I believe that Kim has nothing to emulate, nothing to draw inspiration from, in the Canadian landscape, but rather looks back thousands of miles, and cultures, away to her Korean background.
Kim's designs are a combination of..."deconstructed-reconstructed" works of postmodern art and works that reference her Korean/Asian background.
Kim writes about her textiles and her inspirations:
...the familiar Korean textile never fail to encourage my search --- perhaps it is a consolation that I look for unconsciously living so far away from Korea.
Chung-Im Kim
Bow
2005
8" x 9.5"
Ramie, Hemp, Natural Dyes, Silkscreen Printing, Machine & Hand Stitching
[Source]
Below is my post, from August 2018 on Kim, her designs, and her loyalties:
At the end of the article, I write;
Their ethnic references are too far away, and they are too alienated from their current country, and all that is left is the "structure" of the image: its shape, its empty outline.
I should add to that:
...its empty outline, ready to fill up with foreign, alien forces.
After all, Kim's fungal protrusions are titled" Mutations."
I've always, since my Ontario College of Art Design days, tried to master textile art and design. My instructor was a Korean woman. It was then that I intuitively realized that "Asians" had an inherent dislike of whites. I went to "night school" and took only one course for four consecutive sessions. This course was open to the public and not just OCAD students. It became an issue for her after the second course, but I was paying the $200/course fee. If she had any sympathy for me and my ideas, I would have told her that I was there to use the equipment.
By the third session I had developed many of my ideas. I had briefly started doing the geometric border patterns found in Ethiopian dress, but my models for my work were the historical textiles of the Western World up to the early 20th century. Anything beyond that took on the modernists' "destruction of the image" ideology.
The textile instructor, Chung-Im Kim, who I believe didn't have the rigorous "image-making" background required of textile design - including drawing and painting - vociferously pushed me to "design something Ethiopian." Eventually I came to the course randomly and spent my time - evenings and weekends - in the textile workroom, mixing paints, cutting cloth and printing. I did the blueprints at home on a makeshift IKEA work table.
I wondered later why she never introduced us to the endless list of "white" designers. All artists, however limited their education, at some point come across some textiles which are too breathtaking to ignore. I don't think she was intellectually limited. Nor can she use the "excuse" that she is an immigrant. She had lived in Canada by then too many years to not even have casually wandered across some of these works.
I believe it was (is) this inherent dislike of whites. Perhaps not individual whites, and certainly not the leftist whites which now make up Canada and America who hate "whites" or white civilization themselves, but the white people as a collective, the white civilization, the white mind.
Kim's designs are a combination of these "deconstructed-reconstructed" works of postmodern art and works that reference her Korean/Asian background.
ALL non-whites at some point begin to refer to their ancestral lands for inspiration, artistic or otherwise. And the constant, daily reminder that art created by whites has always been SUPERIOR to their art, from their specific non-European or North American region or country (Asia, South America, Africa, the Caribbeans) must ignite their fury.
I believe, though, that I am the exception.
As I write in an unpublished article:
My family and I left Ethiopia in 1973, a year before the “Ethiopian Revolution” which occurred in 1974, when Emperor Haile Selassie was deposed and a communist regime ran the country for almost two decades. I was ten years old. My father secured a post in UNESCO in Paris. My brothers and I initially attended school in Paris, but our parents sent us to England to boarding school a year later.
That dramatic, but fortuitous exit sent me across the globe from France to England and America to Canada. Our first landing point in Paris separated us from the usual flow of Ethiopian emigrants and refugees who set sail for America (and fewer to Canada). We were alone in our havens. My eleven years in France and as a student in boarding schools in England gave me the unique vantage point of discovering the West without the biases and interpretations of other Ethiopians and Africans. I was able to discover them on my own terms. I learned to love the West through the beautiful city of Paris and the paradisaical countryside of southern Kent.
My informal education had taken a Western orientation, but...I eventually obtained Bachelor and Masters degrees in the Biological and Health sciences in the United States. While pursuing my PhD, I lived in Mexico for two years working on my research work in clinical nutrition. The results of my PhD research eventually produced a unique testing method which was published in various academic science and medical journals.
By the end of my doctoral studies [we] obtained residency...in Canada [where] I was finally stable and able to make decisions about my activities without affecting my residency status. In Toronto, I obtained various certificates and qualifications in film and photography. I also studied textile design, and painting and drawing. I was determined to become an artist.
My constant displacement, my rigorous science education, and my artistic training allows me to ask: What is art? What is beauty? And why is Western beauty and art so singular? I have tried to answer these questions over the years.
Here is a post at the Ryerson Image Centre Facebook page. I recently sent a proposal to have my works exhibited at the RIC, and which I withdrew after I realized that: 1). They were going to stall, and eventually decline my proposal, and 2). Do I really want to be associated with such an organization anyway?
This year, the number of stores hosting or publicizing the holiday has grown exponentially. At last count, I saw about a dozen. It is becoming the second most celebrated holiday in the mall after Christmas.
Below are some store signs and images that I took yesterday. There is Chinese script in all of them, and most without any translation. "Happy Year of the Pig?" I don't know.
Such alien holidays are a conduit for other gods and godheads to enter the spiritual psyche of a country. Once people accept what looks like a benign "Happy Year of the Pig," there wll be other forces to contend with as the when the "pig" is actually a spiritual force that people genuflect to.
Chinese New Year is far from a "fun" event with gold coins and wish envelopes, and dragon dances and bright paper lanterns. It is a spiritual event that has ancient roots and has sustained a culture for hundreds of years.
But aside from the invisible spirits, the population of Chinese in the Mississauga area is growing at a fast rate with immigrants coming to Canada leaving behind their overcrowded cities and falsely reported prosperity. There is no prosperity in China, only a few who have managed to get very rich.
This year, Walmart is selling New Year's foods and clothing, Roger and Bell digital stores are promoting special promotions, and various clothing stores have decorated their stores with Chinese script and displayed red garments in accordance with the red color that goes with the New Year.
The idea is not participating in a multiculturalism, but a way for China to find a way into Mississauga and into Canada, using . multiculturalism as the ploy for an entry point. So far, it has been tremendously successful.
