of the artist’s work and one of the first times her art has been compiled and exhibited like this in over 40 years. I had never heard of Wieland before getting to see this exhibit, and I would think that the majority of you dear readers have likely never encountered this very excellent Canadian woman’s work. Wieland had the sort of artistic career that I tend to admire the most, one with a wide variety of mediums that allows the artist to take on many labels. By this I mean that Wieland was an experimental filmmaker, but also a painter, a knitter, a quilter, and generally a mixed-media artist. Her textile work really drew me in, and I wanted to write a bit about it so I could remember it forever.
I Love Canada - J’aime Canada (1970)
The museum’s curators were able to frame much of Wieland’s work as a dialogue on Canadian national identity. Which, if you’ve seen any North American news lately, happens to be particularly timely. On the wall, the curators wrote:
Just before moving back to Canada in 1971, Wieland began to centre her work on the complex question of Canadian identity. […] She was concerned with the potentially overbearing economic, political, environmental, and cultural influence of the United States over Canada.
I love my country (despite its many flaws) but it does feel like Wieland’s fears have come true 54 years later - at least in the mainstream. The stitching in the middle of the work reads “Death to U.S. Technological Imperialism.” Canadian culture has morphed into this very commercialized American conglomerate, as so many Canadian artists find their niches and their profit in the US. These days, it is extra important for me to chase the hidden true “Canadian” art from across this country. Without knowing our history, it is easy to forget that Canadian art has been here for centuries, and it has always been innovative and weird and strange and multilingual and significant.
[In 1971] Trudeaumania was in full swing (P.E. Trudeau was elected Prime Minister in 1968). In response, [Wieland] looked to feminize politics by using her prestigious solo exhibition as an opportunity to foreground the work of craftswomen in Canada. She visited fairs in the Maritimes and sough out women with whom to collaborate, stating, “I wanted to elevate and honour craft by joining women together in an exhibition where they would be united and proud of what they had done.”
When I see textiles and fabric arts of any kind, I cannot help but be reminded of all the threads, yarn and fabrics that have united craftswomen from all over the world over millennia. An ancient art and a necessary one - one that persists through times of crisis and through political revolt. I love that Wieland understood this, and the shared-ness of it too. I love that she did not dismiss textiles as an art, but of something worthwhile to frame in a gallery.
Heart On (1962)
Heart On epitomizes playful yet candid exploration of female embodiment. She poured ink onto draped sheets, resulting in red splotches reminiscent of menstrual bloodstains. She revealed that this staining also reflected a traumatic childhood memory, when she cared for her mother, who died of uterine cancer when the artist was 9 years old. Heart On is the poignant exploration of the entire spectrum of the human lifecycle, simultaneously alluding to sexuality, the life-giving capacity of the female body and, ultimately, the inevitability of death.
There is unity in fabric! And a physical display of quite literally every aspect of life. I should note that the physicality of it all cannot be (and shouldn’t be) perceived in a digital image. You, dear reader, are missing its size, its shadows and its aura. I am certain the internet cannot replicate it.
As a craftswoman myself, there is an indescribable joy in seeing fabrics in a gallery and feeling its weight. With the stitches and crochets I make in my home I am reminded of all the women who came before me, whether their creations were political statements, or perhaps very simply socks for a loved one. Wieland’s exhibit reminded me of everything I love about art. The politics of it, the collaboration, the hidden gems, the atmosphere it creates, and the shared experience of all of us viewers. If you ask me about Canadian art - I will now point you to Wieland.
If you find yourself in Montréal, I highly recommend you check out this exhibit (bonus: free for under 25s). I didn’t even touch on the last painting in the gallery, one of the last ones that Wieland ever did before she died of Alzheimer’s. I won’t tell you anything other than it made me cry just to look at it. I hope you will go see it yourself.
I wrote this while wearing the first top I ever knit. <3
May the threads of your life fill you with love,
sam
joyce wieland, 1971
special thanks: Tessa and Laura for housing me and making great food <3
a link : to a c. 1000-1200 CE example of knitted socks, with a pattern for you wild crafters
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