Past Exhibitions
Bright Oriental Star
ClosedFebruary 26 to May 22, 2011
A video artwork exploring the connections between the great Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore and Canadian artists and cultural workers profoundly influenced by his work and ideas. Tagore was the first non-European to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature and an internationally recognized name when he visited Canada in 1929.
Stylized videos depicting walking through the Canadian landscape – some resembling Group of Seven paintings – are interspersed with quotes from Tagore’s work, creating a blend of painterly and documentary aesthetics. Rather than a project of historical recovery, the work explores the complex nature of Tagore’s position in the world, East/West interaction and the character of colonial/national history.
South-Asian-Canadian contemporary artist Rachel Kalpana James asks the larger questions about memory: what is remembered, what is erased and what constitutes history? Lingering on the thin line between history and fiction, Bright Oriental Star suggests that the boundaries between the two are always blurred.
About the Artist
Rachel Kalpana James was born in 1961 in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England and is currently based in Ottawa. Her multi-disciplinary art practice is inspired by her South Asian heritage, immigrant history and love of books. Working in installation, video and performance, she explores the construction of identity and belonging. She works with and critiques the authoritative systems of the archive and language, as well as subjective memory, to expose them as both fallible and incomplete. Her work is an ongoing investigation of how we know ourselves, and others. She has been the recipient of a number of grants and her work has been exhibited in Canada, United States, India, Pakistan and the UK.
This installation is generously supported by the Friends of South Asia.
