Art
Shaw Pride Marches On: LGBTQ2SIA+ and BIPOC Artists Unveil Public Art Murals to Celebrate Calgary Pride Where it Began 30 Years Ago
|
|
CALGARY, Alberta, Aug. 28, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Shaw Communications Inc. today announced the launch of Shaw Pride Marches On — a public art experience created by LGBTQ2SIA+ and BIPOC artists who applied their talents and creativity to install temporary art murals at the four corner entrances to Central Memorial Park in recognition of Calgary Pride.
Thirty years ago, in a very different environment, 100 brave members of Calgary’s LGBTQ2SIA+ community gathered in the park to protest discrimination and fight for equality in what would later become acknowledged as the city’s first Pride rally.
With Pride celebrations around the world cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Shaw and its partners — Calgary Pride, Calgary Arts Development, and The City of Calgary — are helping to bridge this void in their home city with public art installations at the landmark Beltline location. Shaw provided each individual artist or team with $2,500 to create their murals.
Today, the completed murals were revealed to mark the first day of Calgary Pride 2020.
“In this extraordinary year, we weren’t able to join Calgarians en masse to celebrate Calgary Pride as we normally would. But we can still partner with Calgary Pride, The City of Calgary, Calgary Arts Development and the amazing artists in our community to create something that everyone can enjoy safely, on their own time and terms,” said Katherine Emberly, President, Business, Brand and Communications, Shaw Communications.
“These murals tell a story. And it’s storytelling that helps the community share experiences, struggles, and the challenges overcome. Our hope is that the stories told through these murals provide a chance to connect, emphasize, and inspire,” Emberly said.
Over the past five years, the number of Shaw employees and leaders participating in the Calgary Pride Parade has continued to increase, reflecting a work environment where people feel they can be their authentic selves.
“Authentic allyship is when we take action to not only recognize, but to also celebrate the breadth of diversity and voice that is reflected in the Pride movement. This collaboration very purposefully does just that,” said Parker Chapple, Executive Director, Calgary Pride. “We are especially grateful for the support of our friends at Shaw for their continued commitment to exemplifying allyship in this project, and every single day, all year round.”
“It’s a wonderful thing when arts organizations and corporate partners like Shaw join forces to enable the power of art, to bring our diverse community together and celebrate, even at a time when we have to keep a bit of distance between us,” said Patti Pon, President and CEO, Calgary Arts Development. “We are still able to share unity in celebration, and that’s what really matters.”
“The City of Calgary is proud to partner with Shaw, Calgary Pride and Calgary Arts Development in giving these artists such a powerful and appropriate way to celebrate our city’s Pride amid truly unprecedented circumstances,” said Gian-Carlo Carra, City Councillor for Ward 9.
The following is a description of each piece, provided by the artists:
- These Boots Are Made For Struttin’ by Cory Bugden (He/Him) and Sarah Lamoureux (She/Her): “If you’re familiar with the movie/musical smash-hit Kinky Boots then you know that shoes are one of the ultimate forms of expression. From eight-inch glittering platform heels to a pair of tennis shoes that are one hole away from falling apart, we wear our heart on our heels. The concept uses drawing of all different kinds of footwear in motion, in all colours of the rainbow. These boots are made for struttin’ — towards social change, towards a better world, towards safe places for humans in the LGBTQ2SIA+ and BIPOC communities, towards acceptance, towards true expression of oneself.”
- Signal Grounder by AJA Louden (He/Him) and Nicole Wolf (She/Her): “Our work centres around advocacy, inclusion, and aiding systemic change. This work is inspired by a quote from the self-described ‘black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,’ Audre Lorde. Lorde spoke and wrote potently about the meaning of ‘difference’ and the power of listening. In expressive type, we’ve drawn on her timeless words, ‘I learned so much from listening to people. And all I knew was, the only thing I had was honesty and openness.’ Her quote is a declaration of welcome to every visitor to Memorial Park, as it acknowledges the bravery of the LGBTQ2SIA+ and BIPOC communities and issues a challenge to every Calgarian to listen to underrepresented and marginalized voices without pretense or judgement.”
