Savant from an Unpeopled Land in Uncharted Waters/AKA The Full-On Mask
2020
It is fascinating to find this image. I wasn't looking for it, but rather found Kara Walker, whom I know as the "cut-out" artists, a black American women - married, by the way to two white men, one she divorced and with whom she has a daughter - who spent her artist's career finding ways to malign white America (and America in general).
Her masked black woman is of course a metaphor for the "muzzling" that whites have done to blacks - her own radical perspective, which she hypocritically holds as she lives her life with those muzzling white men, and as she finds prestige in those very same white-built and white-organized museums, who genuflect to her otherness induced by their centuries-induced guilt for an event that took several hundred years ago, and for which, for all practical purposes - including monetary - they have redeemed themselves.
Still, the unforgiving, and money-grabbing, Walker will have none of this.
The muzzling mask is prescient. This is now happening on a global scale, but through which her own black "brothers and sisters" are suffering the most.
Full-on is what we should expect, metaphorically or not.
Clockwise from bottom left: MacArthur Fellows Ta Nehisi Coates, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Jad Abumarad, Kara Walker, David C. Page, Angela Duckworth, Robert Axelrod and Junot Diaz.
So. How exactly did Walker come up with this mask, an (almost) exact rendition of the mask the American, and Canadian, Sheep, are wearing? All that is left, and as we can conclude, is that the future of the mask is a la Walker. The Full-On.
Above, Kara Walker with daughter Octavia Brugel (image source) from around 2007.
Brugel appears to be in her very early teens (she was born in 1997),
It has taken me a few days to come to terms with the basic message of this article: That a return to some form of paganism can save the West. This is a deluded, dangerous, and subversive argument. Christ's message to unify all people under the umbrella of the one and true God was exactly to remove the worship of idols that had led mankind astray. There IS only one God. If western civilization is to redeem itself of its sinful past, return to its glory, it is NOT through embracing false messengers. The Council of European Canadians should be arguing against such theses, directly and overtly, if they dare publish such articles. By publishing such an article as an actual possibility for paganism, they have opened the doors to all followers of anti-God, anti-Christ, and cannot possibly salvage the already weakened Western Civilization. They will be weakened fighters, which means that they will lose.
I read this article with deep disappointment. It was not an argument, but a thesis. A probability.
Below is a Facebook post from a (now former) staff, Sharada Eswar, at the Art Gallery of Mississauga (posted in full after the dotted lines). This multicultural, Indian woman, writes this article on her Facebook page.
Who knew!
For more on my views, and the anti-west, anti-Canada, AGM, see my posts here.
The AGM is imploding, and that's a good thing!
I wrote about Eswar here, in a post I titled White Out at the AGM:
Eswar talks about her childhood with her grandmother in India.
More information on Eswar here, a 2019 post at Reclaiming Beauty I titled: White Out at the AGM
"...In her Brampton [Ontario] living room, a Ganesha statue sits on a side table...Now, Eswar is bringing her grandmother's ancient stories, and some contemporary South Asian tales, to life in the GTA [The Greater Toronto Area, which includes Mississauga]."
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Eswar's Facebook post on June 22, 2020:
This is a fairly long post, so thank you for your time.
Until December 2019, I was leading a community engaged arts project at the Art Gallery of Mississauga (AGM). A project that I conceived and birthed, and was nurtured lovingly by the racialized and marginalized communities of Mississauga. A project that received funding from the Ontario Trillium Foundation (a grant that I wrote) to the tune of over $420,000. A project that used stories as a common denominator, to bring together the diverse cultural groups and the racialized communities in Mississauga and beyond, engaging with ideas of self-representation to question colonial narratives. A place to share stories, laughs and the heartbreaks associated with them. There were plenty of laughs alright, and heartbreaks a plenty. A project that consumed my very being, every single day for over three years. A project that I had to abandon because the then Treasurer (and I believe, currently the Chair) decided that he had the right to be a bully, an obnoxious and aggressive force that undermined this initiative. An aggression so toxic that to this day, I fear going to Mississauga, lest I see him again.
