I linked the post I wrote this morning: Asma Arshad Mahmood: Art Gallery of Mississauga Curator Contender to the following City of Mississauga representatives (the post is also below):
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Asma Arshad Mahmood: Art Gallery of Mississauga Curator Contender
Date: Sun, Apr 3 at 10:09 AM
Date: Sun, Apr 3 at 10:09 AM
From: Kidist Paulos Asrat <cameralucidas@yahoo.com>
To:mayor@mississauga.ca,stephen.dasko@mississauga.ca,Pat.Mullin@mississauga.ca,chris.fonseca@mississauga.ca,john.kovac@mississauga.ca,carolyn.parrish@mississauga.ca,ron.starr@mississauga.ca,dipika.damerla@mississauga.ca,matt.mahoney@mississauga.ca,pat.saito@mississauga.ca,sue.mcfadden@mississauga.ca,george.carlson@mississauga.ca
To:mayor@mississauga.ca,stephen.dasko@mississauga.ca,Pat.Mullin@mississauga.ca,chris.fonseca@mississauga.ca,john.kovac@mississauga.ca,carolyn.parrish@mississauga.ca,ron.starr@mississauga.ca,dipika.damerla@mississauga.ca,matt.mahoney@mississauga.ca,pat.saito@mississauga.ca,sue.mcfadden@mississauga.ca,george.carlson@mississauga.ca
Cc:info@communityart.ca,agm.connect@mississauga.ca, asma@communityart.ca
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Top: Asma Arshad Mahmood curated the recent exhibitions at the Art Gallery of Mississauga including: Flowing River, Lotus of Thanks, Garden of Healing by Charles Pacther, and COVID-19 and Our Lives Around It.
Bottom: Some of the exhibiting artists in Flowing River, Lotus of Thanks
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The Art Gallery of Mississauga has sent out a memo to advertise that they are looking for a new curator of contemporary art.
The Art Gallery of Mississauga has tried for years now to present the wishful thinking multiculturalism in its programming, and all it has really done is to showcase individual cultures.
One would think by now that multiculturalism would really be that, multiculturalism: a blend of cultures.
Of course this is not possible. How do you blend together Indian, Chinese, various African cultures, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, etc., etc.?
The fact is that multiculturalism is really appendages onto a historical, traditional culture of the country. There is no blending, but a tenuous coexistence.
There seems to be one contender for this position.
The CBC recently interviewed Mahmood (which aired in mid-March 2022). Mahmood curated a series of exhibitions which just wrapped at the Art Gallery of Mississauga. The interviewer introduces Mahmood as: "Celebrated Mississauga curator."
Mahmood's four-part exhibition which she titled "...till all are healed," is on now at the AGM, and works in the series Flowing River, Lotus of Thanks are by local artists whom she asked to paint thanking frontline workers. These works were up for auction to raise money for the pandemic's frontline workers: "to both say a broader thanks and provide income for local artists."
Art Gallery of Mississauga presents “…till all are healed,” a four-part exhibit curated by local artist Asma Arshad Mahmood, in collaboration with CCAI [Canadian Community Art Initiative] and TD [Toronto Dominion Bank] Mosaic Festival.Artworks were made possible by the support of Mississauga Culture Division, City of Mississauga Parks and Rec, Ontario Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, Province of Ontario, and the Department of the Canadian Heritage.The elements of this exhibit have come together naturally as they are centered around the response to COVID-19. There has been a significant challenge during this time, threatening mental and physical health, promoting personal fear of loneliness and hardships on a path to recovery.The title of the exhibition was chosen to inspire equity and global cooperation in realizing the fact that this pandemic will not go away without the global vaccination campaign becoming successful. [Source]
Some of the artists in the Flowing River - Lotus of Thanks exhibit
Mahmood (Second from left) with Mississauga officials: Left to right: Peel Region Medical Officer of Health Dr. Lawrence Loh, Mayor Bonnie Crombie, AGM Executive Director Anna Gulbinski
[Source for both images]
The majority of the entries, 20 of the 27 (74%), of the works exhibited were by South Asians, with two white women who have South Asian last names - and are South Asian by extension.
"Lotus of Thanks" is an odd choice for a title. But while Mahmood is Muslim, she interacts with the Indian subcontinent's general culture, where the lotus flower is important (here is a photo of her and her husband after the Hindu festival Holi).
