Fourth-year visual art students prep final exhibition
In Togo Salmon’s Exhibition Cube, there’s a series of plaster heads topped with exuberant clouds of pastel-coloured foam. On the wall, a series of digital portraits, distorted and blurry.
Up the stairs in TSH 114, there are video installations flickering. Shoes, skirts, iPads, digital images and paintings share the wall space.
Fourth-year students in the Bachelor of Fine Arts program were putting the finishing touches on Flux SUMMA 2018, the annual culminating showcase of work produced by the BFA’s graduating class.
The show, curated by community artist Paul Cvetich, will be on display at the McMaster Museum of Art from April 5 to 28, with an opening reception to be held on April 14 from 2 until 4 p.m.
The display in the art studios was, as professor Judy Major-Girardin puts it, a “dry run” in advance of the gallery show – a chance for each artist to try out their display and for the curator to make any final decisions.
One piece in particular drew the eye. Dina Hamed has laid her diptych – two side-by-side photos – out on the floor.
Two women, posed outside in front of a brick wall, wearing sunglasses that hide their eyes.
The woman on the left is blond and bareheaded. The woman on the right is wearing a hijab.
Both wear identical white t-shirts that say, “I’m the bomb.”
Together, they’re challenging images. And that’s exactly what Hamed intends them to be.
“I don’t think making work that’s controversial just for the sake of being shocking is necessary, but making this piece controversial was important – it’s making people confront whatever their innate reaction is,” explains Hamed, who is Muslim herself. “People will react differently to someone who’s visibly Muslim wearing a shirt like that, versus someone who might not be Muslim. It’s sad, but it’s the truth.”
For Hamed, the work is also about separating the peaceful practice of Islam from “extremist forces that are denigrating it right now.
“If the Muslim identity is going to be talked about, I feel that someone like myself has a right to speak on its behalf, especially when it’s being dragged through the mud by groups like ISIS,” she says. “My art practice in general is about reclaiming the Muslim identity.”
Hamed worked with McMaster’s Equity and Inclusion Office to get permission to have her work hung in the Student Centre, where she hopes it will spark reaction and discussion about assumptions, identity and judgement. It was installed on March 25.
According to Major-Girardin, a public forum for Hamed’s piece is ideal for the type of work it is.
“People who are looking at works in a gallery are used to having their assumptions challenged by art,” she says. “Out in the student centre, the piece has a different kind of power. I think it’s very simple, very clear, very direct – and it has a powerful message about how we judge other people.”
For more information on Flux: SUMMA 2018, go to the McMaster Museum of Art’s website.