Celebration Square Skating Rink
Photo By KPA
January 13. 2019
The skating rink at the Celebration Square in Mississauga blasts music which can be heard a distance away.
And now that the Christmas Season is officially over, the music that the skaters can move to has turned to heavy metal rock music. Even during the holiday season, there were no Christmas songs (how about Jingle Bells) or other less sacred music, but which still have the holiday spirit? We had contemporary pop music of endless "love songs" with sexual and even pornographc conotations, which is now the norm for such music.
But this heavy metal is sinister and evil, where little children innocently move along the ice while the Devil's voice is blasted through the speakers.
I went yesterday to placed an order at Jamie's Italian, one more of the first class Square One Mall's (Mississauga) shopping "experiences."
Just a little background. Jamie is the British chef, Jamie Oliver, who has made an international name for himself with his working class accent and sophisticated dishes. He is somewhat the antidote to that very posh British-sounding American chef Julia Child who brought French cooking into American households. Jamie also has a steakhouse Barbecoa (named after Mexican and American barbecued meat dishes), a diner, and his own cooking show on television which loops silently on the big screen in bar area of Square One's Jamie's Italian.
The waitress at the door told me I should place my takeout order at the bar.
I waited a while for the bartender, who was mixing some fruity cocktail while chatting to a waitress, to take my order. She either didn't see me (not likely) or was biding her time, which often happens to me. I don't look very important.
I watched for a while the big screen tv above the bar which had Jamie's Fifteen Minute Meals on Gusto TV explain how he pounds chickpeas to make hummus, using his very own special Jamie's Olive Oil and canned chickpeas, all products we can buy at Jamie's Italian.
My wait also gave me a chance to observe her. She had yellowish skin and smooth hair. She looked like a hybrid, a mulatto of some kind of Chinese and Indian and white. And she had a very large tattoo of a buddha's head just below the elbow, on the inner arm. She had no "foreign" accent. She was swishing the drinks like an expert. She was no apprentice.
"Are you ready to take my order?" I finally ask with a tone of irritation.
Over the next couple of weeks, I will be posting the anti-Christian (and more recently, anti-Christmas wishes) of our multi-culti folk, from around Mississauga and Toronto.
- From the Ontario Human Rights Commissioner Renu Mandhane's official twitter page, posted on December 25, 2018, is this:
In my most recent post, Paris Would Show Me Her Beauty, I quote Theodore Dalrymple as well as post a full article by him, surprised that someone should understand how my 9-year-old self felt about the looping peripheral roads that surround Paris.
I was trying to illustrate my impressions (and feelings) as we arrived in Paris and traveled through the strands of autoroutes to get to our apartment in the center of Paris.
I had googled 'peripherique' and got to Dalrymple's article somehow. I used to read his on City Journal, but soon tired of his prison stories. I haven't read any of his articles for years now.
Well if I am to post a full article by him on my blog, I should really know more about him, and one way to do so would be to buy one of his (many) books.
And why not his most recent, which is a co-authorship with Kenneth Francis titled: The Terror of Existence: From Ecclesiastes to Theatre of the Absurd, and just came out on December 10, 2018?
There is not really much about the authors other than their literary achievements on these book-selling sites, so I went to good old reliable Wikipedia to find out more.
There is a lot there, but here's what caught my attention:
[Dalrymple] is an atheist, but has criticised anti-theism and says that "to regret religion [...] is to regret our civilisation and its monuments, its achievements, and its legacy". Raised in a non-religious Jewish home, he began doubting the existence of a God at age nine. He became an atheist in response to a moment in a school assembly.
Here he writes (at City Journal once again) about that incident:
I first doubted God’s existence at about the age of nine. It was at the school assembly that I lost my faith. We had been given to understand that if we opened our eyes during prayers God would depart the assembly hall. I wanted to test this hypothesis. Surely, if I opened my eyes suddenly, I would glimpse the fleeing God? What I saw instead, it turned out, was the headmaster, Mr. Clinton, intoning the prayer with one eye closed and the other open, with which he beadily surveyed the children below for transgressions. I quickly concluded that Mr. Clinton did not believe what he said about the need to keep our eyes shut. And if he did not believe that, why should I believe in his God? In such illogical leaps do our beliefs often originate, to be disciplined later in life (if we receive enough education) by elaborate rationalization.
That moment in school assembly - AT AGE NINE! - is when he peeked from a closed-eye school prayer session and saw the Headmaster also peeking!
What intelligent nine-year-old doesn't clumsily confront God because of another clumsy transgression by an adult?
By age 30 this should be simply a "childish transgression" caused by irresponsible (and even perhaps non-believing) adults, and the belief, or non-belief, in God is based on more lofty matters.
But Dalrymple writes this article in 2007 at age fifty-nine! What fifty-nine-old, at the brink of his final meeting with God, makes his nine-year-old experience a pivotal moment in his life regarding his assessment on the presence (or absence) of God? What fifty-nine-old self-acclaimed philosopher does so? The intuition of little children, I suppose, reverse quoting Jesus' "Suffer the Little Children" to the level of blasphemy, and Dalrymple has blasphemed countless of times in his City Journal article.
But being an expert in philosophy, he knows that his non-belief cannot remove God, so wouldn't that make it a reason, the reason, to BELIEVE in God? What Dalrymple does is to leave a small crack for this momentous Being to somehow prove to him that He exists and thus to be worthy of belief. The arrogance of the atheist!
Since my posts are about beauty and art, I was interested in Dalrymple views on beauty and art. But he writes as though beauty appeared out of nowhere, as does his whole premise about life: it came out of nothing.
The arrogance of the atheist!
But it is more than arrogance now. We can ignore arrogance, or cram it into some ivory tower of an Ivy League. But many, ordinary, people read City Journal. And the language is not overly intellectual that many young people (smart school students, for example) can read it too. And there isn't time to go through texts of philosophical discourse, which the likes of Dalrymple spend decades deciphering, so what Dalrymple gives us is it.
Unless, that is, we start printing our own journals, far away from these postmodern centres of thought (and residence) to refute every single word that writers like Dalrymple conjure up, and make his sound like the seasoned wordwizard he is.