Mahmood's message is thanks, and probably uses the lotus flower in relation to gratitude, as this site explains, as a meditative focus:
Finally, when you calm your thoughts and focus on the positive...a very strong spiritual formula consisting of two simple words: “Love and Gratitude“. And it does not matter in what language you will write these two words. The main thing is their essence.
Or perhaps she used this photograph as an inspiration, from one of the very first exhibitions held by her Mosaic: The South Asian Festival of Mississauga organization.
The image, Kashmiri Boy, of a young boy holding a lotus flower has this explanatory note:
The Promenade Gallery held the opening reception for "Image and Identity: Being Ethnic (South Asian): Thursday evening (Aug 9). Kumkum Ramchandani with her photo "Kashmiri Boy"
And here is more on Ramchandani:
Kumum Ramchandani's photograph personifies peace and tranquility sought by wondering souls. A Kashmiri boy offering a flower on Dhal Lake is by no means a small gesture of peace and friendship in a valley torn by political and religious unrest
The Kashmir region is a contested area. Pakistan controls part of the region, while India the other part. Ramchandami appears to be a Sindhi name:
Sindhi Hindus are Sindhis who follow the Hindu religion, whose origins lie in the Sindh region of modern-day Pakistan. After the partition of India in 1947, many Sindhi Hindus were among those who fled Pakistan...Some later emigrated from the sub-continent and settled in other parts of the world.
So, Mahmood's affiliation to the lotus flower could be for a number of reasons, including to cleverly use its pronunciation to create her message: "Lots of Thanks."
"The pandemic gave us time to look at life in a different way...Our life was all the comforts that nation like Canada offers us. Security, safety. Everything was there for us," says Mahmood in her interview with the CBC (around the 3:36-3:40 point).
I suspect this is an indirect, politically correct, way of saying "our immigrants' life." Since Mahmood already demonstrated to us that her interest lies in this "multicultural" aspect of Canada, which came about because of immigrants.
Mahmood is the Senior Artistic Director of the Canadian Community Art Initiative, and founder and long-time Artistic Director of Mosaic. Both focus on the South Asian community in the Mississauga area. Through these organizations, Mahmood presents Mosaic: The South Asian Festival of Mississauga.
Now in its 17th year, Mosaic is the largest FREE South Asian Multi Disciplinary Arts Festival of North America. Mosaic 2022 will be featuring Dance, Music, Literature, Visual Arts,Fashion and culinary delights. The festival also presents a variety of food and commercial vendors.
The auction for the paintings in Flowing River, Lotus of Thanks is on until the end of April. Sixteen of the the 27 are left as of today. And according to the auction site , the paintings are up for $100 (starting point), and "Should you win the bid, you may choose a frontline organization, company or individual person to whom you would like to gift this work of art." Mahmood should update us soon on her many social media (various Faceboook and twitter pages), as well as her websites, on the status of this auction.
So the AGM marches on. And it's time to get a permanent curator.
And Mahmood is up for the challenge. She fits perfectly for the "contemporary art" curator's slot. Her work is all about the contemporary, in Canada that is, with her emphasis on "multiculturalism," and her huge reach into the "multicultural" community. But in her clever endeavors, all her her "multicultural" is all about HER multiculture - the Pakistani/Indians/Hindu/Muslims. They may be fighting on the subcontinent, hundreds of thousands of miles away, but they do get together at least twice a year for festive occasions.
Perhaps, when all the flurry is over, the most telling thing about Mahmood is her own art. She tells us in her CV that she has an MFA from York University, with exhibitions around Ontario, and beyond.
But what does she paint? What does she have to paint about? How does she portray in her works
...as a Candian/Pakistani visual artist and curator...whose work explores globalized artistic context?
How does her artwork [examine]
...identity, memory and representation as ongoing subjects of paintings and installations?
Very tenuously.
Mahmood's paintings are ephemeral sketches of barely-there people.
The piece above, with no title or other information, is from Mahmood's website. It is an ephemera, a wisp of unidentified/unidentifiable human forms.
It is difficult, and almost impossible, to be an artist where one does not have a physical, material connection to the land. Where one loves the land. Otherwise, internal spirits tug aggressively to be released. It is them, or nothing.
Expect more of this, much more, and laced with alien and foreign spirits, on the AGM's walls if Mahmood wins her bid.