Activating activism

>> Drawing Resistance showcases political art
from around the continent

by MARK SLUTSKY

Seems like thousands of art shows pass through Montreal’s galleries every year, but it’s somewhat of a rarity when they deal with explicitly political subject matter. Sure, there’s a lot of politicized art, or art dealing abstractly with political issues, but honest-to-goodness, fist-shaking activist stuff is uncommon.

It’s refreshing, in a way, to see Drawing Resistance, a travelling exhibit showing at Elle Corazon this month that wears its heart on its sleeve. Composed of “two dimensional” work by around three dozen artists from all over North America, the show’s been on the road for over a year now—since September 6, 2001, five days before aggressively lefty discourse went out of style in the U.S.

Originally organized by Wisconsin natives Sue Simensky Bietila and Nicolas Lampert, Drawing Resistance opened in Milwaukee, displayed for a month and then packed up for Chicago. Since then it’s repeated that pattern, travelling to cities all over the continent, and without accompaniment—organizers in each city pass it along from place to place in a process meant to last five years.

Classics and collages
The art, in style and sometimes in quality, is as diverse as the range of activist causes and opinions the show represents. Some are classics of political art, like Seth Tobocman’s “You Don’t Have to Fuck People Over to Survive,” or (at the other end of the design spectrum) Winston Smith’s apocalyptic collages, the gruesome style of which you may recognize from seeing one too many Dead Kennedys album covers.

Actually, those two are representative in some way of the visual polarity of the art on display. About half of the work falls into one of two camps: simple and iconic, or intensely concentrated and visually busy. For instance, there are posters modelled to resemble World War II-era propaganda, like John Yates’s illustration of a plane dropping bombs, with the slogan “Democracy: We Deliver,” or clever reworkings of familiar images, like organizer Lampert’s “Oil Soldier,” a doctored photo of a soldier decked out in patches bearing the names of oil companies. On the busy side of things is Nicole Schuman’s “Ethnic Cleansing,” where industrial apparatus force a crowd into the water, or Kehben Grifter and Juan Manchu’s “Free Trade of the Americas” poster, where the area in question is portrayed as a very bad, Bosch-like place to be.

Of course a lot of stuff is just its own thing. There are a few comics on display—Sabrina Jones’s “Bad News Day” is a day in the life of someone who works at the none-too-subtly-disguised “Peacock Network.” Andy Singer’s grimly hilarious “Invasion of New Markets” features Disney characters storming a beach while a battleship lobs soda cans and televisions at terrified natives.

As with many cities on the show’s tour, some local artists are also joining the bunch, with a few pieces from Montreal types adding to the main exhibition. There’s stuff from Jesse Purcell (who co-coordinated this leg of the exhibit with Aimee Darcel and Elle Corazon), Nadia Moss, Stephanie Heendrickxen, Julie Beauchamp and others.

In keeping with the co-operative vibe of the project, Elle Corazon will be hosting a series of workshops on creating your very own agitprop: there’ll be sessions on stencil-making, book-making and the like. For more info see the schedule at the gallery or check out www.ellecorazon.org. :

Drawing Resistance runs through Sept. 30 at Elle Corazon (176 Bernard W.)

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