Summary
For example, in the work of Ray Dirks, the gallery director who also organized the exhibit, we see a series of photo-quality watercolour paintings presenting the faces of Africa. As a curator, Dirks has worked with artists in 30 countries over the years, including many in Africa. He has also lived and worked there at various times during his life, including a stint as an observer during last year's elections -- the first in 50 years -- in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
In his video, Kevin Ei-Ichi de Forest features himself playing guitar, with his image superimposed over what seems at first to be classic footage of guitar legend Jimi Hendrix. A closer look, however, shows that the performer is actually a Japanese Hendrix impersonator, so that de Forest's video becomes a series of re-interpretations -- a work in which a half-Asian-Canadian interprets the work of an Asian musician who is in turn interpreting an American rock icon. At the same time, he's doing more than that. The crowds that cheer on the Hendrix impersonator seem to cheer on de Forest as well (and, in turn, Hendrix too), so that there's a sense of music and pop culture forming a certain universal language.See the full content of this document
Extract
Exhibit Gives Poverty, Sorrow a Human Face
Lorne Roberts
BASED on the seemingly endless barrage of news about genocide, civil wars, human trafficking and so on, it would seem that disaster and suffering are, to some degree, the global norm.A group of five art...See the full content of this document
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