- Discípulos de Amor by Wilmer Aburto (He/Him) and Colin Menzies (He/Him): A collaboration between photographer (Aburto) and multi-disciplinarian artist (Menzies) focused on the representation of POC, Queer and Femme identities. These voices and experiences are so often erased, silenced, or pushed to the background, that the artists felt very strongly that the stories captured in their work provide a representation that has been missing in Calgary. “As public art, these images can reach an audience that can relate to the visuals,” Aburto says. “This is the reason that in my practice and career that I value art as an important tool for social change. I trust that these images have the potential to contribute to the experience of not just queer people of colour, but for everyone.”
- Lone, United by Mike Hooves (They/Them): “Using an object that carries a Calgarian essence via its roots in cowboy culture and its symbolism in Calgary’s queer history, Lone, United places the Lone Ranger mask into a unique historical context. ‘To be present (at that 1990 gathering) but keep their identities safe, Lone Ranger masks were distributed amongst attendees. They served as a symbol for the lack of safety existing (at the time) for queer people legally, institutionally and culturally. Using all the colours from the Pride flag, I wanted to create a colourful depiction of the masks, intertwined with ribbon to represent the link shared amongst those who marched together, and the link shared by queer people to those who broke ground for Pride to exist.’”
Calgary Pride 2020 features over 200 LGBTQ2SIA+ artists, a free learning series with over 100 workshops, #OurPride community partner events, daily happy hour entertainment leading up to Parade Day, and 11 hours of jam-packed entertainment on Sept. 6, all reimagined to take place virtually.
Events will be live on Calgary Pride’s website at calgarypride.ca/live and streamed on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Twitch.
About Shaw
Shaw Communications Inc. is a leading Canadian connectivity company. The Wireline division consists of Consumer and Business services. Consumer serves residential customers with broadband Internet, Shaw Go WiFi, video and digital phone. Business provides business customers with Internet, data, WiFi, digital phone and video services. The Wireless division provides wireless voice and LTE data services through an expanding and improving mobile wireless network infrastructure.
Shaw is traded on the Toronto and New York stock exchanges and is included in the S&P/TSX 60 Index (Symbol: TSX – SJR.B, SJR.PR.A, SJR.PR.B, NYSE – SJR, and TSXV – SJR.A). For more information, please visit www.shaw.ca
For media inquiries, please contact:
Shaw Communications Inc.
Chethan Lakshman, VP, External Affairs
(403) 930-8448
chethan.lakshman@sjrb.ca
What’s the deal with Leonardo’s harpsichord-viola? Why were Impressionists obsessed with the color purple? Art Bites brings you a surprising fact, lesser-known anecdote, or curious event from art history. These delightful nuggets shed light on the lives of famed artists and decode their practices, while adding new layers of intrigue to celebrated masterpieces.
Beauty is pain. Elizabeth Siddal, one of art history’s most famous muses, had intimate experience with this adage. Siddal first met artist Walter Deverell in 1849, the year she turned 20, while working for a London milliner and soon became a favored model of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood artists. She was featured in William Holman Hunt’s A Converted British Family Sheltering a Christian Missionary from the Persecution of the Druids (1849–50) and most famously in John Everett Millais’s Ophelia (1851–52). It was during her contribution to the latter painting, that she fell ill.
Beauty was a matter of pain for Millais, too. In a rare move for artists of the era, he spent five months painting scenery for Ophelia in a hut along Surrey’s Hogsmill River. “My martyrdom is more trying than any I have hitherto experienced,” Millais remarked, describing “muscular” flies and powerful winds. “The painting of a picture under such circumstances would be a greater punishment to a murderer than hanging.”