After I wrote (re-wrote) this post on Dalrymple, I googled his name further and found that Lawrence Auster of The View from the Right couldn't let pass Dalrymple's nihilistic (I would say Godless) view of our universe, and in one short phrase (amidst several comments by VFR readers related to atheists in general) he writes:
Which is what I say. A sliver of a comment adds to other slivers of comments, and then a whole anti-God thesis is drafted, by people we trust to be our allies.
Which is why we should we start printing our own journals, far away from these postmodern centres of thought (and residence).
"Holiday" Event at Square One: Merry and Bright Holiday Market
[Photo By: KPA]
The Square One Mall retailers refuse to use the word Christmas in the way that it was intentioned.
They've now come up with a "pop up" "market" which consists of various stalls, which they've called a "Holiday Market," which is "Merry and Bright." Yay!
I've been inside, twice, to see if maybe I was missing something.
The last time I was there, I went to some stall (I forget which) and saw a "South Asian" woman, clearly a lesbian, with cropped hair and tattoos all the way down her arms and on her bare breasts (bare upper breasts, but who knows what's going on in the non-visible parts of the rest of her body). I saw all this as she started to talk to me, and I just walked away.
The sponsors of the "market" are listed on the photo above at their site, but the most curious is KIND®, which purports to sell "healthy snacks." But KIND® is still a prepackaged and processed food, and there are no numerical values for the "30% less sugar" (30% less sugar compared to what?) and "low sodium" (see sugar example) on their website.
And KIND® has a "KINDness Tree" in that merry pop-up market where you can "hang a wish" if you so desire. We can do it (be kind and gift-giving, that is) without Jesus and Mary and Joseph and that godforsaken donkey, those nuisance characters in that myth who tend to taken over OUR Holidays. All we need is to OWN it all: The Christmas Tree® and The Christmas Feeling™, and we can enjoy a time of kindness and gift-giving for ALL.
"Be kind" is the motto of our age, and God help you if you're not!
The clever folk at the Art Gallery of Mississauga, adept at garnering 3/4 of a billion dollars in government grant money (and countless thousands in private "donations"), have put up their "happy holidays" message and closed shop for "the holidays."
That is for TWO weeks!
No Holiday Shows. No Holiday Specials. No Holiday Eggnog Courtesy of the Museum.
They need to to save all that money for exhibitions which no-one visits, and which the Canadian government funds in the millions, not to repeat myself.
They have found an artist which best exemplifies their godless and anti-christian sentiment, as they sign off, to glean all the "joy and celebration" of OUR Christian Christmas season.
William Ronald's painting is in the gallery's permanent collection and acquisitions, amongst many others. And it is clearly a "choice" the AGM made to represent its Christmas wishes, aka Holiday Greetings, through his abstract expressionist painting.
William Ronald was the founder of Painters Eleven, the pioneer movement of Modernism in Canada. Their first exhibition, in 1954, was also the first major commercial display of abstract art in Toronto. As well, Ronald is known for his series of non-representational portraits of Canadian Prime Ministers (1977-84).
William Ronald graduated from the Ontario College of Art in Toronto in 1951 and began working as a display artist for the Robert Simpson Company department store. In 1952, he visited New York City where he studied with the American Abstract Expressionist painter, Hans Hofmann. Back in Canada, he persuaded Simpson’s to pair abstract paintings with furniture displays for a show titled Abstracts at Home, a creative way to get the public to accept non-representational art. Painters Eleven came together as a result of this show. Ronald exhibited with the group in Toronto (1953-55) and in New York (1956) (The River, 1956). [Source: National Gallery of Canada]
Imagine that: "Abstract Furniture!" Flows nicely into Abstract Christmas.
Rolan's signature painting, serving as a Christmas Card for the AGM, is aptly titled: "Untitled," from an exhibition in 1990.
The clever artist (and the Clever AGM Professionals) used the scattered, abstracted, red, and the green swoops of paint, to signify abstracted "Holly" and "Ivy," for the AGM's X-Mas card, to wish us all an Abstract Holly (and Ivy) X-Mas.
Simons Department Store, Mississauga
Main Entrance With Christmas Decorations
[Photo By: KPA]
The Square One Mall is slowly getting its X-Mas decorations up. So far, there is plenty of gold and yellow and red and green.
But there is a trend in dark copper.
I've never seen a full-on copper only decoration. Even when mixed with other metallic colors, it is usually very subdued (and minimal), and with a tint of gold rather than the red I'm seeing.
Here's someone who purposefully decorated in copper, but toned it down wth gold and silver.
Why the dark copper in Simons' display window? And notice the burgundy background, and the mannequins in non-festive drab metal grey, lusterless white, and black.
The contemporary world started off by denouncing Christmas ("holiday" became the go-to word). But now Christmas is back.You cannot change the calendar. December 25 is still Christmas. But what contemporary culture has done is to remove as much of the religious and christian celebration that surrounds Christmas to make it into another event, another "holiday," on the calendar.
And who can refuse a glass of eggnog, or a twinkling Christmas tree, or carols about snow and sleighs (or even baby Jesus)?
But the importance of Christmas is still viscerally felt, and it is palpable wherever we go. Christ doesn't disappear by a wave of a wand (or the ordinance of City Hall). We will feel his presence even if the mall decides to give us dark copper instead of shining gold.
And besides, not ALL the mall is doom and gloom. There are still plenty of places to get the spirit of the holiday. And a beautiful carol does sneak through the censors and programmers, and we can hear "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" on the speakers, which we can hum to as we go through shops drinking a Starbucks eggnog latte.
It came upon a midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the earth,
To touch their harps of gold:
“Peace on the earth, goodwill to men,
From heaven’s all-gracious King.”
The world in solemn stillness lay,
To hear the angels sing.
Still through the cloven skies they come,
With peaceful wings unfurled,
And still their heavenly music floats
O’er all the weary world;
Above its sad and lowly plains,
They bend on hovering wing,
And ever o’er its Babel sounds
The blessèd angels sing.
Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring;
O hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing.
And ye, beneath life’s crushing load,
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow,
Look now! for glad and golden hours
come swiftly on the wing.
O rest beside the weary road,
And hear the angels sing!
For lo!, the days are hastening on,
By prophet bards foretold,
When with the ever-circling years
Comes round the age of gold
When peace shall over all the earth
Its ancient splendors fling,
And the whole world give back the song
Which now the angels sing.
