|
||
| It
is within this context, that feminist and postmodern theorists began to
lay down a framework to deconstruct the abstract and moral ethics that
upheld dominant culture. The era of universalism was challenged with a
deep respect for the notion that social and environmental ecology thrived
on diversity. Autonomy could no longer uphold the values of a nation of
which all people were to have equal representation. Artists went through
the painful process of retracing their family’s histories, traditions
and values. Mapping together the non-present stories of Canada’s social
migration back to the land. "We all come to know each other by the asking
for accounts, by giving accounts and by believing or disbelieving stories
in each other’s pasts and identities." writes Paul Connerton in How Societies
Remember. (9) These new catalysts initiated and created public events/exhibitions
to reinterpret meaning and explore the role of memory and how it is connected
to place. In a region of British Columbia when during the early months of 1942 Japanese Canadians, or Nikkei where were interned, Nobuo Kubota opened his exhibition The Exploration of Possibility, curated by Terrence Heath, at The Kelowna Art Gallery, May 1999. Kubota's exhibition presented a consciousness of process and an introduction to the artist's identity, as Kobota states " I work intuitively and the essence of it lies in the process. When the process ends what remains is the showing of the work, which is not as important as the making of it. Kubota's work reflects the inter-cultural alliance of Japanese heritage and Western culture. An alliance as Kubota states as being often tenuous and precarious when he attempts to integrate the disparate points of view."(10) Contrary to the concept of universalism of the modernist period of the 50's as an autonomous act, Kubota integrates his spiritual relationship to all living things (plants, animals, birds, the land, humanity and the universe). Rather then displacing the viewer as a observer he creates an opportunity for interception a point where the viewer if open to the idea of possibility can become apart of the process, the environment, the knowing. As the Group of Seven believed that the Canadian environment had a determining influence on the Canadian character and that the artists must probe the landscape to understand the Canadian psyche. We come to the conclusion that the Canadian psyche is not an autonomous entity, it is transformative and in a state of constant becoming. |
