Mississauga Sunflowers

Riverwood Barn Sunflower Glow 

[Photo By: KPA]

Sunflower Exhibition, in the Riverwood Conservancy

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I recently posted on Asma Arshad Mahmood, under the title  Asma Arshad Mahmood: Art Gallery of Mississauga Curator Contender, which I sent to the various Mississauga representatives.

I have written about Mahmood just a few months back, when I submitted my sunflower photograph to a juried exhibition, that was coming up in November 2021, hosted by Visual Arts Mississauga, and to be exhibited at the Art Gallery of Mississauga.

My photograph was accepted by Visual Arts Mississauga, for another exhibit, this time on sunflowers, and at the Riverwood (nature) Conservancy. The exhibit, due to "COVID," was online.

I withdrew my submission from the AGM's juried exhibition, after I searched Mahmood's background and her connections.

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Art Sabotage 
Thursday September 9, 2021

I have my photograph at the "Sunflower" exhibition hosted by Visual Arts Mississauga.

It is of the barn, with sunflowers, at Visual Arts Mississauga, which I titled Barn Glow with Sunflowers.

Here is the link, which I think still runs - although the exhibition ended, it was "online" and the site is still up [KPA - it is no longer up].

I sent the same photograph for the Art Gallery of Mississauga's "Juried" exhibition, coming up in November. The AGM's site was long in describing the event, and who the "juries" were to be. Very close to the application deadline, they produced this list:

You can see their credentials at the site, here (or by clicking on their names at the announcement page, here).

Both Asma Sultana and Asma Mahmood are "South Asians,"

Here are a few details about their artistic activities, and associations.

Mahmood's Face Book page has as its header this image:

Her post on this image says this:

I contacted Bushra Mahmood, through her website (I found through google - there is no link on Asma Mahmood's post) and asked her this:

To whom it may concern:

I found this image (attached) on the web, and was wondering if it is yours. The background looks like a "sunflower halo." If so, would you have a title for it, and its context.

Of course, the "sunflower" would fit in the theme of the recent Visual Arts Mississauga exhibition, of which Asma Mahmood would be aware.

I never heard back from B. Mahmood, but I found the image's exhibition history (through image search on google) at mybindi.com, supposedly posted on September 2013, although the actual site does not display the image. 

 

So what is it?

It looks like, besides the sunflower "glow," (or a sunflower crown?) of a youngish girl slurping blood through her hand, while holding a goat (a lamb?) on the other.

After the initial horror - blood, and young animals - I realized that this is clearly a "Christian" theme of the Lamb of God, the sacrificial lamb of God, surrounded by a halo, which Mahmood has translated into her own fetish. And hers is a kid (a goat) not the sacrificial lamb that Abraham offered to God.

Mahmood's webiste address is goatsandbacon.com, where she "builds tools for the future," but there is no posting that directly reference goats, or bacon, or this goatherd with blood on her hands and mouth surrounded by a sunflower .

Bacon is the Muslim prohibition against eating pork meat, the goat is a well-known symbol for Baphomet, and at the final judgment, God separates the sheep, who stay with him, from the goats: 

31 When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne

32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.

33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

This drawing now stands as the Face Book header of Asma Mahmood, a Mississauga woman who has been given the task of judging art work that is meant to represent Mississauga's artists. 

I sent an email to the jury group for the Juried Show of Fine Arts:

I find it very interesting that you purport to be a "Mississuagan," i.e. a Canadian, organization, yet your jury is composed of two women (out of four jurors, that is 50% of the jury) who call themselves "Asma" and whose works is posted all over the internet for all to see advocating their Pakistani and Bangladeshi roots, and even presented in their own script and language.

What does the twitter head of Asma Arshad Mahmood mean? What does that have to do with Canada? How will she "judge" my entry if I don't even understand what she says on her twitter page?

Why is Asma Sultana's facebook page, and her webpage showing me her work mostly in an Indian language script? What is she saying? How will she "judge" my entry if I don't even understand what says about her own "art?" 

You don't even attempt to present yourselves as "multicultural" and instead you have been hijacked by Indians/Pakistani/Bangladeshi who will have their own criteria for judging and critiquing Canadian art and artists.

This is a very interesting, and important, development. 

Kidist Paulos Asrat

Art and Commentary by Kidist Paulos Asrat

By the way, the other two aren't much better.

Fauste Facciponte photographs dolls, which Globe and Mail writer R. M. Vaughn describes thus in a 2011 article "Double Visions and Scary Dolls" (the excerpt is of a screen shot from a pdf file):

 

 

And here is Jay Wilson's Toothpick Mountain

And here is Asma Sultana's twitter page entry, clearly a self-portrait. But what does it say?

And the banner for the show? The background to the banner is what looks like clipped paper collage,

 

whereas it is an acrylic painting, by Elizabeth Elkin, 

who nonetheless paints still lifes and flowers with skill.