Dream Big: A Reflection on Nuit Blanche.
I was only really moved by two artworks this year for Nuit Blanche. In the middle of some buildings somewhere in between the Centennial concert hall, the Exchange, and Main street, I came across an outdoor Jazz show. There was a big crowd facing the stage, but behind them and to their right was a ‘happening’ (an art performance which acknowledges the audience, blurring the line between art and real life). It consisted of two people dancing with and against the music, ignoring and acknowledging the audience by begging for a sip of their drinks, puffs of their cigarettes, and often times pausing to pose for pictures being taken of them (If you’re a real one and came to read this straight from my Instagram story you’ll know exactly what i’m talking about ;) ). Behind the two was a more composed man in a suit. The two people, presumably artists based on the way they were dressed, were connected to the man in the suit through puppet strings which he was toying with. Every seemingly random move or proclamation that they made was contingent on a flick of the wrist from the man in the suit.
What I loved about this ‘happening’ was that it was allegorical while also flatly showing you what’s happening in front of you. The man in the suit behind the two artists holds the power. He decides the fate of this instillation by means of his executive will and whether he chooses or chooses not to exercise it. His attitude and his ‘flicks,’ which dictate whether or not these artists get to drink, in what direction they are headed, and what they’re allowed to say, is a perfect picture of the ironic bureaucracy which has cannibalized post-modernist and contemporary art. The artwork is just as surreal as it is real. The man in the suit is both present and hiding. The one we see is part of the performance but stands in for actual corporately-dressed executives who co-signs artworks like these. In making a commentary on the state of contemporary Art, the artists are still held to the limitations which they are trying to give us a picture of; they are confined to the strings of the jury who decide what is shown at Nuit Blanche. In so, the picture that the artwork is trying to make for us is that of the process of acquiring the means to speak to us. By bringing the ‘man in a suit’ into a world of fantasy, they are showing us what goes on beyond the picture frame whilst keeping themselves stuck within it.
I think this has a slight parallel with what Bistyek, a Kurdish-Syrian Winnipeg based visual artist, did with his instillation. Speaking primarily about his paintings, a major theme in his work is his own identity and childhood; his Forbidden Colours exhibition at the WAG earlier this year explored the suppression of Kurdish culture by revisiting his childhood memories. My favourite painting from this collection is The Lion, The Boy, and The Sun, in which a young boy is depicted heroically riding the now stolen lion statue of Ain Dara. This, along with other works, champion his positionality by projecting it onto massive canvases, rejecting and countering the suppression of Kurdish identity and history.
Considering the subject matter, having your memories and imaginations projected onto such a large surface at a notable art gallery is massive. However, a sense of irony and an uneasy feeling about the ‘strings’ working behind the exhibition is not lost on me. This heroic inflation of his positionality was pushed even further at Nuit Blanche, as his now-iconic styled figures became physical objects. Just as he captioned in an Instagram post leading up to the instillation, “POV: your imagination outgrew the box,” it really feels as if the conviction showcased in his paintings have become so big that the figures jumped out of the canvas. Now his memory and identity are in the same plane as the viewer, no longer to be imagined but to be interacted with (a very literal example of concepts becoming things).
In theory, this makes dialogue unavoidable. However, my concern is that in making his art become architecture, what he may have intended to present as celebratory monuments in a space as iconic as Old Market Square could instead become objects that emphasize the space itself rather than the object. Regardless, it is such a large feat that through his art and his growth as an artist, Bisteyk is in a position where his whole identity, both as an artist and as a Kurdish person, is tacit and tactile. In experiencing his art as quasi-architecture and para-fictional figures, I felt the freedom and transfiguration of his work from idea to an actual real thing. Seeing people gathering around a site decorated by such intimate art is a surreal experience, but the fact that they have become literal objects gives me some bittersweetness in a way that I’m not sure how to articulate. Maybe the cost for his paintings to enter this altered form - that is, to become fully integrated into our ‘real’ world - is for it to become monolithic?
Photo: Marc Kuegle (@marcusorelious on Instagram)
Works Cited:
https://www.cara.ngo/news/the-lion-statue-of-ain-dara-syria
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DcBxR8htjkX/?stkn=MWNyMnk4bDR2M24xdw==
https://www.instagram.com/reel/Ddb6iE0xtvZ/?stkn=MTY4d3pxdml0d3N1bQ==