[Note: Partly because of the length of this article and partly that I have other notes to make regarding the topic (ethnic art) for another post, I missed out on some small - mostly typo - errors in the last update. This should be it! Although you will not have missed the point, and message, of the article.]
Meena Chopra, a poet and artist, officially launched her book of poetry and art SHE! The Restless Streak on August 26 at the Mississauga Central Library with Mayor Bonnie Crombie making the introductory presentation.
Above is a view drawings by artist Meena Chopra's She! The Relentless Streak art exhibit on now at the Mississauga Central Library
Below is Meena Chopra with Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie at the book launch for She! The Relentless Streak, a collection of poems and drawings, on Saturday, September 22, 2018
"My art is my search for the moments beyond the ones of self knowledge. It is the rhythmic fantasy; a restless streak which looks for its own fulfillment! A stillness that moves within! An intense search for my origin and ultimate identity". Source: Meena Chopra's Art World
Below is the completed article from my May 25, 2015 draft Meena Chopra's Ephemera: Art in the Multicultural Era
Meena Chopra is the Indian, Third World Goddess that has evoked Mississauga's awe and wonder.
Chopra knows this.
And she and her world are systematically undermining and curtailing the white West's civilization. She says so, clearly, in this presentation:
World is transitioning into a global village where English language is taking the front seat but not in a traditional British, American or any other way. [KPA Note: I suspect the grammatical deficiency might be because these are the notes she was reading at the lecture, but submitting that for publication is lax and lazy.]
She then continues to talk of the "visual" importance of modern-day communications, neglecting to mention the small fact, or covering it up, that she is reciting her poetry in English words, and much more often than her native country's Hindi words.
But, rather than talk about this usurpation of the English language by non-Anglo worlds, and discussing their variations on the English language, including the addition of many non-English words, she deviates from this by writing:
The biggest influence on new English is of the technological culture and the dynamism of the young who are the creative compelling users of technology.
(I should add here that Chopra's written text is probably the notes she was reading from at the presentation. And for a literary person, one would expect the final, public, version of her transcript not to include so many errors).
She says that now, since the English language has become this universal world language, and where the Third World has appropriated it to suit its cultural needs, a new generation is using it in a very different, visual way, and casting aside the scripted, textual language.
Chopra's thesis that language is getting more "visual" is badly developed. She seems to support at times the linguistic idea and at others the visual one. She exemplifies the intellectual laxness of these non-Western sophisticates. But it could be more astute than mere laziness. Her Hindi culture, despite its very well evolved written language, is still a culture of visuals. And with large parts of the population illiterate, or close to illiterate, only the elite educated would be able to read her books. And it is probably the same elite which is educated in advanced English and which could also read her books in English. And there is the major problem in India of the myriad of competing "national" languages. Not all (elite) Indians can speak Hindi fluently, but all elite Indians can speak English fluently (or with close to fluency).
And many elite Indians, including her, have travelled the thousands of miles across oceans to arrive at Canadian shores, manipulating all the tricks in the immigration how-to book, and with full assistance from Canadians themselves.
But these immigrants have come to invade and take over a country which let them in through peaceful acquiescence. Which is the more incredible: that they came at all, abandoning country, culture, peoples and ancestors, for opportunistic gains, or that they were let in without a single fight?
And once here, since their agenda, implicit, complicit, deliberate or instinctive, is a take-over and a transformation of this country so it resembles the one they left behind, they wll be incessant critics of everything Canadian, until things start to change according to their prescriptions. Until things start to look like them.
But what happens when this world does begin to change, and it beings to resemble their native lands? What happens when the sophistications they expect began to erode? What happens, for example, when first-class libraries as the Mississauga Central Library, which shelves their multicultural prize-winning books, is no longer the efficient and organized entity which we all unquestioningly expect it to be, and the literary sophisticates, Indians and whites, can no longer find where their books are stacked, since although the computerized system says "it is there" the book is conspicuously absent from the shelves?
What will they do with their criticisms then, their multicultural agendas, their dismissal and eradication of the culture for which they traveled thousands of miles to make sure that their books were shelved on the right spot in the public library so that people, they, could read them.
The literary textual world, the subject of Chopra's flippant verses, may not come to her rescue. But she is ready for that. She already has her faithful, complicit, visuals ready.
Chopra with at the launch of her book of poems and drawings SHE! The Restless Streak
on September 22 2018 at the Mississauga Central Library,
with the display of the drawings on the background wall
[Image source: Mississauga Library Twitter page]
Marian Kutarna with Chopra, holding Chopra's book of poems Ignited Lines.
Chopra's 2010 poetry reading and book launch
where she recited in Hindi and in English "Adieu to the Dawn" at her book launch
on February 2010 at a Mississauga Central Library event.
Marian Kutarna, then manager of the History & Art department (now manager of library circulation), says, after Chopra read one of her poems in Hindi:
"The sound of a language is poetry. The human heart is the same heart in all of us."
Followed by a round of applause.
Below is the more complete video from which Kutarna's excerpt (from 1:45 min - 3:30 min) is taken:
Glimpses of the Setting Sun - A multilingual poetry celebration
Book Launch and Art Exhibition
Sunday February 28, 2010, 2 pm - 4 pm
Mississauga Central Library, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada
But I find Chopra uncomfortable with the Kutarna's effusive admiration. Chopra make subtle and begrudging jabs at the English and American civilizations and language (which she posts at her blog - I've posted the full article at the end of this blog as well as a bref excerpt above) to whom she owes everything for her highly lucrative and esteemed literary life in Canada.
Chopra is of course a seasoned ethnicist, who has used Canada's infrastructure to its maximum. She is "Friend of the Library" at its most opportunistic.
Below is Chopra reading a poem with those special sounds that Kutarna found so compelling (and incomprehensible!).
I saw a collection of Chopra's paintings and drawings at the Living Arts Centre here in Mississauga. The center is trying to promote the various arts, and has a full-scale concert hall, a gallery, and various artists' workshops. It is quite a formidable building. I saw Chopra's work hanging somewhere in the gallery, and looking online, I realized it was at the LIVE Restaurant, which is mostly used for after-concert meals and refreshments.
