Américan Cloisonée (detail - corn and photograph), Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan (1987-1988) Matthew Tietelbaum writes: [ Américan Cloisonné ] was, at once, a celebration of a sprawling and verdant garden, and a cri- tique of structures which enclose, restrict and classify the popula- tions they represent. [Benner] consciously articulated the enclo- sure of the Conservatory in his ref- erences to the prison, the covered arcade, and the shopping mall. All are sites of classification and containment. In their prescriptive order, they establish a process by which people (and plants) can be observed and disciplined. The corn, beans and peppers of Américan Cloisonné represent contact between cultures re- stricted by the present boundaries of nation-states. (pp33-35) As The Crow Flies , winter 2007. Mireya Folch-Serra writes: As The Crow Flies (1984-1991) depicts not only the connections between geographical points on the map of the Americas along the meridians of longitude 81.14 and 79.23, but also sheds light on their disjuncture. One encounters plants native to the Americas, and enclaves associated with indig- enous cultures and the militarisa- tion of contemporary life. The world view that has informed the creation of the installation is a process and not a conclusion. (paraphrased from pp 17-30)
focussed and eloquent about his project. Andy Patton’s two pieces, ‘The garden of the unsuccessful politician’ and ‘Ron Ben- ner and the Ecology of Limitation’, speak directly about the art. Scott Toguri Mac- Farlane reminds us of the other garden par- ticipants – fungi, rot, insects, mildew and weather – in ‘Something of the Tender: the work of others in Ron Benner’s Gardens’. He sets these inevitable processes against such hard edged political discussions as, for example, Asado –through the eyes of young sheep (1976-77), which refers directly to the disappeared of Argentina’s dirty war. Poli- tics, and Benner is deeply political, is never dissociated from the processes of tending the garden. Collectively, all the essays describe the com- plexity of Benner’s work. It is not a project of the purity of origins, but is about the complexity of origins. In this, it too is a hedge against an increasingly alienating aspect of post-national politics that re- constructs us into ethnic camps. Nothing is that pure. *
2 For example, Robert Sibley’s recent book, Northern Spirits. John Watson, George Grant and Charles Taylor. Appropriations of Hegelian Thought. (Montreal: McGill-Queens Press, 2008) uses Lawren Harris’s 1926 North Shore, Lake Superior , on its cover. The National Gallery describes it thus: Through the central image of a strongly lit, solitary tree, blasted smooth and clean by the forces of nature, the art- ist sought to convey the underlying spirit and universal principles found in the northern Canadian landscape. Perhaps Harris’s theosophical construction of the Canadian landscape can be linked to Hegel, but it appears to act more like a notation of nation, a shorthand mark of Canadianness in a crowded academic publishing landscape. After reading Benner, my first thought is that Harris was prob- ably painting what is now a land claim.
3 Salt Spring Seeds, for example, has a seed sanc- tuary, dedicated to the preservation of ‘edible, medicinal and useful crops that can be grown in Canada’. There are interesting parallels here with the original concept of zoos as collections of species from the empire, and contemporary zoo work in conservation breeding programs, keep- ing endangered species going and reintroduc- ing them into their original territories. Benner’s work teaches us to examine such projects from a more critical and informed position.
1 In ‘Multiculturalism: a Canadian Institution’ (James Duncan & David Ley, editors. Place/Culture/ Representation . London: Routledge, 1993) Audrey Kobayashi outlines three stages of multicultur- alism: demographic, symbolic and structural. These are useful demarcations: the banlieus of Paris are demographically diverse (within France), but not symbolically accepted and cer- tainly not structurally integrated. Canada seems to love the symbolism of ‘ethnic’ festivals and foods, but cannot seem to integrate its highly literate taxi-drivers. The question is whether Michaëlle Jean’s symbolic role as representative of the Queen is evidence of symbolic multicul- turalism, or structural. The election of Barack Obama to the presidency, despite its symbolism, is undoubtedly structural multiculturalism.
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