Festival goers view the exhibitions at Atelier Ville-Marie
Review and photos by Maria Gergin
When X Ottawa Photography Festival (September 23 to October 3) unveiled this year’s theme—IN/OUT: Contemporary Photography and the Politics of Difference—more than 30 galleries and 150 artists seized the opportunity to interpret the concept, in forms ranging from photographic art, to artist talks, lectures on artistic processes and technology, portfolio reviews, and community-based events.
Festival organizers hoped the theme would both fuel provocative dialogue and ensure extensive artist participation—a tactic that seemed to succeed for the latter of these two aims. Not only did the festival garner the largest number of artists and viewers since its inception in 2007, but observers also praised the event’s culturally utopian and democratizing influence: the inclusionary theme created a common space for established and emerging photographers at both English and French galleries, resulting in an impressively wide sampling of photographic practices, including photojournalism, social landscape, still life, and photomontage.
But did the democratizing aspect of the theme come at the expense of a coherent, unifying thread for the photographic exhibitions themselves?
“We aimed to come up with something that many people would find relevant, so they’d be able to find as many entry points as possible,” said Khalia Scott, festival president and programming committee chair.
When a theme carries the duty to ‘mean something to everyone’ it may often end up not meaning anything in particular to anyone at all.
Possibly aware of the theme’s problematic nefariousness, festival organizers invited Melissa Rombout, an Ottawa-based curator, writer and educator, to act as thematic “respondent.” Rombout wrote and presented an essay analyzing particular interpretations of the theme and relating them to the festival’s larger message. Rombout contends that the theme was left deliberately open-ended so that it could be explored from numerous cultural and aesthetic perspectives.
“The slash in particular interests me,” she says. “It’s at once a boundary line, a meeting point, a semantics, and a physical space where dualities and ideas are contested.”
But post-modern analysis is notoriously difficult to translate in practice. Arguably, the academically abstract and nebulous concepts embodied in the festival theme were largely indiscernible in most exhibitions. Was there really a “politics of difference” contained in the series of glossy, stylized stills of flowers prominently on display in one festival gallery, or in the oversized, deserted landscapes that hung in another?
One explanation for the festival exhibitions’ lack of thematic integrity was certainly the fact that participating galleries were left entirely to their own curatorial devices, conducting their own artist selection and applying their own interpretation of the theme.
As Rombout explains, “We as a festival did not ‘select’ anything. The process was delightfully Darwinian, because it was governed by individual processes in every gallery.”
Not surprisingly, some of the exhibitions echoed foreign inspirations, ideas and processes unrelated to the festival; many simply had the stale feel of something that has graced a wall for a while.
In a few cases, however, works exhibited a conscious engagement with the festival theme. One of the most successful takes on IN/OUT was Ela Kinowska’s Little Franek–A Roma Boy in Slovakia, shown at Atelier Ville-Marie. The exhibition offered a chronological series of playground interactions between groups of Slovakian and Roma children.
Kinowska recounts that the two groups were inhibited by negative cultural preconceptions they held of each other until she took out her camera and began photographing: “The Roma children at once became intrigued by the camera strapped around my neck and asked me to take pictures of them as they began showing off little tricks … Nobody was afraid of one another anymore.”
Kinowska’s images capture the dismantling of cultural stereotypes; the initial fear on her subjects’ faces transforms into the simple delight found in playing games with unlikely friends.
Perhaps the most striking (yet inadvertent) interpretation of the festival theme was seen in I know you are but what am I, a showing by Tony Fouhse at Karsh-Masson Gallery in conjunction with his 2010 Karsh Award for photography. In recent years, Fouhse has made headlines with compellingly edgy portraits of Ottawa’s crack addicts. By making these overlooked people the subjects of his art, Fouhse invites “in” those who are literally and figuratively “out.”
Fellow Karsh award winner Justin Wonnacott says of Fouhse’s project: “Tony’s agenda is not to improve the appearance of his subjects or to disapprove and judge; rather it is a process of knowing each other by looking.” This “looking” is sometimes uncomfortable, demanding a dismantling of the viewer’s own cultural and political assumptions
Still, Fouhse began depicting Ottawa’s marginalized long before Festival X decided on its theme; any thematic alignment here is mostly a fortunate coincidence.
Festival X has quickly become one of Ottawa’s most important cultural events with an inclusive approach that showcases works both excellent and ordinary. As the festival grows out of its relative nascence, all involved might be better served by a more coherent curatorial presence and a bolder artistic vision.
From Ela Kinowska’s Little Franek–A Roma Boy in Slovakia exhibition shown at Atelier Ville-Marie
Work by Tony Fouhse was included in the heart + soul exhibition at Patrick Gordon Framing gallery
From Vincent Meurin's exhibition Résistence shown at the Alliance Francaise
