(Re)Negotiating Every. Now. Then‘s Invisible Centre: Institutional White Spatiality

Fung is quick to point out that this is only partially true, as Every. Now. Then was conceived by former Curator of Canadian Art Andrew Hunter in collaboration with Anique Jordan, a Black artist and independent curator based in Toronto. In addition, Every. Now. Then features thirty-nine mostly Black, Indigenous, and Southeast Asian artists, positioned alongside archival and natural materials (Paul Kane’s Portrait of Maungwudaus, 1849 – 1851; footage from a 1925 “Indian Powwow”; an Impact Shatter Cone from Sudbury, Ontario, on loan from the Royal Ontario Museum). The show deliberately has no clear centre, enabling it to, as art critic Murray Whytedescribes it, “veer wilfully off course, without apology or explanation.”³ 3 - Murray Whyte, “Canada Revisited at the Art Gallery of Ontario,” The Toronto Star, July 3, 2017, <bit.ly/2j0k84K>. Its main themes — memory, migration, narration, and time — are instead divided into sections and elucidated via artist quotes or authorless wall texts written in English and Anishinaabemowin. Although the exhibition’s curators clearly wish to give the participating artists the freedom to imagine new and different futures for themselves and their communities, Every. Now. Then nonetheless has, as Fung points out, a distinctly white tone — one that is, paradoxically, due to the exhibition’s lack of a curatorial centre.

If whiteness has a “tone,” it can be difficult to detect. According to scholar Sara Ahmed this is precisely because whiteness operates as an “absent centre against which others appear only as deviants or as lines of deviation.”⁴ 4 - Sara Ahmed, “The Orient and the Others,” in Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others (Durham and London: Duke University Press 2006), 121. Every. Now. Then’s white tone reverberates as a refusal — a negation, even — of a wilful departure: a refusal by the art institution to tackle its own culpability in the perpetuation of white supremacy; a curatorial refusal to lean into each artwork’s potential to disorient the space; a refusal by spectators to explicitly link contemporary white Canada to ongoing processes of white supremacy (observable in many of the comments left behind in the exhibition). Instead, Every. Now. Then reads as though it has been filtered through the lens of polite multiculturalism, another form of refusal that intentionally dilutes Canada’s English and French roots by emphasizing the country’s cosmopolitanism.⁵ 5 - See Ken Lum, “Canadian Cultural Policy: A Problem of Metaphysics,” Canadian Art 16, no. 3 (1999): 76 — 83. Historical and current multicultural policy therefore relies upon the false notion that Canada is without a definitive (white) centre operating in service to an Anglophone and, to a lesser extent, a Francophone elite.

Writers and educators Eunsong Kim and Maya Isabella Mackrandilal coined the term (white)spatiality in their essay “The Whitney Biennial for Angry Women” (2014) as a means to describe the issues inherent in exhibiting racialized artists in white-dominated spaces.⁶ 6 - Eunsong Kim and Maya Isabella Mackrandilal, “The Whitney Biennial for Angry Women,” The New Inquiry, April 4, 2014,
<bit.ly/2j0MpIO>. Kim and Mackrandilal anchor their critique in the Black body to highlight Black artists’ ­fraught relationship with the gallery space, which they describe as both white supremacist and visually oppressive: “We’ll call [(white)spatiality] passing. We’ll call it presence without provocation. We’ll call it just enough black faces to assuage liberal guilt without the discomfort of challenging anything. We’ll call it the fantasy of a postracial America. We’ll call it visible invisibility.”⁷ 7 - Ibid.

In other words, and not unlike Canadian multicultural policy, white spatiality subsumes difference by making everyone over in its image. When artists are unable to conform to this institutional line, they are placed in boxes — Black artist, Indigenous artist, Asian artist, woman artist — that serve to reinforce whiteness as the absent, yet pervasive, centre. While I am the AGO’s (and many other major institution’s) ideal patron — white, middle class, educated — I likewise have a fraught relationship with it, though for different reasons: I continually (perhaps naïvely) hope that the museum will become a space for reflection, in which the hegemonic is questioned and discomfort becomes generative. That an exhibition can be co-curated by two cultural workers intent on critiquing Canada’s racist and colonialist beginnings and still come across as primarily in service to its white patrons signals a deep disconnect between the artwork and the space of the institution that, to an extent, reaches beyond the curatorial. And yet it would be a mistake to understand this disconnect as simply the inevitable result of presenting racialized artists in spaces built upon whiteness. Indeed, many exhibitions have successfully tackled the nuances of Canada 150.⁸ 8 - See, for example, raise a flag (September — December, 2017), curated by Ryan Rice at OCAD University’s Onsite Gallery; Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience (January — March, 2017) at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto; LandMarks 2017 (June 10 — 25, 2017), a series of collaborative art projects spanning multiple sites across Canada. A question arises, then: how do we reorient spaces that have been imprinted with a distinctly white spatiality?