It began as a pilot project in 2017. It was a runaway success. The community wanted their voices heard, their stories told and I decided to expand the project. In 2018, things began to change. A number of events dramatically transformed the working environment at the AGM. We were told that the Gallery was financially unhealthy and the very existence of the Gallery was at risk. The one silver lining was receiving the Trillium funding for my project. However, things escalated in 2019. I witnessed, along with my colleagues and many members of the arts community, an alarming deficit of clear communication, leadership and respect from the board and the directorship of the AGM. But all of this paled in the face of patriarchy and white supremacy that was rampant in the Board. The then Director was asked to leave and the predominantly white governance Board decided to become an operating board (there was no public announcement about this shift, nor was the membership informed). A Board that had no clue on how the arts world functioned, let alone how community engagement and relationships are built and nurtured. With no Director to act as buffer, the staff were at the mercy of the Board. Staff were constantly micro-managed and belittled. Things came to a head when the last remaining full-time staff’s position was suddenly and mysteriously dissolved. I say suddenly because despite the position being part of the new 5-year strategic plan approved by the Board and the then Chair & Interim ED, it was dissolved soon after.
At first it seemed as if I would be spared but how wrong I was! Within weeks I was subject to aggressive emails demanding why the artists I had contracted for the project were paid so high (mind you this was a funder approved budget and were being paid as per industry standards); why are there no European voices in this project (one of the main objectives of border crossings was to make room for communities and voices that were until now absent); and then some questions that were beyond the scope of my job description and expertise, though I tried to the best of my ability to answer them all. Emails, so aggressive that I began to dread logging into my computer. I was made to feel incompetent, incapable of doing minor tasks correctly and peppered with questions that felt more like inquisitions. Then there was the gaslighting behaviour. On one occasion I was asked about a missing camera that had “supposedly been bought” for the project – in spite of me insisting that there was no camera bought, I was repeatedly interrogated, making me feel like a criminal. Finally, I was told that if the camera couldn’t be traced, it was my job to lodge a complaint with the police for insurance purposes. It reached a point where I began to question my own sanity, my memory, my actions, my thoughts. After much heart wrench and soul searching, I resigned. I left the project and everything that I had worked towards to that point behind.
Until today I have chosen not to make a broader public statement of the toxicity that my colleagues and I walked into every single day. So why am I speaking now? I, like several others, left space for the funders (specifically the City) and the community members to voice their concerns about the organization. But I realize that to remain silent out of respect for our community may be taken as complicity in an erasure of agency, which was in no way my intention.
Two things happened that galvanized me into action -- the first of the two was on June 3, 2020. There was a post from AGM as part of the #BlackOutTuesday in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. I saw the post and laughed. The hypocrisy I thought! A “leadership” that treats its BIPOC staff with utmost disregard and disrespect now expressing solidarity! I was tempted to comment something nasty but desisted. Then there was a post on Twitter that for me was the tipping point. A podcast (a podcast I had produced and hosted) with the Treasurer as guest. I haven’t been able to bring myself to listen to it. It has brought back all the toxicity to the fore, everything I thought I had under control, the fears, the anxiety, the shame, the rage, the guilt at abandoning the community members, who had time and again made themselves vulnerable, trusting me with their stories. The fact that I had to let go of my project, my creation that was second only to my own child, and this bully is still about exuding power!
WOULD you like to help others understand Covid-19 in the face of overwhelming, false propaganda?
I know, the odds are slim because most people are unwilling to face the traumatizing possibility that they have been misled, but it’s worth trying to reduce the paranoia, frustration and depression that is rampant in areas still under extreme restrictions. To that end, consider making a print-out of all or part of this list, “Facts about Covid-19,” provided by Swiss Propaganda Research. [Read the rest of the post here]
After weeks of silence on COVID, both on her tweeter pages and on her articles at VDare, Michelle Malkin is quoting another journalist, and retweeting Gemma O'Doherty's tweet (yes, indirect associations is the name of the game for the ever-cautious con-servatives).
City Centre Lockdown
Photo take Sunday May 17, 2020
By: KPA
The COVID Scamdemic has shown us how easy it is to disrupt and uproot whole countries, whole economies, whole societies.
I took a set of photographs around the Mississauga Civic Centre, and the adjacent Square One Shopping Centre and its parking lots in mid-March, shocked by the parking lots which emptied days after the first announcements of COVID, and posted them on April 9: City Centre Lockdown.
