Brian Guevarra speaks about his exhibit, Playing in the Rain, at Grafitti Art Gallery. Photo: Graham McDonald/U Multicultural Journalism and Media Arts Centre
On June 19, Graffiti Art Gallery opened Voluntary Withdrawal, an exhibition featuring the work of seven recent University of Manitoba School of Art graduates. Through photography, sculpture, and mixed-media works, the artists explore themes of identity, migration, memory, and belonging.
“I don’t feel Filipino enough… but I don’t feel Canadian enough,” said Brian Guevarra, one of the artists, about his exhibit, which explores Filipino diasporic identity.
Guevarra’s resin-cast tank tops were inspired by a childhood trip to the Philippines, where he briefly felt he blended in with the neighbourhood children before realizing he would still be seen as an outsider once he spoke.
“My work only stemmed from a memory that I had as a child,” Guevarra said.
“When I was around seven or eight years old, it was the one and only time I’ve been back to the Philippines, where my family is from, because I was born here in Winnipeg,” Guevarra said.
“So, we were all wearing our pambahay, or house clothes in English,” Guevarra said. “That consists of, typically, this shirt, which is a white tank top, which we call asando.”
“And so, yeah, we were all wearing that, and in the moment when we were playing in the rain, I felt like I looked like everyone else who was there in the neighbourhood,” Guevarra said.
Guevarra said he wanted to reach other Filipino Canadians in Winnipeg who might feel caught between two worlds.
“So I wanted to talk to people who maybe had this experience of feeling as though, you know, in Filipino spaces, they feel as though they’re not welcome because they are too westernized or don’t embody these specific elements or don’t speak their native tongue,” Guevarra said.
“But also in Western spaces, they feel as though they are still outsiders. You know, they have different skin colour, different foods, or speak differently, say different words differently.”
Jasmin Reimer, another of the artists, who is both non-binary and from a Mennonite background, presented an exhibit composed of a series of black-and-white photographic self-portraits in various styles of dress. They said the self-portraits helped them reconcile the various identities that made up their past.
“I’m working a lot with my queer identity as a non-binary person,” Reimer said, “but also working with my Mennonite culture and trying to see how these identities kind of clash with each other.”
“And then the other two are a lot more about me finding my place in my Mennonite culture instead of just rejecting it.”
One way that Reimer flipped gender roles was by turning their grandmother’s hobby of making lace doilies into something masculine.
“This is a suit jacket made of doilies,” Reimer said, referring to one of the self-portraits, “a lot of which my grandma made before she passed away. So I thought I would try and bring that craft associated with women into a more masculine outfit.”
Brodie McQueen’s exhibit consisted of vulcanized rubber tires with elaborately patterned stained glass between the spokes.
“So, wheel windows, or rose windows, are the big circular windows that you’ll see in old cathedrals, usually a little bit more toward the medieval era of cathedrals,” McQueen said.
McQueen said he adapted the medieval cathedral designs to “further sanctify the car into something worthy of worship.”
Graffiti Art Gallery hosts an exhibition featuring the work of specially selected University of Manitoba School of Art graduates every summer.
“This is an annual exhibit, so next year we’ll have a new set of honour students from the University of Manitoba School of Art. So, yeah, it’s an annual thing,” explained Allie A, a gallery assistant at Graffiti Art Gallery.
“The theme changes, yes. The theme depends on the students and how a lot of their work kind of centers on a certain topic. Usually, what we look for is cohesiveness, to make it all flow in a certain way.”
“A lot of the pieces, from my understanding, connect to identity. A lot of it focuses not particularly on their past, but many of them do focus on childhood or something that connects to them as a person,” Allie A added.
“If you look at a lot of them, it’s either coming from a different country, coming from a rough upbringing, or having encouragement from family members or friends before becoming an artist. So it’s a way of showing how they emerge from, I guess, a little cocoon—a little caterpillar to being a butterfly.”
Voluntary Withdrawal is on display at Graffiti Art Gallery until August 21.
Graham McDonald, U Multicultural Journalism and Media Arts Centre