The appointment of Wanda Nanibush as Curator of Indigenous Art is, of course, promising. Yet this good news is tarnished by the fact that two women are now essentially sharing Andrew Hunter’s vacated position, with Georgiana Uhlyarik working alongside Nanibush as Curator of Canadian Art. Whether intentional or not, their joint appointment suggests that, on some level, the AGO finds it impossible to fathom Nanibush (or Uhlyarik, for that mater) as the custodian of both Indigenous and Canadian art. In an open letter to his former employer, published in The Toronto Star before the museum’s director and CEO, Stephan Jost, announced the new positions, Hunter writes about his disappointment with the AGO’s unwillingness to restructure itself — for the institution to imagine, let alone lend a hand in creating, a less hierarchical future more in touch with the local.⁹ 9 - Andrew Hunter, “Why I Quit The Art Gallery of Ontario,” The Toronto Star. October 3, 2017, <bit.ly/2xf3S4H>. Although I think it’s important for people in positions of power, particularly white people, to call out whiteness when they see it, Hunter risks overshadowing the work that he and Jordan have done with Every. Now. Then by shifting focus away from the exhibition — its artists and counter-narratives — toward his public display of allyship. By implication, his letter also calls into question the AGO’s motives for appointing Nanibush and Uhlyarik, undermining both women’s curatorial capabilities. At the same time, the institutional critique levelled by Hunter is an important one, even if it takes a certain amount of privilege, not to mention career mobility, to voice it so publicly.

Large-scale art institutions such as the AGO can remake themselves as sites of reflection and transformation, but only if they embrace the spatial and intellectual resources of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of colour) and LGBTQ2S+ artists and curators. However, it might just be that such artists and curators will choose not to spend the majority of their time and resources in places built to serve whiteness. An example of this would be Every. Now. Then’s off-site programming, curated by Anique Jordan, which extended the exhibition into the wider community. The Public: Land and Body (East) at Y+ Contemporary in Scarboroughincluded performances by artists Jo SiMalaya Alcampo, Esmaa Mohamoud and Qendrim Hoti, Paul Ohonsi, Mariam Magsi, and Abedar Kamgari. Black Creek Community Farm, an urban farm committed to “improving food security, reducing social isolation, and improving employment and educational outcomes”¹⁰ 10 -  Black Creek Community Farm website, <http://www.blackcreekfarm.ca/about-us/>. hosted The Public: Land and Body (West), which included a moderated panel discussion with Erica Violet Lee, Ella Cooper, and Sabrina Butterfly Gopaul, as well as video installations and performances. Jordan has insisted that Every. Now. Then is different from other institutional exhibitions because it allows “the perspectives of people who are never seen as valuable in spaces like these to lead.”¹¹ 11 - Anique Jordan, quoted in Whyte, “Canada Revisited.” Providing Jordan with the resources to reach beyond the traditional gallery space — to lead, as she says, a considerable deviation from the institution as the site of knowledge production — not only forces the AGO to share its considerable resources with smaller, emerging galleries and centres, it also reflects the activist community that Jordan hails from and acknowledges that societal transformation often happens outside institutional spaces.

Within the AGO itself, racialized artists productively disrupt the museum by imprinting their bodies, presence, and voices onto white spaces, and Every. Now. Then is no exception. Gu Xiong’s Illuminated Niagara Falls (2017) and Yu Gu’s Interior Migrations (2017) are incredibly affecting, as are Syrus Marcus Ware’s four massive drawings, Baby, Don’t Worry, You Know That We Got You (2017). The Jamaican and Mexican migrant workers represented in Xiong’s cascade of photographs are given closer, more intimate treatment in Yu’s three-channel video, which translates Xiong’s overwhelming imagery through sound and movement. Where the sheer number of Xiong’s photographs renders the workers virtually unknowable, Yu provides an opportunity to focus more intently on individuals and their stories. Ware likewise provides an intimate look at members of Toronto’s activist community, rendered in relaxed positions that subtly counter mainstream perceptions of violence. Black Lives Matter’s Toronto Chapter co-founder Yusra Khogali leans forward casually, lips slightly parted, eyelids lowered as though she is about to greet a friend, and yet she towers over the viewer, portrayed in a size historically reserved for kings and, later, the bourgeoisie. Works like those presented by Gu Xiong, Yu Gu, and Ware challenge the AGO’s spatial fixity by purposefully frustrating viewers’ expectations of didactic visibility — patrons must physically engage with the work, shifting their bodies in relation to the ebbs and flows of materials (and subjects), in order to drink in each one’s nuances. Inhabiting one’s body — pacing back and forth between different parts of the work, lean­ing, squinting, crouching, shifting attention between screens and speakers — has the capacity to, if not change, at least expose people’s physical, mental, and social orientations.