On May 9, a month later, I posted a commentary I wrote in mid-March, which I titled Death through Acquiescence.
Two months later, nothing has changed. Ontario's Premier, Doug Ford, promised of "gradual" openings starting in June, but I'll believe it when I see it.
Those that we trusted as mediators of information, analysts and interpreters of opaque Orwellian language, betrayed us. I can only deduce that they are complicit, either directly through financed support (what else is there?) or through deliberate activity to disrupt and destroy.
Whole cities of grownups have been reduced to infantile acquiescence for a virus that hardly makes it up the Richter scale. Whole economies have bent to the order of shutdowns and lockdowns.
And no-one says anything! Some smugly sit in their dubious castles, others sing praise to Western ingenuity, as their very leaders behave like quivering epileptics, convulsed by invisible spiritual forces.
Lies, lies and more lies is what we've got with COVID, and those we thought we trusted have said NOTHING.
I posted my City Centre Lockdown images on April 9, and wrote Death through Acquiescence in March 17, which I posted on May 9, a month later. I wrote: "The world belongs to us, now. We are the inheritors, and its spokespeople. All else want its destruction."
Now nearing June, my impressions have not changed one iota. And neither has the City Centre Lockdown.
Below is what I wrote on March 17, as I was just beginning to understand this "pandemic."
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It's fascinating. A pathetic virus (sane people slip out that it is a variation of the flu) is running the world.
I was watching the news (CNN, CBS, NBC, and the Canadian CBC and CTV) during the first announcements of the "pandemic," and they are all alarmists.
Don't the newscaster have any shame? A virus which by epidemiology standards is NOT an epidemic, let alone a "pandemic" is running the world.
Of course, the news has to have been manipulated.
As the coronavirus map shows, the virus has "bypassed" most of the world, including the Middle East, the Indian Subcontinent, the Horn of Africa, etc. Even Canada seems immune, but you wouldn't know it with the public panic attack.
It IS the Western World under attack. Europe, the beautiful Italy, Spain, France and of course England and Britain.
The maps, the talking heads, the "experts," the "doctors," and some "news analysts" all talk in apocalyptic language.
The Western World will die with a pathetic acquiescence of a contrived disease. Not through some glorious outrage and uproar.
For us, for me, it is good to know where we stand. Let them all fumigate in the mire of their own making. Let them reject and deny God, and follow the Devil's directions.
It is a fascinating, and exciting time.
The world belongs to us, now. We are the inheritors, and its spokespeople. All else want its destruction.
I have revived my Museum of Beauty idea, which I hope to develop into an online presence. There are lots of sane people out there who have had enough of these usurpers.
This is a clever, ingenious, strategy: creating a non-virus to affect our civilization.
But nature is honest. And the birds are chirping the arrival of Spring. Flowers will be blooming soon.
So, have a good day!
Star Tulip
(Tulip Tarda)
Photo By: KPA -
Port Credit, Mississauga
[Photo By: KPA]
I was discussing the Coronavirus with a group of people at its very early stages, when statistics were just coming in, and when we were all trying to figure out how to behave to avoid infection.
This is, by the way, standard behavior for the annual flus we get.
[Discussion in mid-March]
I think this virus is a big nothing, and all we should do is take extra precautions, as we would the flu virus.
[...]
Trudeau and his team have chosen to make the Canadian population suffer through business closures and restrictions (on a virus which barely makes it on the epidemiological scale, as I said - a big nothing). We are still trying to figure out their agenda, but I believe it is to re-orient Canada, and Canadian society. Don't think multiculturalism will get part of the pie, either. At Walmart, those struggling with shopping carts and dozens of bags are not white Canadians, who can order online and get deliveries through expensive FedEx packages, but Indians, Chinese (yes, they are poor here), Arabs, etc.
[...] a lockdown of dutiful, and guilt-ridden, Canadians became the reality. Across the country, dutiful citizens closed their shops, left jobs, shuttered schools and daycare centres, and stayed home, waiting for Tam’s daily updates, to urge them to participate in the next battle tactic against their invisible enemy, who could be lurking anywhere.