The Tate notes that Millais devoted only four months to portraying Ophelia herself. Siddal agreed to stand in for the doomed beauty. She spent long hours in a bathtub at the artist’s Gower Street studio, wearing a cheap gown Millais acquired. “Today I have purchased a really splendid lady’s ancient dress—all flowered over in silver embroidery,” he wrote. “It cost me, old and dirty as it is, four pounds.” The dress is still in the Tate.
Millais arranged oil lamps beneath Siddall’s tub to keep her bathwater warm. One of those lamps went out. Millais didn’t notice, and Siddal didn’t complain—by then she knew that beauty means pain. The water grew so frigid that Siddall fell ill with pneumonia. Siddall’s father ordered Millais to cover her extensive medical bills. The artist allegedly made off paying the least possible amount.
Siddal in Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Lady Lilith (1866–68; 1872–73). Collection of the Delaware Art Museum.
Siddal made a full recovery from her Ophelia-induced illness, but the bout proved foreshadowing. Siddall likely met Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti while they both sat for Deverell’s massive oil painting Twelfth Night, Act II, Scene IV (1850). Siddall fell for Rossetti, who made her his sole model. In 1853, Rossetti took Siddall on as an art student. He taught her to draw, and advised her to drop the last letter from her surname. By 1857, Siddal became one of the only women to exhibit alongside the Pre-Raphaelites. Over the next 15 years, she produced numerous drawings, paintings, and poems, often inspired by Lord Tennyson, her favorite poet since discovering his verses on a butter wrapping as a kid.
As time wore on, Siddal grew fearful that her philandering beau would abandon her for a younger muse. While Rossetti resisted their marriage due to Siddal’s working class background, the two wed in 1860. It wasn’t enough to stave off her consumptive melancholy. Siddal died from a laudanum overdose, a rumored suicide, in 1862—decades before 1894, when Ophelia was included the original Henry Tate gift. It’s one of the museum’s most popular paintings today, due in no small part to Siddal’s sublime beauty, the pain it brought her.
Follow Artnet News on Facebook:
Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward.
/* OOVVUU Targeting */
const path = ‘/news/canada’;
const siteName = ‘thestar.com’;
let domain = ‘thestar.com’;
if (siteName === ‘thestar.com’)
domain = ‘thestar.com’;
else if (siteName === ‘niagarafallsreview.ca’)
domain = ‘niagara_falls_review’;
else if (siteName === ‘stcatharinesstandard.ca’)
domain = ‘st_catharines_standard’;
else if (siteName === ‘thepeterboroughexaminer.com’)
domain = ‘the_peterborough_examiner’;
else if (siteName === ‘therecord.com’)
domain = ‘the_record’;
else if (siteName === ‘thespec.com’)
domain = ‘the_spec’;
else if (siteName === ‘wellandtribune.ca’)
domain = ‘welland_tribune’;
else if (siteName === ‘bramptonguardian.com’)
domain = ‘brampton_guardian’;
else if (siteName === ‘caledonenterprise.com’)
domain = ‘caledon_enterprise’;
else if (siteName === ‘cambridgetimes.ca’)
domain = ‘cambridge_times’;
else if (siteName === ‘durhamregion.com’)
domain = ‘durham_region’;
else if (siteName === ‘guelphmercury.com’)
domain = ‘guelph_mercury’;
else if (siteName === ‘insidehalton.com’)
domain = ‘inside_halton’;
else if (siteName === ‘insideottawavalley.com’)
domain = ‘inside_ottawa_valley’;
else if (siteName === ‘mississauga.com’)
domain = ‘mississauga’;
else if (siteName === ‘muskokaregion.com’)
domain = ‘muskoka_region’;
