The Portrait Gallery of Canada is providing free workshops to elementary school students to complement its two-month exhibit, Family Portraits: Immigration and Identity, a collection of portraits that reflect the immigrant experience in Canada.
The exhibit, which runs Feb. 16 to April 30, features 17 mixed-media works created by new immigrant families born in countries ranging from Afghanistan, Colombia, Haiti, and Taiwan. Many portraits incorporate a mixture of family photos, sketches of traditional garments, and handwritten quotations.
The project has received significant positive feedback from families and teachers for providing an outlet to express family-self through art in a public space, says Martin Lajoie, head of new media programming at the PGC.
“This is what we wanted,” Lajoie says.
“This is the next leg of it. We don’t want (Family Portraits) to just end now that the exhibition is up, it’s something we want to keep going.”
The workshops, which explore the themes of family, diversity and citizenship, are designed for students Grade 6 and up, but can be adapted for other ages.
At each workshop, the class is divided into two groups, which alternate between activities in the gallery and in the adjacent art studio. While half of the class receives a tour of the exhibit and participates in games, students in the other half create their own family portraits with the help of artist-facilitators, who are also immigrants.
By being exposed to diversity and multiculturalism through art in the workshops, the children don’t always realize they’re learning something important, says Jacob McBane, a volunteer at Ottawa Community Immigrant Services Organization.
McBane, who started volunteering with OCISO last month, says projects such as Family Portraits can help Canada-born citizens relate more easily to immigrants, especially those who feel the two have nothing in common.
He says he believes non-Aboriginals living in Canada should still consider themselves immigrants despite their birth-country, because at one point, their family line contained a first-generation immigrant.
Lexie Buchanan, education project officer at the PGC, agrees and calls this a “common tie” between Canada-born citizens and immigrants.
“Because (immigration) is such a huge part of our culture with families coming from all over, it’s important for kids to understand and be aware of culture differences,” she says.
“By getting kids involved, they start thinking about their own identity and what makes them who they are.”
The gallery hosted its first round of workshops during the last week of February, and according to Buchanan, students in one class couldn’t stop chattering with excitement after finding a portrait from their country.
Buchanan tells a story of a little boy from the class who stood silently in front of the portrait by a Palestinian family who lived in Iraq.
The boy, whose name she couldn’t recall, moved to Canada from Iraq a month ago.
As he began explaining Iraqi culture to his classmates, Buchanan says she felt it was incredible to see how quickly he and other children could be integrated into a new country while maintaining a sense of pride over their birthplaces.
“This entire project embodies what the portrait gallery is all about,” she says.
“A portrait can be so many different things as long as it is representative of who you are and who you believe you are.”
Family Portraits: Immigration and Identity was created in collaboration with the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia and will move to Halifax after the exhibit closes in Ottawa.