Art and Gastronomie
Chopra's works hanging above wine glasses and folded napkins: the epitome of Western sophistication,
but with the Eastern content
Hanging here are oil paintings "Hope" and "Afloat"
and selling for $285
The center, including the restaurant, is partially funded by government grants, and is losing money, and is accepting all kinds of events to cover its costs. One recent one was a body builders' gathering, where strange, inflated humans were circling around the hallway. Anothers is to hold various ethnic festivals, and their programs includes a recent presentation by a Chinese circus and an Indian religious event to celebrate one of their gods. Chopra's program fits that bill.
Chopra's works at LIVE were:
"SHE: A Restless Streak" Art Show by Meena Chopra
CELEBRATING THE SPIRIT OF WOMANHOOD
At:
"Live Cuisine" at Living Arts Centre Mississauga from March 9, 2015 until May 25, 2015.
4141 Living Arts Drive, Mississauga, Ontario
Mississauga, Ontario L5B
9th to 25th May
10:30am to 5:30pm everyday
Below is a drawing hanging at the LIVE restaurant, but which I also found online. The photograph of her paintings hanging in the restaurant is what I took, as well as the view of the LIVE restaurant's entrance.
Drawing:
Meena Chopra
Pastel on paper 11'x8"
From Chopra's series: She: A Restless Streak
Poem
Excerpt from Chopra's poem Iconoclast (full poem below)
The real in her
longs to be
revealed through layers
seeking identifications
undraped
in a figureless
formless existence.
Iconoclast
Is she a vase
or a statue on a pedestal ?
She is no icon!
Her feet strong
firm on ground.
The earth supports her.
The real in her
longs to be
revealed through layers
seeking identifications
undraped
in a figureless
formless existence.
In vain,
she searches - an iconoclast,
beyond the turbidity of love.
Will she find one in you ?
Is this the forceful Hindu Goddess, the statue on a pedestal, that Kutarna is looking for? Will she find this figureless, formless, elusive creature?
Chopra may present herself as a modern, progressive oriental with Western ideas. But, as we look deeper into her thoughts, she remains much more Indian than Western. And she is not forthright with Kutarna, whom she will surely abandon when her authentic "identity" trumps pleasantries, leaving Kutarna with nothing but those incomprehensible sounds.
An Indian Woman at the LIVE Restaurant
At one time (about a year ago) the restaurant had changed its buffet style menu from an exclusively European menu and had added one or two Indian dishes. I asked recently about booking the restaurant, and found out that one of the chefs was Indian. When I looked at the buffet, the menu included only one Indian dish, and that was a simple chickpea dip. I asked to meet the chef to inquire about group rates, and was introduced to what looked like a cook. "You can order anything you want. Yes, we can do Indian dishes, butter chicken, anything."
My conclusion was that the attempt to turn this wonderful little place into an Indian/ethnic restaurant didn't work. How many folk festivals are there going to be, and how many are "inclusive" enough to attract a wider audience than just Indians?
Chopra's work is hardly that of the goddess/artist of Kutarna's eulogy. She has managed to convince the ethnicist Indians who still require the admiration of white Canadians - and they got one at least via Kutarna, and those multi-culti whites who still run the organizations - that she is worthy of their attention. And, following the multi-culti/ethnicist recipe, that is not hard to do. I don't doubt that Chopra has artistic ability, but she wouldn't have reached such a level of recognition hadn't she had all these underlying "qualities," and all that "support."
Chopra with her painting Eyes of Time, with a snake-like sign on her forehead [Image Source: The Hamilton Spectator, Sept. 2017]
Chopra eschews the bindi, a traditional decorative red dot painted on the forehead. Instead, she paints a bold black snake figure in its place. Like the bold images of her paintings, it has what she calls her “artistic signature.“ It is me,” she said. “It is a part of who I am.” [Image and text source: Toronto Star, August 9, 2010]
Note: "Celebrating 150 years of Canada" was a nationwide observance of many types of events and festivals commemorating the 150th anniversary of the country's Confederation
“Aankhen uthin to dekha kaynaat jal rahi thi
jab ye jhukin to tum the aur kuchh bhi nahin”
Roughly translated from Hindi:
When the eyes rose outwardly they saw the entire universe aflame.
When they opened inwards, it was you (the one reality of life) and nothing but you.
(From Chopra's Hindi poem And Nothing Else)
Art Exhibition: EYES OF TIME - The eye as a channel into the new dimensions of life.
By Artist and Author Meena Chopra
(Celebrating 150 years of Canada)
“Eyes wear the wings of time to fly beyond the cry of human desires, reveries and the realities,
penetrating the boundaries of the visible universe into the unknown, invisible realms".
Exhibition is on view from 8th August to 15th September 2017
Venue: Heritage Mississauga 1921 Dundas St W, Mississauga
Below is text from Chopra's writing from her blog page written in 2013. I tried to shorten it, but I think it should be read in its full, error-filled (for a wordmonger! but she does tell us of her Hindi bias) totality to understand in the scope of its message:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- One World, One English, The Many Languages of the Imagination
World is transitioning into a global village where English language is taking the front seat but not in a traditional British, American or any other way. It is evolving with variety of different realistic cultural influences. The biggest influence on new English is of the technological culture and the dynamism of the young who are the creative compelling users of technology. The idiom and syntax are changing fast.
Manifestation of the subtle thought imaging is taking over directly from the mental sound vibrations in a language where we have started expressing in symbols like smilyes, pictograms and info-graphics etc. This visual expression of subtle thought is the immediate outer expression of our mental imagery perhaps descended on us from that one ultimate sound vibration (Shabd Brahm). The entire generation is on the thresh hold of being more and more visual in their expression of thought.
Underneath this visual explosion, English, with its new tools of expression is threading the beads of different languages so to speak, where the images of mind in their visual expression have started taking the lead.
What language does imagination has? It is a question that eludes many of us. Whatever way our creativity gets stimulated, according to the researchers, as humans our thinking is mostly in images and is visual. To add, from generations, powerful imagery has always been an intrinsic part of any creative writing which actually surpasses the barriers of language and language becomes a medium of creative expression.
