Come Help UN/make the Horizon in a Quest Art Master Class on May 14th and 15th.
Have you ever wondered how the tradition of landscape painting developed so strongly in Canada when so much of the art world still considers portraits and the figurative to be the ultimate discipline? Interestingly enough, landscape paintings in Europe started as a way of communicating the class, leisure and wealth of the upper class! This picture below shows us a portrait of a recently married couple, who by coming together have secured a larger parcel of land through their union. Still holding the recently signed marriage contract, land often used to serve as a bride's dowry, despite her not being able to be a landowner as part of the union. These patriarchal practices are just one of the many laws that disempowered women and still points to gender inequities today.
If we look at how landscape painting got its footing in North America, it actually started off as a way of colonial, imperial forces mapping geographies from which to extract resources, expand trade routes and establish settlements that were well situated to defend territories, many of which still remain unceded today. So what can artists do to help undo the colonial gaze that led to the unjust accumulation and devastation of land that gradually replaced respectful relations between Indigenous populations and the earliest of settlers?
In thinking about how images can either perpetuate or disrupt the colonial, industrial and capitalist gaze, I have teamed up with Quest Art to offer another experimental workshop around methods of unmaking. Where deconstructing, abstracting, inverting, disrupting, covering, erasing, inserting or layering, this MASTER CLASS will have you thinking more about how to drop the gaze and come more into relation with your immediate environment today.
To read a more indepth outline of the course and register for you spot, visit EVENTBRITE.
