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Art Criticism & Theory

Other Conundrums

Race, Culture, and Canadian Art

by (author) Monika Kin Gagnon

Publisher
Arsenal Pulp Press, Artspeak Gallery
Initial publish date
Oct 2000
Category
Criticism & Theory, General
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781551520926
    Publish Date
    Oct 2000
    List Price
    $21.95

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Description

Other Conundrums, copublished with Vancouver's Artspeak Gallery and the Kamloops Art Gallery, is an extraordinary collection of essays on Canadian artists of colour by Monika Kin Gagnon, one of Canada's most respected art writers and curators. The essays explore the history of cultural production in this country with an emphasis on race, cultural difference, and cultural hybridity.
Using specific artists and exhibitions as a starting-point for Gagnon's discussions, these essays, and the artists she writes about, are firmly grounded in Canadian cultural events, artistic projects, and theoretical ideas concerning race and culture which have circulated in often disparate contexts for the last decade. The book makes a distinctively Canadian contribution to ongoing dialogues on issues of race and culture that have originated from artists, writers, and theorists from the US and Britain, and provides an important and relevatory context to the work of Canada's artists of colour.
The book includes numerous colour and black and white images, and a foreword by award-winning writer Larissa Lai (When Fox Is a Thousand).
Chapters include overviews of the work of such artists as Shani Mootoo, Paul Wong, Jamelie Hassan, and Dana Claxton.
Other Conundrums is an essential snapshot of contemporary issues surrounding race and identity as revealed in visual art.

About the author

Monika Kin Gagnon's writings have been published in numerous books, including topographies: aspects of recent B.C. art, Fluid Exchanges: Artists and Critics in the AIDS Crisis, and A Leap in the Dark, as well as many artist catalogues and magazines. She has a doctorate in philosophy from Simon Fraser University, and a Masters degree from York University. She is an associate professor in Communications Studies at Concordia University in Montreal.

Monika Kin Gagnon's profile page