Einstein said that he always thought in images, in his words, "I very rarely think in words. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterwards,"
So what we have observed with any of our senses, we can imagine; what we imagine, we image.
Traditionally in a country like Canada with its English predominance, linguistic diversity definitely breaks down the barriers to intercultural dialogue and promotes multilingualism as a fundamental tool for the prosperity of literature. Linguistic diversity also contributes to enhancing creativity and innovation at all levels of education and learning. There is a clear link between multilingualism and creativity because knowledge of languages gives access to other ways of thinking and to other cultures as well, reinforcing our creative capacities. This in turn has a positive impact on innovation.
In the changing environment where English is the predominant world language, Hindi like many other languages of the world is also transforming. It is becoming richer because of cultural influences for both in its usage, vocabulary and expressiveness. English language definitely has a major influence on Hindi as well as it has on many other languages in many ways.
There are many remarkable Hindi literary blogs on the net. It is adapting very well to the transition and the idiom. This change is inevitable with technological progression where English is predominant.
Some facts and observations about Hindi language:
- After Chinese, Hindi is the maximum spoken language of the world.
- Hindi has been one of the first languages which was picked up by Google when they started adding and introducing languages to the net for a wider usage of technology with languages.
- Instant Google translations are available at hand for all languages.
Hindi Writers' Guild, the organization I represent here, was formed in June 2008. It is the first of its kind multi-faceted organization in Canada. Its prime objective is to educate and increase public understanding of Hindi literature and the language, also to develop the writing skills in Hindi language. Organization promotes South Asian writers and literature through seminars, lectures and conferences etc. Computer literacy and promotion of book publication in Canada are the main intents of Hindi Writers’ Guild.
To elaborate the organization is involved in the following:
- GUIDANCE IN THE ART OF HINDI WRITING AND HINDI LITERATURE
- FACILITATION OF COMPUTER LITERACY IN HINDI WRITING
- FACILITATION OF EDITING AND PUBLICATION OF HINDI BOOKS
- TRANSLATION AND PUBLICATION OF NON - HINDI LITERATURE IN HINDI
- ARRANGING LECTURES BY EMINENT LAUREATES ON HINDI LITERATURE, BUSINESS, ENVIRONMENT AND PHILOSOPHY
- HOLDING BOOK EXHIBITIONS, PUBLIC SEMINARS AND CONFERENCES TO PROMOTE HINDI LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
- PROVIDE TRANSLATION SERVICES FOR HOSPITALS AND OTHER INSTITUTIONS FOR INDIVIDUALS WHOSE MOTHER TONGUE IS NOT ENGLISH
- LIAISON AND COLLABORATION WITH CHARITABLE ORGANIZATIONS, NON-PROFIT COMMUNITY, GOVERNMENT AGENCIES, EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF PROGRAMS RELATING TO HINDI LANGUAGE AND HINDI LITERATURE
- HELPING IMMIGRANTS ASSIMILATE INTO CANADIAN SOCIETY BY DEVELOPING HINDI INDO-CANADIAN LITERATURE IN CANADIAN PERSPECTIVE
- MAINTAINING HINDI WEB-SITE FOR E-MAGAZINE AND E-LIBRARY FOR MEMBERS
[Note: Partly because of the length of this article and partly that I have other notes to make regarding the topic (ethnic art) for another post, I missed out on some small - mostly typo - errors in the last update. This should be it! Although you will not have missed the point, and message, of the article.]
Meena Chopra, a poet and artist, officially launched her book of poetry and art SHE! The Restless Streak on August 26 at the Mississauga Central Library with Mayor Bonnie Crombie making the introductory presentation.
Above is a view drawings by artist Meena Chopra's She! The Relentless Streak art exhibit on now at the Mississauga Central Library
Below is Meena Chopra with Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie at the book launch for She! The Relentless Streak, a collection of poems and drawings, on Saturday, September 22, 2018
"My art is my search for the moments beyond the ones of self knowledge. It is the rhythmic fantasy; a restless streak which looks for its own fulfillment! A stillness that moves within! An intense search for my origin and ultimate identity". Source: Meena Chopra's Art World
Below is the completed article from my May 25, 2015 draft Meena Chopra's Ephemera: Art in the Multicultural Era
Meena Chopra is the Indian, Third World Goddess that has evoked Mississauga's awe and wonder.
Chopra knows this.
And she and her world are systematically undermining and curtailing the white West's civilization. She says so, clearly, in this presentation:
World is transitioning into a global village where English language is taking the front seat but not in a traditional British, American or any other way. [KPA Note: I suspect the grammatical deficiency might be because these are the notes she was reading at the lecture, but submitting that for publication is lax and lazy.]
She then continues to talk of the "visual" importance of modern-day communications, neglecting to mention the small fact, or covering it up, that she is reciting her poetry in English words, and much more often than her native country's Hindi words.
But, rather than talk about this usurpation of the English language by non-Anglo worlds, and discussing their variations on the English language, including the addition of many non-English words, she deviates from this by writing:
The biggest influence on new English is of the technological culture and the dynamism of the young who are the creative compelling users of technology.
(I should add here that Chopra's written text is probably the notes she was reading from at the presentation. And for a literary person, one would expect the final, public, version of her transcript not to include so many errors).
She says that now, since the English language has become this universal world language, and where the Third World has appropriated it to suit its cultural needs, a new generation is using it in a very different, visual way, and casting aside the scripted, textual language.
Chopra's thesis that language is getting more "visual" is badly developed. She seems to support at times the linguistic idea and at others the visual one. She exemplifies the intellectual laxness of these non-Western sophisticates. But it could be more astute than mere laziness. Her Hindi culture, despite its very well evolved written language, is still a culture of visuals. And with large parts of the population illiterate, or close to illiterate, only the elite educated would be able to read her books. And it is probably the same elite which is educated in advanced English and which could also read her books in English. And there is the major problem in India of the myriad of competing "national" languages. Not all (elite) Indians can speak Hindi fluently, but all elite Indians can speak English fluently (or with close to fluency).
And many elite Indians, including her, have travelled the thousands of miles across oceans to arrive at Canadian shores, manipulating all the tricks in the immigration how-to book, and with full assistance from Canadians themselves.
