RENDER – Volume Nine
Acknowledgements
We are thrilled to present the Ninth edition of the RENDER Graduate Journal. This volume is the product of our May 2023 conference by the same name, Sign of the Times: Examining Aesthetics After Trauma. Regatu and myself sincerely thank Olivia Musselwhite for her help with organizing the conference, and this subsequent edition. We would also like to thank our wonderful contributors for presenting their research to us at Carleton and agreeing to submit their work for publication. Voted on by our Graduate Student Society, the inspiration for Sign of the Times came from the recent experience of the pandemic. Considering the recent and ongoing pandemic and the effects on our global interactions, this edition explores further connections between trauma and aesthetics. Challenges to individuals, communities, countries, or our global existence can influence the ways in which we experience, communicate, and create. Works emblematic of the aesthetics of trauma engage with themes of temporality, absence and presence, the historical, and the psychological, amongst others. We thank our contributors, Regatu Asefa (Carleton), Erin Galt (University of Ottawa), Olivia Musselwhite (Carleton), Rojina Sabestiashraf (University of Alberta), Yoobin Shin (University of Toronto), and Sharon VanStarkenburg (University of Ottawa). We are so grateful to have had the opportunity to rekindle RENDER after two years, and hope that this has provided momentum for the continuation of this important journal. It is imperative to provide space for young scholars to have the opportunity to work together, and to publish their important research.
Please enjoy the ninth edition of the RENDER Graduate Journal!
Best,
Jessica Endress (Co-president AGHSS, 2022-2023)
Regatu Asefa (Co-president AGHSS, 2022-2023)
Content warning: This edition of RENDER will cover topics that may be triggering or difficult to contend with such as sexual trauma, racism, grief, war, colonialism and the Holocaust, as well as potential graphic imagery of blood and violence. If you need to speak to someone, there are several resources such as Good2Talk Ontario which offers 24/7 counselling advice, the Ottawa Rape Crisis Centre which provides 24/7 help and the Native Youth Crisis Hotline which is available 24/7 to provide support.
* * *
Contents
“Refusal of French Morality: Female Blood Imagery in Jean Fautrier and Niki de Saint-Phalle” by Regatu Asefa
In 1961, amidst the Algerian War of Independence, famed art critic and founder of the Nouveau Réalistes, Pierre Restany, wrote the introduction panel for the exhibition, La France déchirée. In it, he compared the décollage artworks that featured posters referencing the war to the dirty, menstrual-stained laundry of a well-bred woman. His text represents French disavowal of history and the mid-century cultural cleansing. Following the end of the Second World War, France’s reconstruction period demanded cleanliness, intent on ridding herself of the decay, stains, and complicity of the Occupation. Restany’s introduction, on display while the country was actively engaged in the Algerian War of Independence, connects the cultural cleanse of post-WWII and 1960s French colonialism. Through this cultural cleansing, French morality could be restored. However, Jean Fautrier’s 1943 La Juive and Niki de Saint Phalle’s 1961 Grand Tir – Séance de la Galerie J complicate the French virtue Restany’s writing espouses. These works challenge the image of a pure and virtuous France by emphasizing female blood imagery and therefore exposing the violence of the country’s politics throughout the twentieth century. Through female blood imagery including death, decay, wounds, and blood, these two pieces challenge the constructed image of a virtuous and clean France and expose the country’s virtue as a falsehood. The female blood imagery in these works emphasizes the moral failings and dirty history (or ‘laundry,’ as Restany wrote) of the nation, rejecting the cleansed national image France sought for herself.
“The Affective Power of Visuals After Trauma in the Artworks of Ana Mendieta through Deleuze, Kristeva, and Bennett” by Erin Galt
During the Covid-19 pandemic, there was an unprecedented rise in gender-based violence. As we approach the fortieth anniversary of the Ana Mendieta’s murder by then-husband artist Carl Andre, we can look back at the early implications of blood in her art. Many know of Mendieta’s use of blood as a symbol for rebirth and renewal. In this paper I focus on her earlier blood-based work where blood was used to signify absence, presence, and violence. Moreover, these earlier artworks demonstrate her investigation into the aesthetics of trauma through performance and film. In Untitled (Moffitt Building) (1973), blood signifies absence of body and the presence of violence. In Untitled (Rape Scene) (1973), blood is an intervention of the Abject, and in Untitled (Blood Signs #2/Body Tracks) (1974), blood signifies the indeterminacy of trauma. Instead of rebirth and renewal, Mendieta’s early blood-based artworks use affective imagery to confront gender-based violence and the scope of trauma. I explore this motif through Gilles Deleuze’s theory of Affect, Julia Kristeva’s notion of the Abject, and Jill Bennett’s identification of the aesthetics of ‘trauma art’. These three authors, each in their own way, advance a theory that enables the interrogation of trauma in art beyond representation. According to Deleuze, affects exist as active exchanges between materials and humans, demanding meaning regardless of the viewer’s intention. Kristeva’s theory of the Abject refers to the human reaction to a threatened breakdown in meaning caused by the loss of the distinction between self and other. Building upon Deleuze, Jill Bennett argues the affective power of the visual in art that draws from trauma, which is traditionally defined as being beyond both language and representation. Not only will this essay give a new perspective on Mendieta’s oeuvre but, through an analysis of her art, illuminate the theories of important writers.
