Art Sabotage

I have my photograph at the "Sunflower" exhibition hosted by Visual Arts Mississauga.

It is of the barn, with sunflowers, at Visual Arts Mississauga, which I titled Barn Glow with Sunflowers.

I sent the same photograph for the Art Gallery of Mississauga's "Juried" exhibition, coming up in November. The AGM's site was long in describing the event, and who the "juries" were to be. Very close to the application deadline, they produced this list:

You can see their credentials at the site, here (or by clicking on their names at the announcement page, here).

Both Asma Sultana and Asma Mahmood are "South Asians."

Here are a few details about their artistic activities, and associations.

Mahmood's Face Book page has as its header this image:

Her post on this image says this:

I contacted Bushra Mahmood, through her website (I found through google - there is no link on Asma Mahmood's post) and asked her this:

To whom it may concern:

I found this image (attached) on the web, and was wondering if it is yours. The background looks like a "sunflower halo." If so, would you have a title for it, and its context.

Of course, the "sunflower" would fit in the theme of the recent Visual Arts Mississauga exhibition, of which Asma Mahmood would be aware.

I never heard back from B. Mahmood, but I found the image's exhibition history (through image search on google) at mybindi.com, supposedly posted on September 2013, although the actual site does not display the image. 

 

So what is it?

It looks like, besides the sunflower "glow," (or a sunflower crown?) of a youngish girl slurping blood through her hand, while holding a goat (a lamb?) on the other.

After the initial horror - blood, and young animals - I realized that this is clearly a "Christian" theme of the Lamb of God, the sacrificial lamb of God, surrounded by a halo, which Mahmood has translated into her own fetish. And hers is a kid (a goat) not the sacrificial lamb that Abraham offered to God.

Mahmood's webiste address is goatsandbacon.com, where she "builds tools for the future," but there is no posting that directly reference goats, or bacon, or this goatherd with blood on her hands and mouth surrounded by a sunflower .

Bacon is the Muslim prohibition against eating pork meat, the goat is a well-known symbol for Baphomet, and at the final judgment, God separates the sheep, who stay with him, from the goats: 

31 When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne

32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.

33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

This drawing now stands as the Face Book header of Asma Mahmood, a Mississauga woman who has been given the task of judging art work that is meant to represent Mississauga's artists. 

I sent an email to the jury group for the Juried Show of Fine Arts:

I find it very interesting that you purport to be a "Mississuagan," i.e. a Canadian, organization, yet your jury is composed of two women (out of four jurors, that is 50% of the jury) who call themselves "Asma" and whose works is posted all over the internet for all to see advocating their Pakistani and Bangladeshi roots, and even presented in their own script and language.

What dies the twitter head of Asma Arshad Mahmood mean? What does that have to do with Canada? Hwo will she "judge" my entry if I don't even understand what she says on her twitter page?

Why is Asma Sultana's facebook page, and her webpage showing me her work mostly in an Indian language script? What is she saying? How will she "judge" my entry if I don't even understand what says about her own "art?" 

You don't even attempt to present yourselves as "multicultural" and instead you have been hijacked by Indians/Pakistani/Bangladeshi who will have their own criteria for judging and critiquing Canadian art and artists.

This is a very interesting, and important, development 

Kidist Paulos Asrat

Art and Commentary by Kidist Paulos Asrat

By the way, the other two aren't much better.

Fauste Facciponte photographs dolls, which Globe and Mail writer R. M. Vaughn describes thus in a 2011 article "Double Visions and Scary Dolls" (the excerpt is of a screen shot from a pdf file):

 

 

And here is Jay Wilson's Toothpick Mountain

And here is Asma Sultana's twitter page entry, clearly a self-portrait. But what does it say?

And the banner for the show? The background to the banner is what looks like clipped paper collage,

 

whereas it is an acrylic painting, by Elizabeth Elkin, 

who nonetheless paints still lifes and flowers with skill.

Spring!