But these immigrants have come to invade and take over a country which let them in through peaceful acquiescence. Which is the more incredible: that they came at all, abandoning country, culture, peoples and ancestors, for opportunistic gains, or that they were let in without a single fight?
And once here, since their agenda, implicit, complicit, deliberate or instinctive, is a take-over and a transformation of this country so it resembles the one they left behind, they wll be incessant critics of everything Canadian, until things start to change according to their prescriptions. Until things start to look like them.
But what happens when this world does begin to change, and it beings to resemble their native lands? What happens when the sophistications they expect began to erode? What happens, for example, when first-class libraries as the Mississauga Central Library, which shelves their multicultural prize-winning books, is no longer the efficient and organized entity which we all unquestioningly expect it to be, and the literary sophisticates, Indians and whites, can no longer find where their books are stacked, since although the computerized system says "it is there" the book is conspicuously absent from the shelves?
What will they do with their criticisms then, their multicultural agendas, their dismissal and eradication of the culture for which they traveled thousands of miles to make sure that their books were shelved on the right spot in the public library so that people, they, could read them.
The literary textual world, the subject of Chopra's flippant verses, may not come to her rescue. But she is ready for that. She already has her faithful, complicit, visuals ready.
Chopra with at the launch of her book of poems and drawings SHE! The Restless Streak
on September 22 2018 at the Mississauga Central Library,
with the display of the drawings on the background wall
[Image source: Mississauga Library Twitter page]
Marian Kutarna with Chopra, holding Chopra's book of poems Ignited Lines.
Chopra's 2010 poetry reading and book launch
where she recited in Hindi and in English "Adieu to the Dawn" at her book launch
on February 2010 at a Mississauga Central Library event.
Marian Kutarna, then manager of the History & Art department (now manager of library circulation), says, after Chopra read one of her poems in Hindi:
"The sound of a language is poetry. The human heart is the same heart in all of us."
Followed by a round of applause.
Below is the more complete video from which Kutarna's excerpt (from 1:45 min - 3:30 min) is taken:
Glimpses of the Setting Sun - A multilingual poetry celebration
Book Launch and Art Exhibition
Sunday February 28, 2010, 2 pm - 4 pm
Mississauga Central Library, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada
But I find Chopra uncomfortable with the Kutarna's effusive admiration. Chopra make subtle and begrudging jabs at the English and American civilizations and language (which she posts at her blog - I've posted the full article at the end of this blog as well as a bref excerpt above) to whom she owes everything for her highly lucrative and esteemed literary life in Canada.
Chopra is of course a seasoned ethnicist, who has used Canada's infrastructure to its maximum. She is "Friend of the Library" at its most opportunistic.
Below is Chopra reading a poem with those special sounds that Kutarna found so compelling (and incomprehensible!).
I saw a collection of Chopra's paintings and drawings at the Living Arts Centre here in Mississauga. The center is trying to promote the various arts, and has a full-scale concert hall, a gallery, and various artists' workshops. It is quite a formidable building. I saw Chopra's work hanging somewhere in the gallery, and looking online, I realized it was at the LIVE Restaurant, which is mostly used for after-concert meals and refreshments.
Art and Gastronomie
Chopra's works hanging above wine glasses and folded napkins: the epitome of Western sophistication,
but with the Eastern content
Hanging here are oil paintings "Hope" and "Afloat"
and selling for $285
The center, including the restaurant, is partially funded by government grants, and is losing money, and is accepting all kinds of events to cover its costs. One recent one was a body builders' gathering, where strange, inflated humans were circling around the hallway. Anothers is to hold various ethnic festivals, and their programs includes a recent presentation by a Chinese circus and an Indian religious event to celebrate one of their gods. Chopra's program fits that bill.
Chopra's works at LIVE were:
"SHE: A Restless Streak" Art Show by Meena Chopra
CELEBRATING THE SPIRIT OF WOMANHOOD
At:
"Live Cuisine" at Living Arts Centre Mississauga from March 9, 2015 until May 25, 2015.
4141 Living Arts Drive, Mississauga, Ontario
Mississauga, Ontario L5B
9th to 25th May
10:30am to 5:30pm everyday
Below is a drawing hanging at the LIVE restaurant, but which I also found online. The photograph of her paintings hanging in the restaurant is what I took, as well as the view of the LIVE restaurant's entrance.
Drawing:
Meena Chopra
Pastel on paper 11'x8"
From Chopra's series: She: A Restless Streak
Poem
Excerpt from Chopra's poem Iconoclast (full poem below)
The real in her
longs to be
revealed through layers
seeking identifications
undraped
in a figureless
formless existence.
Iconoclast
Is she a vase
or a statue on a pedestal ?
She is no icon!
Her feet strong
firm on ground.
The earth supports her.
The real in her
longs to be
revealed through layers
seeking identifications
undraped
in a figureless
formless existence.
In vain,
she searches - an iconoclast,
beyond the turbidity of love.
Will she find one in you ?
Is this the forceful Hindu Goddess, the statue on a pedestal, that Kutarna is looking for? Will she find this figureless, formless, elusive creature?
Chopra may present herself as a modern, progressive oriental with Western ideas. But, as we look deeper into her thoughts, she remains much more Indian than Western. And she is not forthright with Kutarna, whom she will surely abandon when her authentic "identity" trumps pleasantries, leaving Kutarna with nothing but those incomprehensible sounds.
An Indian Woman at the LIVE Restaurant
At one time (about a year ago) the restaurant had changed its buffet style menu from an exclusively European menu and had added one or two Indian dishes. I asked recently about booking the restaurant, and found out that one of the chefs was Indian. When I looked at the buffet, the menu included only one Indian dish, and that was a simple chickpea dip. I asked to meet the chef to inquire about group rates, and was introduced to what looked like a cook. "You can order anything you want. Yes, we can do Indian dishes, butter chicken, anything."
My conclusion was that the attempt to turn this wonderful little place into an Indian/ethnic restaurant didn't work. How many folk festivals are there going to be, and how many are "inclusive" enough to attract a wider audience than just Indians?
