Calendar Description:
A consideration of
specific issues in the recent art of Canada.
Course Description:
Memory entails an imaginative
renegotiation of the past within the ever-changing present. It can be lost,
retrieved, contested, repressed, or inherited – a source of sorrow, shame,
comfort, or joy. This course examines artwork, produced in a contemporary
Canadian context, that responds to, or connects the beholder to, a variety of
personal, collective, or culturally specific forms of memory – to issues of
personal and cultural identity, pre-memory/postmemory, bereavement, nostalgia,
memory of place, and to contested figures/histories. Students will have the
opportunity to explore various expressions of memory through art – from public
art/commemorative monuments to mementoes of a more personal nature, such as
vernacular photographs – considering the many ways memory can be expressed,
created, supported, and manipulated through these objects, practices, and
performances. Some artworks/objects become unexpected mementoes whereas others
are created with the sole intention of fostering remembrance practices or
evoking feelings of nostalgia. How can relationships to such memory objects
change over time? And how do we reconcile conflictual relationships to the past
and to the way this is conveyed in artwork/commemorative monuments/memory
projects?
- Teacher: FELICITY TSERING CHÖDRON HAMER
- Teaching Assistant: Isabelle Burrows