Paintings

February 19 – March 9, 1991
Exhibition

About the Program

Jeannie Kamins moved from Vancouver to Montreal in 1987. In November of that year, Anthony Griffin, a 19 year old black youth, was shot and killed by a Montreal policeman who had a history of racial violence. This incident sparked in Kamins an extended exploration into racism. Using the Griffin murder as a jump off point, she explored racist incidents in Canada's past such as the Komagata Maru in the early 1900s, the national policy on Jewish Immigration during World War II (none is too many), and the ongoing racist polices around Indigenous people. Finally, she turned to racist incidents internationally, including issues in South Africa, Israeli/Palestinian problems, and the gassing of the Iraqi Kurds.

Kamins' series is a rich and personal exploration into racial and cultural differences. She dealt with these subjects in a bold, graphic style. The works were posters, bright and colourful, and they dealt with the subjects in a straightforward and forceful manner. Some works are hard to look at. Together as a series they are a hard-hitting lesson in our racist history. More importantly, they make the connection from our past to our present, where racism is still front and centre and doesn't look any prettier. She provides herself a historical backdrop and present reality, and through her thoughts on multiculturalism she comes to the belief that racism and differences are used in a political way to divide populations. Never reaching a commonality and suspicious of the other, we are manipulated into war and away from the pressing social and environmental problems that are the concern of us all.

Artist

Jeannie Kamins

Identifier

1991.0219 PAI

Collection

grunt gallery Programming Archive

Location

grunt gallery (first location)
209 E. 6th Ave, Vancouver, BC, Canada, V5T 1J8
Unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ/selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations

In copyright. For uses beyond Fair Dealing, research requests, corrections, takedown requests, or other inquiries, please contact grunt gallery: archives@grunt.ca