The City of Markham’s sudden, last-minute cancellation of a piece of public artwork one year in the making has the artist — and his subject — concerned about censorship.
In early September, Vancouver-based artist Julian Yi-Zhong Hou was scheduled to install a piece called “Bicycle” on the exterior of the Pan Am Centre sports complex in downtown Markham for a five-month period.
The printed vinyl banner, which measures 127 feet by 30 feet, features a person in drag and was to be unveiled at an event featuring local drag queens, artists and other performers. Then — one day before the installation and over the objections of Markham’s own public art curator — the city cancelled.
At the time, it released a statement that did not offer an explanation but simply said the city had “made a determination not to proceed.”
In the month since, Hou, his collaborators, and supporters, say that’s all they’ve been able to find out.
As a result, they say they’ve been left to speculate that it was a political decision that stifles free expression and was motivated by fear of a community backlash given the piece represents a queer person with a non-traditional gender identity.
“Cancelling a large-scale, highly-visible artwork that features a subject in drag should require an explanation, if only to make clear that they aren’t simply repeating a history of stifling public representation of marginalized people,” said Hou.
“It was just very confusing and seemed very disrespectful to myself, but also the curator and everybody else that was involved in the process.”
Julian Yi-Zhong Hou was commissioned by the City of Markham’s public art curator to produce the inaugural artwork for the city’s Façade art program. (Emmanuel Etti)
The cancellation comes amid a political climate in Canada and the U.S. of rising hostility toward drag performers and the LGBTQ2S+ community at large. Protestors have repeatedlytargeted drag storytime events in recent months, whileStatistics Canada data shows police-reported hate crimes related to sexual orientation in Canada rose 90 per cent between 2020 and 2022.
James Albers, another Vancouver-based artist who is the subject of the piece, called the city’s decision “an act of censorship against my queer body.”
Albers, who identifies as gender fluid, meaning their gender identity fluctuates, said it’s a missed opportunity to show support for the LGBTQ2S+ community.
“We had this opportunity to have a person in drag be on this large billboard to kind of like, you know, be loud and proud and show that these people do exist and these practices do exist,” Albers said.
“It was just like a major loss for that possibility.”
Image resulted from yearlong curatorial process
In summer 2022, Markham’s public art curator, Yan Wu, approached Hou to take part in the Façade Public Art program, which would explore “the identity of Markham,” according to emails shared with CBC Toronto.
Hou’s piece was meant to be the inaugural piece launching a two-year collaborative public art project with the Art Gallery of York University.
He said he decided to use the Daoist yin-yang concept to structure the piece and to reflect his “fractured identity” as a Chinese Canadian.
“I began thinking about different models and different kinds of people basically that could sort of represent some of these ideas of a fragmented identity,” he said. “It led … into thinking more in terms of like the differences of gender performance and gender fluidity, and also thinking about the binaries of gender.”
Hou recruited his friend Albers, who performs in drag using the moniker Lady Boi Bangkok, to model for the work.
The final piece of art shows mirrored images of Albers as both themself and their drag persona. On the right side of the image, Albers is pictured on all fours in only underwear and a bandana. On the left side, Albers is shown lying on their side, wearing a baseball hat and jersey, diamond tights and high-heeled shoes.
We had this opportunity to have a person in drag be on this large billboard to kind of like, you know, be loud and proud… It was just like a major loss for that possibility.– James Albers, Vancouver-based artist
Scattered throughout are objects, symbols and spiritual references to Chinese and Western culture, which function “as a bridge between cultures common to Markham, (Albers’) mixed ancestry, and my own identity as a Chinese-born Canadian,” according to a description of the work.
Hou worked closely with the city’s curator, Wu, throughout the yearlong creative process. In April 2023, he shared a draft of the image with her that closely resembles the final piece.
At no point were any concerns raised, Hou said, and he was under the impression the piece had been approved at the highest levels of the city.
“I could imagine it being challenging, but I’m a bit surprised that it was cancelled,” he said.
Wu said she’s “deeply disappointed” in the cancellation.
“The decision came from City of Markham upper management. I have not received any information about the decision-making process,” she said via email.
Public art must be ‘inclusive and sensitive to all,’ city says
Following repeated inquiries, a senior city spokesperson shared a statement with CBC Toronto on Monday that says the city has a duty to ensure publicly-commissioned art that’s displayed in municipal space is “inclusive and sensitive to all.”
“With this as our guide, the decision was made that the artwork was not suitable for its intended location,” the statement said.
The spokesperson acknowledged the city’s decision came late in the process and apologized to the artist and event participants. The artwork and cancelled launch event have cost the city $40,000, the city said.
Per the statement, city staff have started an internal review of the Façade art program “to ensure publicly procured art aligns with their planned display location.”
While the city said it’s committed to working with the artist to find an “alternative opportunity” to unveil and display the artwork, Hou said the city has yet to reach out to him.
Grant Peckford, a former board member of York Pride who was recruited to emcee the launch event, said he’s disappointed with how the city handled the issue.
“I just think it really is important for people making these decisions to look at the bigger picture and understand the impact that these decisions have, not only on their community but their staff and the other stakeholders,” Peckford said.
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