Spring: Magnolia Tree Flowers - Jubilee Garden, Mississauga

[Photo By: KPA]

COVID Directions: This Way - That Way

COVID Directions: This Way - That Way
Main entrance to 1 City Centre Drive, Mississauga
[Photo By: KPA]

Here is the interior of 1 City Centre Drive, pre-COVID:


[Image Source]

The Perfect COVID-Mask

Courtesy of the Mayor of Mississauga.

Reminder: Face coverings are now mandatory on all transit systems that move through #Mississauga. That includes GO Transit, Up Express, MiWay, TTC and Brampton ZUM. When you leave the house, don't forget your keys, wallet and mask. My mask protects you and your mask protects me. https://t.co/sdgLjVysqp

— Bonnie Crombie 🇨🇦 (@BonnieCrombie) July 21, 2020

French Style in Mississauga

This is a screen capture of 1470 Mississauga Road, in Lorne Park, Mississauga, a beautiful combination of pale yellow walls and light blue window shutters. It is shielded by wrought iron gates.

This website (with more photos) describes it as:

French Chateau / Farmhouse, reminiscent of holidays in Bordeaux.

Currently: Off market.

A little of southern France, wine country, transported to the Mississauga Valley.

More about Lorne Park, here. A good Wikipedia article, which describes older Mississauga villages, and a generalized history of Mississauga.

From the article:

Even though Lorne Park was absorbed into Mississauga, it remained a distinct neighborhood that retains ties to its pioneer origins.

This building is a new development, but the Lorne Park neighborhood has some of the oldest mansions, and houses, of Mississauga.

More on the historic estates in Lorne Park here and here.

Felician Sisters, Mississauga

Felician Sisters, Mississauga
Image Source: Mississauga.ca

We drive by a long, slightly winding driveway. The last time we drove by it, I managed to write down the nearest number to the road: 2185 Mississauga Road.

On Google Map, the Felician Sisters is located near this area, and looking them up, they are at 2165 Mississauga Rd.

Most of these side roads show homes on either side, but this one has an intriguing absence of anything but the trail and tall trees on either side.

Here is a little background on this convent (text below from mississauga.ca, and images screenshots from google map):

2165 Mississauga Road North. Range 3, CIR, pt. Lot 10.

This is a two-and-a-half storey structure built as an English country estate in English Tudor Manor style. It was designed by architects George and Moorhouse in 1938 and originally known as the William George Dean residence. (William George Dean was a director of Eaton's.) The building later became a convent for the Felician Sisters of St. Francis Canada. It is not visible from the road. There is a carriage house attached to the east side and a modern addition to the west. There was a small cemetery on the property where about seven of the sisters were buried. Sometime before 2004 six of the sisters' bodies were moved, without the knowledge of the Registrar of Cemeteries, and reinterred in Assumption Cemetery. It is possible that there are still some burials on the property. The property is listed on the Heritage Register. Description as of July 2018.

Agency: Mississauga Library System

And more here:

Felician Sisters of St. Francis Canada Convent & Cemetery, Erindale
Date Built: 1938
Subject: Historic buildings - Ontario - Erindale (Mississauga)
Location: 2165 Mississauga Road North, pt. Lot 10, Range 3 CIR

The Multi-Culti Mississauga Art Establishment Implodes

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]."

------------------

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!

Jubilee Peonies

Jubilee Peonies
Photo By: KPA
In the Jubilee Garden, Mississauga

French Style in Mississauga

This is a screen capture of 1470 Mississauga Road, in Lorne Park, Mississauga, a beautiful combination of pale yellow walls and light blue window shutters. It is shielded by wrought iron gates.

This website (with more photos) describes it as:

French Chateau / Farmhouse, reminiscent of holidays in Bordeaux.

Currently: Off market.

A little of southern France, wine country, transported to the Mississauga valley.

More about Lorne Park, here. A good Wikipedia article, which describes older Mississauga villages, and a generalized history of Mississauga.