Chopra's work is hardly that of the goddess/artist of Kutarna's eulogy. She has managed to convince the ethnicist Indians who still require the admiration of white Canadians - and they got one at least via Kutarna, and those multi-culti whites who still run the organizations - that she is worthy of their attention. And, following the multi-culti/ethnicist recipe, that is not hard to do. I don't doubt that Chopra has artistic ability, but she wouldn't have reached such a level of recognition hadn't she had all these underlying "qualities," and all that "support."
Chopra with her painting Eyes of Time, with a snake-like sign on her forehead [Image Source: The Hamilton Spectator, Sept. 2017]
Chopra eschews the bindi, a traditional decorative red dot painted on the forehead. Instead, she paints a bold black snake figure in its place. Like the bold images of her paintings, it has what she calls her “artistic signature.“ It is me,” she said. “It is a part of who I am.” [Image and text source: Toronto Star, August 9, 2010]
Note: "Celebrating 150 years of Canada" was a nationwide observance of many types of events and festivals commemorating the 150th anniversary of the country's Confederation
“Aankhen uthin to dekha kaynaat jal rahi thi
jab ye jhukin to tum the aur kuchh bhi nahin”
Roughly translated from Hindi:
When the eyes rose outwardly they saw the entire universe aflame.
When they opened inwards, it was you (the one reality of life) and nothing but you.
(From Chopra's Hindi poem And Nothing Else)
Art Exhibition: EYES OF TIME - The eye as a channel into the new dimensions of life.
By Artist and Author Meena Chopra
(Celebrating 150 years of Canada)
“Eyes wear the wings of time to fly beyond the cry of human desires, reveries and the realities,
penetrating the boundaries of the visible universe into the unknown, invisible realms".
Exhibition is on view from 8th August to 15th September 2017
Venue: Heritage Mississauga 1921 Dundas St W, Mississauga
Below is text from Chopra's writing from her blog page written in 2013. I tried to shorten it, but I think it should be read in its full, error-filled (for a wordmonger! but she does tell us of her Hindi bias) totality to understand in the scope of its message:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- One World, One English, The Many Languages of the Imagination
World is transitioning into a global village where English language is taking the front seat but not in a traditional British, American or any other way. It is evolving with variety of different realistic cultural influences. The biggest influence on new English is of the technological culture and the dynamism of the young who are the creative compelling users of technology. The idiom and syntax are changing fast.
Manifestation of the subtle thought imaging is taking over directly from the mental sound vibrations in a language where we have started expressing in symbols like smilyes, pictograms and info-graphics etc. This visual expression of subtle thought is the immediate outer expression of our mental imagery perhaps descended on us from that one ultimate sound vibration (Shabd Brahm). The entire generation is on the thresh hold of being more and more visual in their expression of thought.
Underneath this visual explosion, English, with its new tools of expression is threading the beads of different languages so to speak, where the images of mind in their visual expression have started taking the lead.
What language does imagination has? It is a question that eludes many of us. Whatever way our creativity gets stimulated, according to the researchers, as humans our thinking is mostly in images and is visual. To add, from generations, powerful imagery has always been an intrinsic part of any creative writing which actually surpasses the barriers of language and language becomes a medium of creative expression.
Einstein said that he always thought in images, in his words, "I very rarely think in words. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterwards,"
So what we have observed with any of our senses, we can imagine; what we imagine, we image.
Traditionally in a country like Canada with its English predominance, linguistic diversity definitely breaks down the barriers to intercultural dialogue and promotes multilingualism as a fundamental tool for the prosperity of literature. Linguistic diversity also contributes to enhancing creativity and innovation at all levels of education and learning. There is a clear link between multilingualism and creativity because knowledge of languages gives access to other ways of thinking and to other cultures as well, reinforcing our creative capacities. This in turn has a positive impact on innovation.
In the changing environment where English is the predominant world language, Hindi like many other languages of the world is also transforming. It is becoming richer because of cultural influences for both in its usage, vocabulary and expressiveness. English language definitely has a major influence on Hindi as well as it has on many other languages in many ways.
There are many remarkable Hindi literary blogs on the net. It is adapting very well to the transition and the idiom. This change is inevitable with technological progression where English is predominant.
Some facts and observations about Hindi language:
- After Chinese, Hindi is the maximum spoken language of the world.
- Hindi has been one of the first languages which was picked up by Google when they started adding and introducing languages to the net for a wider usage of technology with languages.
- Instant Google translations are available at hand for all languages.
Hindi Writers' Guild, the organization I represent here, was formed in June 2008. It is the first of its kind multi-faceted organization in Canada. Its prime objective is to educate and increase public understanding of Hindi literature and the language, also to develop the writing skills in Hindi language. Organization promotes South Asian writers and literature through seminars, lectures and conferences etc. Computer literacy and promotion of book publication in Canada are the main intents of Hindi Writers’ Guild.
To elaborate the organization is involved in the following:
- GUIDANCE IN THE ART OF HINDI WRITING AND HINDI LITERATURE
- FACILITATION OF COMPUTER LITERACY IN HINDI WRITING
- FACILITATION OF EDITING AND PUBLICATION OF HINDI BOOKS
- TRANSLATION AND PUBLICATION OF NON - HINDI LITERATURE IN HINDI
- ARRANGING LECTURES BY EMINENT LAUREATES ON HINDI LITERATURE, BUSINESS, ENVIRONMENT AND PHILOSOPHY
- HOLDING BOOK EXHIBITIONS, PUBLIC SEMINARS AND CONFERENCES TO PROMOTE HINDI LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
- PROVIDE TRANSLATION SERVICES FOR HOSPITALS AND OTHER INSTITUTIONS FOR INDIVIDUALS WHOSE MOTHER TONGUE IS NOT ENGLISH
- LIAISON AND COLLABORATION WITH CHARITABLE ORGANIZATIONS, NON-PROFIT COMMUNITY, GOVERNMENT AGENCIES, EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF PROGRAMS RELATING TO HINDI LANGUAGE AND HINDI LITERATURE
- HELPING IMMIGRANTS ASSIMILATE INTO CANADIAN SOCIETY BY DEVELOPING HINDI INDO-CANADIAN LITERATURE IN CANADIAN PERSPECTIVE
- MAINTAINING HINDI WEB-SITE FOR E-MAGAZINE AND E-LIBRARY FOR MEMBERS
