Saskatoon art lovers have plenty to see in two new exhibitions that opened this past week.

Wing Yee Tong’s show Homework is showing at the Snelgrove, and Vancouver-based artist Jayce Salloum’s history of the present is at the Mendel.

Obvious headlines aside, both exhibitions present the artist as archivist, collector and hoarder of the objects, images, conversations and even recipes that are the material residue of lived experience. In both exhibits, the gallery space and the artist’s treatment transform our relationship to these objects.

Homework

Wing Yee Tong continues the MFA thesis series with a show that is intimate, playful and clever.

The works are unnamed and there is no artist statement. Tong was coy when asked what her show is about. “Doilies,” she responded.

Doily: a mass-produced paper craft sold by hundreds at the dollar store. And doilies, those delicate homecrafts from a previous generation. These days, the latter find their way to flea markets and thrift stores along with other objects of low commercial value.

Scattered through Homework are several handmade doilies purchased in Saskatoon. Tong recalls buying two doilies from the Village Green for eight dollars. One had taken eight hours and the other two days to make. “I felt like I was committing robbery,” she said.

In a gallery setting, these doilies become found objects that show the investment of time and care in craft. Variations in colour, design and material are evidence of creativity within accepted boundaries.

On the floor of the gallery are two impressive astroturf versions of the artist’s own creation. They sparkle in their symmetry.

In another corner, a 3D pipecleaner doily creates a 2D reflection on the ceiling thanks to a mustard-yellow lamp also found at the Village Green.

Tong uses second-hand, low-value, even discarded items and makes them beautiful in unexpected ways. Take the glass towers formed of perfume bottles, for example, or the plastic bottle forest at one end of the gallery.

There are inferences to be made about capitalism, consumption and disposal, value and gendered labour. On these matters, the doilies speak for themselves.

Jayce Salloum: history of the present [selected works 1985-2009]

This exhibition is a mid-career retrospective of Jayce Salloum’s work, curated by Jen Budney.

The scope is wide. There are photographs from Vancouver, New York City and Beirut storefronts; video from the Okanagan, Paris, Lebanon and the former Yugoslavia; altered images from a book of Third Reich propaganda; film stock, an Arabic Bible, postcards and fortune cookies.

The piece that drew the most attention at the opening reception was “map of the world,” an elaborate collage of security envelopes, bottle caps, photographs, twigs and an old muffin wrapper. The artist has literally drawn connections between the objects with a ballpoint pen.

“map of the world” is aesthetically appealing in that the colours are harmonious. It is also surprising: who knew security envelopes came in such a variety of designs and shades of blue? And bottle caps of all shapes and colours!

An elderly woman beside me compared it to her recycling bin and noted that everything on the collage had been produced in the last 30 years. After a few minutes she was exasperated: “Will people ever stop shopping?”

The five-part video installation untitled is another highlight that takes hours to experience in its entirety. Personal narratives overlay political contexts in the Okanagan Valley, Lebanon, Palestine and the former Yugoslavia.

Particularly striking is the interview with Soha Bechara, a Lebanese National Resistance fighter who was detained for 10 years in a tiny cell. In the gallery, a single chair faces a flat screen monitor that shows Salloum’s interview with Bechara. His close framing of Bechara combines with the narrowness of the dark gallery walls to produce an intense and intimate effect.

Friday night’s opening included a tour with the artist and curator.

Curator Jen Budney concluded her remarks with what was possibly the most stable summary one could arrive at. She said that Salloum’s work is not so much political as it is epistemological.

“It’s about how we know what we know,” she said.

Given that the exhibit just opened last Friday, a review this early feels somewhat premature. It’s the kind of exhibit that will evolve over time and with repeated visits. Depending on where you stand, content and connections seem to change. Each set of headphones is attached to a different perspective.

The viewer’s shadow cast on a video projection or their reflection in the glass covering a photograph — usually these are distractions. Here, they appear to be reminders of the space intentionally left for the viewer within each work they encounter.

—
Photo: Raisa Pezderic