Visual confrontations
Rebecca Belmore’s two-venue exhibit decries theft of land and culture
Stacey Abramson

Parallel is a perfect example of why Rebecca Belmore is one of Canada’s best contemporary artists.

The two shows that make up this unique, co-operative exhibit — put on by aceartinc. and Urban Shaman — highlight three works by Belmore, each of which is as breathtaking, devastating and brilliant as the next.

The collaboration is wonderfully balanced, giving Parallel both a definite division and cohesion in showcasing Belmore’s powerfully political work about the theft of culture and land from the aboriginal people of Canada.

Urban Shaman features the performance-based video Vigil, part of an exhibition titled The Named and Unnamed. Situated in the centre of the gallery, the piece is projected onto a large screen interrupted by light bulbs shining like stars. The screen displays a Belmore performance in Vancouver’s East Side, given when many women and children were missing in and around that area.

Stripping flowers bare with her teeth, the artist screams out names scribbled on her arm like tattoos. Donning a red dress, she nails the gown to a back-lane post, earnestly tearing the dress and herself away from the nails until nothing is left of the garment. The performance is a clear reminder of the silence surrounding the deaths of these women.

Then Belmore slips her jeans and sandals back on and leans against the door of a truck as James Brown’s It’s a Man’s World blares from the speakers. The ritual is a powerful act of remembrance and rectitude, giving the lives lost and forgotten a fierce sense of honour.

Belmore recently had the honour of representing Canada at the 2005 Venice Biennale — think of it as the Olympics of contemporary art. Fountain, the video component to her Biennale piece, pours off the wall in a room at aceartinc. The two-minute loop shows Belmore frantically attempting to fill a bucket in shallow water, only to emerge and splash a full bucket of blood at the camera.

The piece is quite confrontational — as blood slides down the lens Belmore looks with blaming eyes right through the camera, seemingly into the eyes of any onlookers, and her political message of physical and cultural theft is overwhelming. The looping ‘fountain’ splashes a history of deceit that is not to be forgotten.

Architecture for a Colonial Landscape is a beautifully haunting piece. Images of burning tires are projected on three slender wooden pillars in the centre of ace’s main gallery area. The space is silent, letting the images create a mental soundtrack.

The sadness of smouldering rubber set against a beautiful blue sky is Belmore’s way of bringing the effect of land theft to a level at which viewers can connect. While watching what feels like a campfire, an unsettling feeling of disgrace and shame sets in. Like most of Belmore’s highly political work, the piece strikes a chord when you least expect it to.

Belmore’s work is always political and personal. It’s her intimate connection to the issues she approaches and dissects that makes her work so powerful, and this exhibition is an important part of the history of contemporary Canadian art.