“Stitching as Storytelling and Healing: Ruth Cuthand’s Don’t Breathe, Don’t Drink (2016)” by Olivia Musselwhite
Beadwork is often categorized as craft in the Western tradition, and relegated to glass cases, giving the false impression that it is an art tradition associated with the past. Beading is not frozen in time, but rather, as Lana Ray articulates, it is an active artistic practice that continues to serve as a powerful form of visual storytelling in Indigenous communities. Sherry Farrell Racette expands this idea, stating that beadwork can then be viewed as a form of medicine, with its connections to storytelling, thinking, mourning, healing, and the passing of memory. Adding to this discourse, Stephanie Anderson explains that there is a transformative power in traditional materials, enabling them to confront trauma and hidden histories, while affirming the ongoing vitality and sovereignty of Indigenous communities.
The concept of time is intertwined with beading in its laborious process and in its abilities as a medium to bring traditional Indigenous methods into present discussions. In Ruth Cuthand’s work, Don’t Breathe, Don’t Drink (2016), she beads the three-dimensional forms of viruses commonly found in contaminated drinking water. The colourful beads are suspended in drinking glasses and baby bottles, placed on top of a tarp-covered table. The beadwork provides opportunities for activism and healing, encouraging conversations about drinking water crises in Indigenous communities that continue in Canada today. Beading rejects notions of Indigenous peoples as being a part of the past, and instead propels Indigenous discourse into the present and into the future.
“Embodied Experience in the Museum Context: Exploring the Intersection of Trauma and Aesthetics in the Aftermath of COVID-19 at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Arts” by Rojina Sabetiashraf
In this paper, I propose to analyze the embodied experience of museum visitors in the aftermath of Covid-19. I will focus on the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Arts in Tehran, Iran. By using a phenomenological and cultural studies approach, I want to consider how embodied experiences in the museum are shaped by a range of factors, including the physical characteristics of the space, the sensory qualities of objects on display, and the movements and interactions of visitors themselves. Using Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological perspective, which emphasizes the role of the body and the senses in shaping our perception of the world around us, can provide a theoretical framework for understanding how visitors engage with the museum space and objects on display. Additionally, using Mieke Bal’s theory on the act of looking and its relationship to the visual arts can provide a useful lens through which to view how cultural and social factors shape visitors’ experiences and contribute to the production of meaning in the museum context. Overall, an analysis of embodied experience in the museum context can provide valuable insights into how trauma and aesthetics intersect and can help to illuminate the convoluted and multifaceted ways in which visitors engage with and make meaning from the museum experience.
“Invisibility, Space and Monument: Activism through Absence” by Yoobin Shin
Can we have an activist movement through silence? This paper attempts to question the fundamental Western notion of activism through a recent memorial/art installation by a Vancouver-based Haida artist, Tamara Bell, at the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery’s southern entrance. Installed in 2021 in response to the discovery of the remains of 215 Indigenous children on the grounds of the former residential school in BC, Canada, pairs of shoes were displayed, each to represent those missing children. Discursively engaging with Avery F. Gordon’s theorization of Ghostly Matters and Haunting, Bell’s installation is not simply regarded as a memorial and art installation; rather, it redefines itself as an activist movement through the silence without having any corporeal involvement of humans in the place. Through the quite haunting of the ghosts of children conjured up from the displayed shoes, it visualizes the history of invisibility and inequality placed Indigenous peoples under the structure of colonialism. At the same time, the author examines the strategic location of the installation, which breaks the silence of the place and unsettles spatial relations that are established between the former and current Vancouver Law courts, intervening in the history of the Canadian legal system and calling forth the reconciliation with the Indigenous Peoples. Bell’s installation stands still today in its place, becoming a monument — this shows a hope to continue to memorize the pain of children, not to be forgotten again.
“Representing Pain in Visual Art: How Suffering Bodies are Othered in the Western Tradition” by Sharon VanStarkenburg
What might be the aim for contemporary artists for representing pain and its traumatic affects in their work today? One might venture to guess that the objective is to elicit, within the viewers, emotional responses, followed by deliberate actions toward the amelioration or eradication of the source of that suffering. Artists may wish to evoke empathy or compassion, consider the work to be resistance to adversity, or employ it in community building strategies. The inherent assumption within any of these, critically, is that the act of witnessing the pain of others has the capacity, if not as an automatic response, to evoke empathy from viewers. But we must ask if this is actually the case or does it, instead, cause yet more violence? Can concern for others be planted in the minds of art viewers? There is evidence that representing pain can transpose it from a description of experience to a de facto descriptor. Judith Butler has pointed this out in a number of her analyses, with the correlation between women and vulnerability being a prime example. This poses serious consequences for those that do experience various forms of violence and suffer the consequent trauma, such as women, Black or brown folks, or those with disabilities. Pain, or the predisposition to suffering, becomes understood as an inherent quality of inhabiting such a body, rather than a consequence of oppressive circumstances. In the following I will trace a brief history of the representation of pain in the Western tradition of visual art in order to draw out how “we” (a strategic essentialism: “we” are visual art viewers familiar with Western art historical precedents) may be indoctrinated to view and interpret the representations of others’ pain. I will support these arguments with examples of historical representations of pain and trauma, as well as contemporary examples.