Kristina Lee Podesva

In colourschool, a project by Kristina Lee Podesva, the Vancouver-based artist merges her interest in pedagogy with conceptual and relational elements. Marc Mayer would have benefitted from attending some of these classes.

Skeena Reece

Combining performance, visual art, music and poetry, artist Skeena Reece speaks of the past, present and future of First Nations people in Canada with eloquence, wit and brutal honesty. Marc Mayer would learn a lot from listening to her.

This is documentation of her piece at last year's Nuit Blanche in Toronto.

Abbas Akhavan

The body of work of now Toronto-based artist Abbas Akhavan spans drawing, painting, installation, video / performance and site-specific ephemeral works. In his pieces, he deals with the borders between the public and the domestic as they relate to notions of hospitality and hostility.

Jamelie Hassan

London, Ontario-based artist Jamelie Hassan has exhibited her work nationally and internationally since the 1970's

Paul Wong - part 2

Mr. Mayer should also learn that Paul Wong continues to make art today. Here's a link to Paul Wong Projects website.

Paul Wong

A video work by Canadian artist Paul Wong, titled 'The Refugee Class of 2000.'

According to the Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art, the piece was part of a series of TV ads produced in collaboration with the Unite Against Racism campaign mounted by the Canadian Race Relations Foundation. The videos were aired on television on Jan. 15, 2000

Rebecca Belmore - Part 2

This is another work by Rebecca Belmore, a 2002 performance in Vancouver's Downtown East Side titled: Vigil

Rebecca Belmore

One of the Professor's favourites, Rebecca Belmore is the first in this series of EXCELLENT Canadian and Canadian-based artistsm Marc Mayer should learn about.

Professor J. S. Émigré comes out of retirement to educate Marc Mayer

Professor J. S. Émigré is a rogue scholar who loves to vogue. He was born somewhere in the so-called Global South, but he has been so deeply and effectively acculturated, assimilated and adapted into Canadian culture, he can’t really remember exactly where he comes from. Colonized but not lobotomized, Émigré has devoted his illustrious career to combating the ethno-centrism that unfortunately plagues some of the nation’s most prominent cultural institutions.

“I believe it is essential to recognize the value of the knowledge of ALL the peoples who populate this land we now call Canada, the knowledge of the Nations that were here originally, and the knowledge of all the cultural groups that have arrived since contact with the Europeans,” said the Professor in an interview with McLean’s magazine in 1990.

Émigré, who now calls the Royal City of New Westminster his homeland, likes to ask the hard questions and have real conversations.

“Why should there be a hierarchy that makes Lacan’s musings on “the real” more or less worthy of consideration than Mary J. Blige’s? How can we bridge the space between Jennifer Lopez and Judith Butler? ” he has asked rooms full of attentive pupils.

Outraged by recent statements made by Marc Mayer, Director of the National Gallery of Canada, regarding the lack of cultural diversity in the nation’s most prominent institution, Professor Émigré has come out of retirement, embracing the new technologies of blogging and Facebook, to speak out.

“Marc Mayer says he only cares about “excellency,” that the National Gallery does not include more artists of non-European backgrounds because he “never sees” them. I am so sorry to hear Mr. Mayer is blind. I would like to open up his eyes, educate him.”

High culture, pop culture or urine culture, the professor believes it is the job of public cultural institutions to seek out and give visibility to the work of artists emerging out of the communities they are meant to be serving. This why the professor has set up a blog and a Facebook page where he will create an online archive of works by EXCELLENT Canadian and Canadian-based artists of non-European descent.