And they all obliged. Tam’s draconian “Stay Home/ Restez a la Maison” ordinance could be the beginning of much stricter enforcements to come, based on her premise that “anyone could be infected,” which means that we could all be infected
And here below is one of a series of photographs I took of parking lots around Mississauga's city centre, where the Civic Centre, which is across from the large Square One shopping centre/mall, is located. These lots (they stretch as far back as the building block at the very far end) are usually full capacity, starting early in the morning (by around 8am). These photographs were taken a little later, around 9:30am. I posted them on April 9th under City Centre Lockdown, although I started to take them in late March.
Spring Landscape Study, Ontario, Canada, April 2020
Edward Burtynsky
(Photograph on Globe and Mail article by Burtynsky, April 22, 2020: "On Earth Day, we must reflect on our duty as stewards of nature."
This photograph is from a new body of work Edward Burtynsky is creating while in isolation, focused on natural landscapes, with proceeds going to support the arts in Canada)
This is a slightly edited version, for privacy and grammar, of an email I sent a friend after I attended a program organized by the Ryerson Image Centre in April 2019:
That's when I saw the other Ryerson affiliate Ed Burtynsky, sitting quietly in the back row, who takes disaster photographs "aesthetically," now more recently in African countries in order to, I'm sure, destabilize leaders with "Climate Change" and "The Environment" from doing reasonable large scale programs.
Burtynksy is must be very wealthy, and has projects/books/tv documentaries/lectureships all over the place, all the time. (I've attached a photo from his facebook/instagram page on his visit to a school: "So fun engaging with aspiring artists and sharing stories...What a special opportunity letting them play with some of the things they're working on an avara media [Burtynsky is part of this also] and hearing their unique, intelligent perspectives..." Comment: valeriedurantvancouver: Shaping young minds for the future. So important...)
Catch them while they're young.
I continue
He [Burtynsky] is very impressive. But my admiration was short-lived. He is part of the elite global leftist artists whose mandate is to show how terrible the world is: Global Warming/Climate Change/Environmental Destruction. Of course they are not incorrect, where our civilizational responsibility is to use the world in a Godly manner, but we USE the world and its resources, not let them stew useless in their quarries.
And
[T]hese elitist Western photographers and professional artists dictate the course of "global" culture through their disaster imagery.
COVID must be a godsend for the likes of Burtynsky, especially since it coincides with Earth Day (which was April 22, by the way).
It feels a little surreal to be commemorating the 50th anniversary of Earth Day in the middle of this unprecedented global crisis...
writes Burtynsky, in an April 22 article for the Globe and Mail, which is also available here, and which I've posted below.
He continues:
My first trip to China in 2002 took me to Wuhan en route to photograph along the Yangtze River, where entire cities and landscapes were being commandeered and flattened to make way for the building of the Three Gorges Dam. So, when the pictures first emerged of the coronavirus lockdown in Wuhan months ago, never did I imagine seeing cities being shut down in this new and devastating way – or that we would soon experience this contagion all over the world.
Finally, his China disaster photographs and world apocalypse have conjoined, and given him a re-invigorated mission, where
...isolated at home, with a new pathogen determined to wreak global havoc...[m]y hope is that during this time in isolation I am able to create a suite of images looking at nature, with proceeds going directly to support the arts sector in Canada.
The government is tanking because of a fake emergency, people are set to lose everything, home, job, savings, and his contribution is to print a few prints and sell them for the proceeds for those "starving" artists.
One has to conclude that even these elites realize that the COVID is a big scam. A couple of prints from Ed, and all will be well! What's wrong with that picture?
The future of life on this planet rests in our hands...
doom talks Burtynsky. What a lofty ordeal!
Below is the article, which Burtynsky wrote for the Globe and Mail (available here, and a version of it here), on COVID-19, and for Earth Day. He writes, and prints his charity photographs, from the comfort of his "cottage," his rural home by a lake and in the woods, somewhere in northern Ontario, far away from the urban apocalypse that ordinary folk are experiencing.
------------------------------------------------
On Earth Day, we must reflect on our duty as stewards of nature
It feels a little surreal to be commemorating the 50th anniversary of Earth Day in the middle of this unprecedented global crisis. Admittedly, I had envisioned this day much differently, yet with COVID-19 forcing us all into isolation, the message of Earth Day seems more urgent than ever.
