By Jennifer Lew
Ordinarily, Canadian Tire money and dozens of shredded maps wouldn’t get you anywhere, but that’s exactly what took two Centretown artists to Mexico recently.
In an art exchange called Boxes and Borders, artists in Ottawa shipped their works to Mexico, while Mexican artists sent their works here.
The exhibition, at Gallery 101 on Nepean Street and Arte In Situ, a gallery in Mexico City, expresses the cultural, geographical and historical connections between the two countries.
Adrian Göllner bought $254.95 worth of Canadian Tire money, “enough to buy a dehumidifier,” and created a portrait of Pancho Villa, the Mexican revolutionary.
Göllner used Velcro to stick the colourful currency on a seven-sq.-m canvas that he intended to stand out like a political banner.
The work alludes to a system of currency Villa introduced as president of northern Mexico. He printed his own money but then decreased its value when he put too much of it into circulation to pay his troops.
“Using currency that only exists here and rendering Pancho Villa in money is quite tragic,” says Göllner.
Antonio Outón, a guest curator at Arte In Situ and former president of Gallery 101, proposed the exhibit exchange.
He said he wanted artists to think about how globalization has changed cultural identities in both countries.
Outón writes, “. . . the global economy, with its exchange of products — and consequently culture — has radically transformed local identities that once were disconnected.”
The Mexican works displayed at Gallery 101 critique such things as the mass marketing of once-traditional products and the prevalence of American brand names in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.
Ottawa artist Uta Riccius chose to show the effect of free trade on North American borders with her work, titled The Armchair Traveller.
She says she “played God in a weird way,” by “reshaping
and re-knitting” maps.
Instead of using wool, Riccius ripped maps into long, thin strips, stitched the paper with invisible thread to strengthen it, then knitted “Mexico and the U.S. together leaving Canada unravelled.”
Knitting needles were left poking out of the paper bundle to look as if someone stepped away from the knit work “to pee or something.”
Riccius travelled to Mexico to help set up the exhibit. There, she showed off her three-dimensional work, The Armchair Traveller, in local markets.
One day, Riccius sat next to a sweater vendor and started knitting her maps. To her surprise, onlookers asked if they could buy her work. While Riccius didn’t sell any mini-globes in Mexico City, she plans to take the paper globes around the world to see how others react to her art.
Other Canadian works in the exhibit include Deborah Margo’s sculpture, Pages From a Grey Book, a cluster of about 25 concrete tablets with river images engraved into them and set in wooden crates.
She took the Boxes and Borders theme literally and presented her work in the crates they were shipped in.
Maureen Sandrock’s marble sculpture of a human heart was inspired by her 25-year career as an operating room nurse.
She wanted to show the organ as a commodity, not just as something that can be shipped and transplanted.
Eric Walker created a three-part work called Halifax Transmission.
Using expandable rulers, cans and other recycled materials, Walker made a radio tower. Nova Scotian folk music, with a Spanish narration, plays on an antique record player.
The third part is a map that shows a hypothetical transmission path from Halifax to Montreal to Mexico City.
Boxes and Borders in Mexico City runs until Dec. 9. Gallery 101 will show the work of six Mexican artists until Dec. 2.