From the article:

Even though Lorne Park was absorbed into Mississauga, it remained a distinct neighborhood that retains ties to its pioneer origins.

This building is a new development, but the Lorne Park neighborhood has some of the oldest mansions, and houses, of Mississauga.

More on the historic estates in Lorne Park here and here.

City Hall Blossoms

Blossoms by the Mississauga Civic Centre
[Photo By: KPA]

COVID as the Great Delineator

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.

Death through Acquiescence

Below is what I wrote on March 17, as I was just beginning to understand this "pandemic."

-------------------------------------

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]

Magnolia in the City

Saucer Magnolia by the Mississauga Civic Centre
[Photo By: KPA]

Magnolias

The Magnolias at Mississauga's Jubilee Garden
[Photo By: KPA]

These magnolias are closer now to full bloom.

Spring is Around the Corner

[Photo By: KPA]

The persistent rains we've had, and the empty parking lots because of the COVID have brought out the fauna from their hiding places (namely by the lake shore).

Ducks are flying in and out, waddling through empty garages, enjoying the disappearance of their human foe.

I think they think I'm not a foe. I wear a white parka, and may resemble a giant seagull.

Have a Wiggle

Here is how the Mississauga Central Library wishes its readers (now that there there is a COVID-Shutdown) a Happy Easter: with a wiggle.

And, as usual, my instincts were prescient.

Have a Happy Wiggle, everyone!

Have a Nothing

Here is how the Art Gallery of Mississauga wishes its readers (now that there is a COVID-Shutdown) a Happy Easter: with nothing.

Here is my proposal for Picturing My Landscape, the title of the project, which I sent to the AGM several months ago. I withdrew my proposal project, 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?

And, as usual, my instincts were prescient.

Have a Nothing, everyone!

City Centre Lock-Down

Winter Garden

Photo By KPA
March 18, 2020

A winter garden, in the lovely Jubilee Garden in Mississauga.

Double Country

I made it to the Art Gallery of Mississauga on Saturday, ignoring the forecast of a snowstorm. The storm was worse than I had expected, the falling snow was a snow/ice mixture, with a blowing wind that made these pellets feel like mini pine needles.

The AGM hosted its the annual juried show presented by Visual Arts Mississauga the night before. I prefered to see the exhibition at a quieter time, at my own pace. The VAM Facebook page has uploaded photos of the event, including some of the paintings (there were 40 entries).

Here are two that caught my eye in the exhibition, and which I took snapshots of:


Left: Hannah Veiga: You Used to be My Favourite Colour
Right: Stuart Godfrey: 4th Line Backside

Albeit, they are both a little bleak in concept.

Veiga writes on her website that her fabric piece is: "a contemplation of what constitutes a home, and what remains when something loses its meaning of a home." Is is not clear what she means by that. Perhaps her curtains don't have any place to hang, other than in galleries and design shows. Her floral design is a complicated process with seven color scheme (red, light red, green, light green, grey, yellow, white), and its mockup on (Japanese) Kozuke paper - no less! I assume the fabric was printed through the digital fabric printing processes now readily available, probably more so than silkscreen studios. Manual printing, the method I used to print on fabric, prepares each color separately on a silk screen, and in this case, seven separate screens, to produce the whole pattern.

And Godfrey's barn has no front, and the items within it, or surrounding it, look like old fences, sacks and what look like mattresses. But it is still standing, as are many old and non-functional barns throughout the countryside, waiting to be rediscovered, remodeled, and to be put to use again. Godfrey is a talented painter, whose oil panel is meticulously painted, to the last blade of grass.

Both pieces allude to a surer time, when no-one questioned the "favourtism" of a home's choice of colors. When curtains WERE colorful, and the black/white/gray/beige variety that line "designer" stores these days (for color and variety, go to Walmart!) And both have solid structures: the barn still has an upright frame, and all a farmer need do is restore the floors and facade; the pattern promises of a home of florals. And both reference a time in the recent past when we had such things in our landscapes, both internal and external, and lived better lives through them.