My 40-year career as an artist has taken me on a journey around our planet in search of the largest examples of human systems expressed upon the land and sea. I have been to many places that very few of us have any reason to go – the places where we wrest out the things we need from nature to propel our human destiny. My first trip to China in 2002 took me to Wuhan en route to photograph along the Yangtze River, where entire cities and landscapes were being commandeered and flattened to make way for the building of the Three Gorges Dam. So, when the pictures first emerged of the coronavirus lockdown in Wuhan months ago, never did I imagine seeing cities being shut down in this new and devastating way – or that we would soon experience this contagion all over the world.
There’s no doubt that the ravenous human appetite to conquer nature has compelled us to encroach on natural habitats and biodiversity in an ever-expanding way, and that this has led us to where we are today – isolated at home, with a new pathogen determined to wreak global havoc. It seems the paradigm has shifted: Where humans once had our collective boot on nature’s neck, we now find ourselves with nature’s boot firmly pressed against ours.
On this 50th anniversary of Earth Day, I find myself in northern Ontario. This familiar landscape has become hugely important to my career. It’s the place where I recalibrate and consider nature, and where I first came to understand that we do not own this land – we merely serve as its steward, taking care of it and passing it on to the next generation. It has become an inflection point for me, a stark reference for when I’m able to go out into the world and see humanity shaping nature at scale through industry, urban sprawl and the sheer impact of the nearly eight-billion-large human population dominating our planet.
Rural Canada has taught me many things, and as I reflect on humanity’s impact on the planet, the most profound lesson now is that our reach into nature has gone too far. The global call to action against this virus is a test run for our inevitable fight against climate change. And that time is looming.
Over the past few weeks, I have been inspired to go back to my origins of photographing in these natural landscapes – viewing nature as a kind of painting. Looking at abstract expressionism and trying to find that place through photography. Going back to the shrubs and bushes of the forest. Going back to my home, nature.
My hope is that during this time in isolation I am able to create a suite of images looking at nature, with proceeds going directly to support the arts sector in Canada. The arts have taken an oversized hit during these times and will continue to suffer enormously because of this crisis. And yet, it is the artists, musicians, filmmakers and performers to whom we are all turning for catharsis, relaxation, distraction, entertainment and, perhaps most importantly, hope. As the great artist Gerhard Richter once said, “Art is the highest form of hope.” Artists now need our support as much as we need theirs.
There will be a lot of pain felt out there over the next months, as we regroup, as we try to gather in spaces and share them together again. I don’t know what those next few months will bring, but in this time of isolation and contemplation, I can be assured of one very important thing: The future of life on this planet rests in our hands. There might one day soon be a vaccine for this virus, but there’s no vaccine for climate change.
Landscape Study #4, Ontario, Canada, 1981
Edward Burtynsky
(Photograph on Globe and Mail article by Burtynsky, April 22, 2020: On Earth Day, we must reflect on our duty as stewards of nature)
I wrote earlier that textile artists Chung-Im Kim is married to potter Steven Heinemann. It appears not so. A recent profile states him acknowledging: "...my remarkable partner and fellow artist Chung-Im Kim, my profound gratitude." [Source: Steven Heinemann Culture and Nature catalog for his exhibition at the Gardiner Museum, in Toronto]. Married folk don't call each other "partners."
In the same reference as above, during an interview for his retrospective exhibition at the Gardiner Museum, Heinemann discuses his pottery:
In 1979, the start of my last year at Sheridan College, we were all asked to make work for a fundraising mug and bowl sale...it was like I sat down at the wheel to work, and never looked up. This humble and almost inconsequential form became utterly absorbing, and I literally spent the rest of that year making bowls. And uncannily, the more I narrowed down the more it would open up in possibility. Inadvertently and unconsciously, I had found my life’s work.
[...]
Out of that early obsession came an abiding interest in volume and contained space, which has informed everything
I’ve done.
[...]
It’s also connected to my interest in “the meditative image,” which you find in things like Tantric art [Link by KPA]. And like those paintings, they have a function: to gather and transform the attention of the viewer...
This gives him ample space and time to meditate the image, to transform the attention of the viewer.
And assist in ancestral bowing with his Korean "partner" Kim.