White spatiality is, however, deeply root­ed. Metastasized like a cancer, its effects permeate the institution. Thus I would be remiss to suggest that simply adding more artists and curators of colour will reorient the institution toward a less Eurocentric, patriarchal, and white-supremacist model, particularly when so much of the museum’s upper echelons, including the source of its funding, are embedded with the principles of white spatiality. Most Canadian museums employ a combination of private and public money, with the private sector donating an ever-larger piece of the pie. Indeed, the AGO’s chief benefactors in the 2014 – 15 fiscal year include the Thompson family, the Delaney Family Foundation, Fredrick S. and Catherine Eaton, The Globe and Mail, and Mobil Oil Canada, in addition to the revenue accrued through government grants (roughly thirty-three percent of its budget).¹² 12 - Art Gallery of Ontario, “2014/2015 Year in Review,” <bit.ly/2ytra7y>. To keep the AGO from raising ticket prices exponentially, these donations are necessary, and yet they are undeniably constituent with white spatiality: the presentation of a seemingly contrary position, particularly around already controversial events such as Canada 150, reaffirms the legitimacy of the institution as a bastion of progressiveness at the same time that it absolves certain investors (governmental or otherwise) of their (potentially) neo-colonial tactics. Every. Now. Then’s main financial supporters, for example, are the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario 150, and, simply, the Government of Canada. This information is not hidden; to the contrary, it is displayed on a plaque at the entrance of the exhibition — before, even, the acknowledgment of Indigenous territory.

Because this issue of esse addresses the inconsistent, agonistic nature of democracy, I cannot help but recall Justin Trudeau’s election in 2015, in which he appointed two Indigenous members of Parliament to his cabinet. The photographs that circulated shortly thereafter, of Trudeau alongside Jody Wilson-Raybould (Justice Minister) and Hunter Tootoo (Minister of Fisheries and the Canadian Coast Guard), did much to demonstrate the Liberal government’s inclusivity and dedication to reconciliation.¹³ 13 - Tiar Wilson, “Hopeful Indigenous Reaction to Justin Trudeau Cabinet Picks,” CBC News. November 4, 2015, <bit.ly/2mneOLy>.It also solidified the prime minister as a sincere ally, intent on tackling justice reform (particularly for missing and murdered Indigenous women), environmental issues, and providing adequate federal aid to First Nations and Inuit communities. None of this turned out to be true: pipelines were approved, the MMIW commission fell apart, northern communities went without clean drinking water, and death by suicide among Inuit youth soared. Gestures toward inclusion are, as Kim and Mackrandilal point out, “often rhetorical”: until people of colour occupy positions of power, their insertion into white-dominated spaces does not automatically negate the imperialistic beginnings or current colonial leanings of those spaces.¹⁴ 14 - Kim and Mackrandilal, “Whitney Biennial.” Worse, it is often to the advantage of whiteness, helping to further its agenda by placating those who might otherwise be critical. The danger in letting white curators, critics, directors, and the public remain content by mere gestures of inclusion is that neoliberal hegemony continues, unabated. To suggest, as Hunter does, that museums are coercive is to place emphasis on force or intimidation, ignoring the fact that white spatiality is ideological; not only does it drive the creation of our physical spaces, it also influences our intellectual and social relations, and it does so in much more subtle, insidious ways.

Our public institutions are predicated on the same ideals as those that characterize Western democracy, but believing in the contemporary museum as a public space free of prejudice means ignoring how it has always been coded by white supremacy. I am not an authority on how, exactly, museums should dismantle white spatiality, not least of all because I am white. The appointment of Nanibush is obviously a start, as would be hiring more people of colour to prominent positions within the institution. Perhaps this necessitates radical institutional transparency, achieved through an open, accessible public conversation about how museums hire staff and choose their exhibitions. This transparency may also necessitate a more honest conversation about the roots of institutional liberalism and the ways in which it has leaned on white spatiality to both justify and elide its mistreatment of racialized artists and curators. If, however, the AGO gives curators, artists, directors, and financers who have traditionally been left out of the conversation the autonomy to lead — and if those same employees continue to ferry resources out of the institution, asserting the importance of grassroots organizations as they do so — perhaps there is a reason to keep these lumbering dinosaurs around, after all. 

I would like to extend sincere thanks to fellow curator and critic Tak Pham for his thoughtful comments and support during the writing of this essay.