Life Of A Craphead

ENTERTAINING EVERY SECOND
02.28–04.06.2019
Room 1

According to artists Amy Lam and Jon McCurley, from the conceptual art duo Life of a Craphead, the past and ongoing effects of Western colonialism in areas outside of North America have not been sufficiently examined. In response to this problem, the duo endeavours to report on experiences and representations of colonialism in Asia. Through family histories, anecdotes, and popular references, Lam and McCurley reveal dynamics of “otherization” that have shaped history; they look at events that have been excluded from it, and memories that have been altered or made invisible. Their practice addresses the multiple manifestations of racism and sexism entangled within the colonial system as a way to demonstrate its persistent presence and to untie the traumas that bind it. A subtle but incisive humour is ever-present in their work, which infiltrates historic material and transforms its substance. Their critical interventions problematize the power relations that organize and instrumentalize its underlying stereotypes. Thus revealed, these power relations and stereotypes contribute to a political rewriting of history.

McCurley’s genealogy and the violent events that have marked it unfold in the main gallery. Three complementary pieces—two Wikipedia pages and a pair of photographs of the One Pillar Pagoda—refer to Phạm Thận Duật (1825-1885), an ancestor of the artist who took part in the anticolonial resistance movement in Vietnam. Until recently, his involvement in the resistance was unknown and it was believed he had been a collaborator of the French forces. In Find the U.S. Soldier That Killed Your Grandma, the duo presents in the expanded form of a comic strip their quest to find the American soldier who assassinated McCurley’s grandmother, Phạm Thị Sinh, during the Vietnam War. Examples of discrimination against Asian women are also expressed in other works on view, while the work of British writer Graham Greene and Canadian painter Chris Cran are truncated and severed to highlight the oppression they perpetuate. Ceilings with Clowns combines the notions of glass ceiling and bamboo ceiling to evoke the barriers Asian women face within the workplace. The installation now includes clowns, added in reaction to a comment made by a selection committee (composed entirely of white members) that the original sculpture was not “that” funny.

Life of a Craphead addresses the tragic and the unspeakable through sarcasm and satire, however subtle it may be. The result is a sharp observation of colonialism, where the power dynamics that shape our relationship to others are turned on themselves.

– Maude Johnson (translation : Jo-Anne Balcaen)