Chung-Im Kim
Bow
2005
8" x 9.5"
Ramie, Hemp, Natural Dyes, Silkscreen Printing, Machine & Hand Stitching
[Source]
On a related note: Where do such artists acquire enough funds to live in such places, and practice "meditative imaging," i.e. looking out into space, by selling their works at $8-10,000 apiece? A converted barn?! How much did that cost? And how much does it cost to heat, ventilate, etc, especially during those cold, frozen, Ontario winters?
The only conclusion I could come up with is the art's welfare, otherwise known as The Canada Council for the Arts, and The Ontario Arts Council. This information is not readily available (I found two resources under the Canada Council for the Arts from 2006-2007 and 2002-2003, for $500 and $2500 for Heinemann), but more searching showed nothing more. But those are early days. 2020 must be much more lucrative, with numerous shows, including a recent, 2018, retrospective under his belt. Heinemann doesn't teach, at least according to his CV, but his partner, Kim, is associate professor at the Ontario College of Art and Design. That should add to the couple's finances.
$689,000
Listed Since: March 20th 2020
Great Opportunity. Many Uses Allowed For Present Zoning On This 2 Acre Lot Located Minutes To Cookstown. The Area Is Experiencing Rapid Development Which Will Provide Many Amenities For The Future Residents. Present Amenities Include Close Proximity To Hwy, Shopping Centre, Grocers, Schools, Parks And More As The Area Continues To Grow. Property Boasts Clear Views, Level Terrain. The Property Has A Two Storey Bank Barn And An Oversized Drive Shed.**** EXTRAS **** Newer Septic System (Large Capacity), Newer Drilled Well (Exceptional Flow Rate). Natural Gas At The Roadside. Topographical Map And Architectural Drawings Available. Build A Custom Home, Start Your Business, Hold For Future Investment. (id:23309)
Address: 4630 HWY 89
Location: INNISFIL
Ownership: FREEHOLD
MLS: N4727745
This land is located in Cookstown Ontario.
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.
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.
I tuned into the Golden Globes yesterday, not for the awards but for what the awardees would do and say. At one time, I would tune in to watch the fashion, but it is no longer so interesting. What has happened is that all these "equality now" "feminists" are hypocrites. They parade around in ten-thousand-dollar ball gowns by star designers as they mouth out their #MeToo proclamations. I can learn about fashion by going to my local department store and reading my monthly Elle.
I wasn't disappointed.
The most fascinating was Sandra Oh.
Sandra Oh in Killing Eve
She is currently starring in a television production called Killing Eve. Just the name of the series alone is disconcerting. Everyone, even the non-Christians, know that Eve is the name given to Adam's mate in the Genesis account. Eve of course betrays Adam and disobeys God with her complicity with the serpent.
God never killed Eve, but rather he banished her, along wth her foolish conspirator Adam, to life outside of paradise, a life of hardship, nothing like the life they led in His Holy Garden.
What exactly is Killing Eve and what is Oh doing in it?
Killing Eve follows the intertwining lives of two women – Eve (Sandra Oh), a quick-witted but bored MI5 security services operative whose desk job conflicts with her ambitions of being a spy, and Villanelle (Jodie Comer), a polished, highly skilled killer-for-hire, who enjoys the rich benefits that come from her violent career. As the two fiercely intelligent women go head to head, they become equally obsessed and entangled with one another in a combination of brutal mischief making, sharp humour, and high-stakes action. [Source: Bravo.ca]
Since I haven't watched nor plan to watch this latest installment in evil TV programming, I will reference a viewer who wrote:
Not dramatic or thrilling. I thought after Sandra Oh was nominated for an Emmy that this show would be worth watching. Not the case. The plot started out Ok but quickly went downhill. The production was awful. Comedic for no good reason. Horrible soundtrack of hip and rock music for no good reason. Lesbian love scenes for no good reason. Sandra Oh as a sorta-spy in non-Asian countries-totally stupid. The script was just horrible. Every character is over the top for no good reason. The only things good about this show were the location scenes. Otherwise. It's a dud and a total waste of time waiting for it to "get good." And the ending?? Ugh. Just a ploy to make another boring season. I think this show must have been created to find a way to use Sandra Oh. Keep looking! She's a very tired looking spy. Not at all compelling or interesting in this genre. Seems that only France, Israel, the Uk, and the Nordic Noir folks can make dramatic and thrilling spy/crime/political shows that keep you on the edge of your seat. [From: bjnordin-828-626007 commenting on IMBD]
And another:
There is no message, no meaning this a l'art pour l'art thing. Except romanticizing senseless human suffering and bloodshed is in no way an original, exciting or even acceptable form or art. If this were a satire, some black comedy that would be entirely different but the show is just too serious to be perceived as such. Humour here is just part of the makers' plot to try and manipulate the viewers' sense of ethics and decency into seeing monstrosity when mixed with aesthetics as something cool. Well it's not. [From: gabor_nb]
And another:
People wake up screaming at the top of their lungs. Targets of low budget assassinations ask "Why me?" and the star of the show says "I don't know." Shock for the sake of shock.
This show is about vapid, soul-less, sickening characters, and the cynical concept that if there is nothing to show, the audience will try to figure out the mystery. The joke here is that there is nothing behind the curtain. The characters have no human values. Pointless cruelty and death are the focus of this show. Killing Eve is degrading to the human spirit. This is just crass and trash.
The main writer for this show said that they do not do backgrounds for each character. That is lazy writing. This is an incredibly awful series about characters that nobody should care about, and stupid situations that end badly.[From: Johnny_West]
And another:
Men begging for their lives. men brutally murdered. men are stupid and amount to nothing. this series is a feminist wetdream. btw, the assassin isnt psychotic, she is a mary sue [From battever]
And what is a "mary sue?"
Mary Sue is a negative term used in fanfiction and literary criticism to describe an original character that is often overly idealized or assumed to be a projection of the author. When used by a male author, the character is referred to as a Gary Stu or Marty Stu. [From: Know Your Meme]
And another definition of a "mary sue:"
‘Mary Sue’ protagonist are hotly debated. What can be agreed is that it started its life in fan fiction circles, where it was used to suggest that a protagonist was a thinly veiled version of the author, allowing them to insert an idealized self into the story. [From: Standout Books]
That captures Oh perfectly, and especially her performance at the Globes last night.
Firstly Oh is the one "killing Eve," the Western, Christian Biblical female. She usurps God's role to do it for Him, but with a particular reference to her own non-Christian, non-Western background.
All non-Westerners are now openly antagonistic towards Western culture, and whites. They of course are led by the traitorous whites themselves who hate their own people, their own culture, and their own country. The parasites are from within. And non-Western immigrants and the children of these non-Western immigrants born within these Western shores are simply following this lead. If whites were not so intent on destroying themselves, these others wouldn't have the cracks in the system to enter and continue with the havoc (or the agenda).
One powerful and fundamental way to destroy destroy Western Civilization is by destroying Christianity.
"We (non-Christians, non-Westerners) will destroy the myths and stories that built Western society, and lets start with the first female herself.
We like Eve because she disobeyed God. But she didn't go far enough. She is still part of that legend. We have to remove her entirely, by showcasing her violent nature which we can use to our advantage for her to wreck more havoc.
We will kill her off and install our own gods and goddesses, but with her spirit in mind, her betrayal.
We will kill Eve to resurrect her with our own image."
Forget Oh's "#MeToo" moment, and her "look at us now in all these hues and colors" rhetoric while receiving the golden award. She doesn't really care about feminism (that western-produced ideology), nor about multiculturalism, nor really about other cultures other than their usefulness to her agenda. She was married to white man after all, that race she purports to disdain. But marrying white still pays dividends for an immigrant's offspring, and she seems to date only white men. She has bigger agenda, a bigger mission, a bigger world to conquer. She wants to rid of the whites, the true enemy.
Boyfriend, Indie Musician Andrew Featherston in 2007
Current boyfriend, Russian immigrant (came as a child to the US) artist Lev Rukhin
And finally, she can establish her own Korea-Away-Form-Korea land, where she can bow to her parents and her gods with impunity. And where she can be more Korean than even her own Catholic parents, which is exactly what her parents desired, and subtly instilled in her when they packed their bags and came to Canada: "Our Children will not forget our ancestors, our ways."
Welcome to a glimpse at the Brave New World of America and Canada.
Invocation of the gods
What happened?
Image Source: From Article: "Why Sandra Oh Meditates on Mindful.Org
[Oh] practices Vipassana, a Buddhist form of meditation that’s interpreted as “seeing deeply.”
And Oh sees all of it — acting, meditating, waiting, even this very conversation between us
— as an extension of the same practice, an attempt to operate from a place
where you’re fully grounded within yourself, of “finding that authentic kernel.” [Source: "The Protagonist After decades in supporting parts, Emmy nominee Sandra Oh plays the hero in Killing Eve." Vulture Magazine]
CURATED BY ANU RADHA VERMA
SEPTEMBER 6 – DECEMBER 21, 2018
Gallery spaces are often conceived of as separate(d) from communities, requiring community members to cross a threshold to enter, engage and be included. shift CTRL is a search for the liminal space, not simply inviting people in, but recognizing the ways in which the institution is always a part of community. Over three months, the XIT-RM is transformed into a multi-use space for shift CTRL with three distinct components that ask questions, celebrate community and challenge barriers.
responding to the city we are in: engagement hub on art, politics and belonging
September 6 – September 30
community collaborations: short-run exhibitions with local groups committed to social change
October 1 – October 31
shift CTRL B(l)ackspace: Kadeem Dunn’s playable showcase examines the past/present of Blacks in gaming
November 1 – December 21
From: Mandy Salter
Date: Wed, May 9, 2018 at 12:00 PM
Subject: Kidist Asrat - no longer permitted entry to the AGM premises or events
To: Kidist Paulos Asrat
Cc: Ryerson Maybee , Susan Legge , Sadaf Zuberi
Hello Ms. Asrat,
I had emailed you some months back expressing the AGM’s concern with the nature of your reviews and commentary for the AGM’s programmes, staff, artists and community. I had clearly articulated at the time that if the hateful and insulting tone of many of your blog posts, in regards to AGM content, staff and or community did not cease, you would be no longer welcome at the AGM. While you certainly have the right to freedom of speech, the AGM also has the right to not be defamed and or the recipient of hate propaganda.
As you have continued to criticize, defame and generally create an unsafe space for many at the AGM, you will no longer be permitted to enter the AGM premises under the Trespass to Property Act, RSO 1990, c. T.21 - Ontario.ca
If you are to enter the AGM premises at any time in the future, you will be escorted off the property immediately by City Security.
Mandy Salter
--Mandy Salter MA ISA
---Director/Curator
We are now accepting visual and written works by women of colour artists and storytellers on the theme Invisible Love.
Invisible Love :: Your mother never said it. Your first crush was the girl you couldn't tell. The love of your life you couldn't share with the world. The feeling of being desired but never wholly loved. The ways in which our chosen family cares for us. The way the love we desire is about undoing the patriarchy. The way we feel seen but not always loved. The way we feel love that isn't always seen.
And the artist is a black American woman (couldn't they find a black Canadian woman?):
Her first solo exhibition in a museum, Nina Chanel Abney: Royal Flush, opened at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina in February 2017. Curated by Marshall N. Price, the exhibition included about 30 of her paintings, watercolors, and collages and spans 10 years of her work. The works contain a wide range of art historical references, including medieval icons, Northern Renaissance still lifes, and artists such as Henri Matisse and John Wesley. They illustrate narcissism, celebrity culture, the objectification of women, issues of race, and police brutality. [source]
Imagine using a Matisse collage to "illustrate narcissism, celebrity culture, the objectification of women, issues of race, and police brutality."
It is a clever re-creation. I suppose that the palm leaf over the black face's lips indicates "silencing." And the "xs" are "negation," but coupled wth the "os" and the hearts mean "love." There is also a bird in there - a dove? And a circle on the top left corner of the face which looks 3-D and could be a globe. And the triangles? Pointing direction upwards, a secularized reference to heaven? Or the supremacy of the (black) female (the big triangle "holds" the face); the Black Goddess? But then there's the red, clown's nose describing: "The way we feel seen but not always loved"?
But why Matisse? Again, couldn't Nina Chanel Abney find a black (American) woman artist to re-create her "message" filled collage?
[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
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