else if (siteName === ‘newhamburgindependent.ca’)
domain = ‘new_hamburg_independent’;
else if (siteName === ‘niagarathisweek.com’)
domain = ‘niagara_this_week’;
else if (siteName === ‘northbaynipissing.com’)
domain = ‘north_bay_nipissing’;
else if (siteName === ‘northumberlandnews.com’)
domain = ‘northumberland_news’;
else if (siteName === ‘orangeville.com’)
domain = ‘orangeville’;
else if (siteName === ‘ourwindsor.ca’)
domain = ‘our_windsor’;
else if (siteName === ‘parrysound.com’)
domain = ‘parrysound’;
else if (siteName === ‘simcoe.com’)
domain = ‘simcoe’;
else if (siteName === ‘theifp.ca’)
domain = ‘the_ifp’;
else if (siteName === ‘waterloochronicle.ca’)
domain = ‘waterloo_chronicle’;
else if (siteName === ‘yorkregion.com’)
domain = ‘york_region’;
let sectionTag = ”;
try
if (domain === ‘thestar.com’ && path.indexOf(‘wires/’) = 0)
sectionTag = ‘/business’;
else if (path.indexOf(‘/autos’) >= 0)
sectionTag = ‘/autos’;
else if (path.indexOf(‘/entertainment’) >= 0)
sectionTag = ‘/entertainment’;
else if (path.indexOf(‘/life’) >= 0)
sectionTag = ‘/life’;
else if (path.indexOf(‘/news’) >= 0)
sectionTag = ‘/news’;
else if (path.indexOf(‘/politics’) >= 0)
sectionTag = ‘/politics’;
else if (path.indexOf(‘/sports’) >= 0)
sectionTag = ‘/sports’;
else if (path.indexOf(‘/opinion’) >= 0)
sectionTag = ‘/opinion’;
} catch (ex)
const descriptionUrl = ‘window.location.href’;
const vid = ‘mediainfo.reference_id’;
const cmsId = ‘2665777’;
let url = `https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/ads?iu=/58580620/$domain/video/oovvuu$sectionTag&description_url=$descriptionUrl&vid=$vid&cmsid=$cmsId&tfcd=0&npa=0&sz=640×480&ad_rule=0&gdfp_req=1&output=vast&unviewed_position_start=1&env=vp&impl=s&correlator=`;
url = url.split(‘ ‘).join(”);
window.oovvuuReplacementAdServerURL = url;
TORONTO – The union representing hundreds of striking Art Gallery of Ontario workers says it’s reached a tentative deal with the museum.
The Ontario Public Service Employees Union says they reached the deal late last night, after 16 hours of bargaining.
function buildUserSwitchAccountsForm()
var form = document.getElementById(‘user-local-logout-form-switch-accounts’);
if (form) return;
// build form with javascript since having a form element here breaks the payment modal.
var switchForm = document.createElement(‘form’);
switchForm.setAttribute(‘id’,’user-local-logout-form-switch-accounts’);
switchForm.setAttribute(‘method’,’post’);
switchForm.setAttribute(‘action’,’https://www.thestar.com/tncms/auth/logout/?return=https://www.thestar.com/users/login/?referer_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thestar.com%2Fnews%2Fcanada%2Fstriking-art-gallery-of-ontario-workers-reach-tentative-deal-with-museum%2Farticle_f93dfb4a-141d-5144-bb61-41d842fc7153.html’);
switchForm.setAttribute(‘style’,’display:none;’);
var refUrl = document.createElement(‘input’); //input element, text
refUrl.setAttribute(‘type’,’hidden’);
refUrl.setAttribute(‘name’,’referer_url’);
refUrl.setAttribute(‘value’,’https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/striking-art-gallery-of-ontario-workers-reach-tentative-deal-with-museum/article_f93dfb4a-141d-5144-bb61-41d842fc7153.html’);
var submit = document.createElement(‘input’);
submit.setAttribute(‘type’,’submit’);
submit.setAttribute(‘name’,’logout’);
submit.setAttribute(‘value’,’Logout’);
switchForm.appendChild(refUrl);
switchForm.appendChild(submit);
document.getElementsByTagName(‘body’)[0].appendChild(switchForm);
function handleUserSwitchAccounts()
window.sessionStorage.removeItem(‘bd-viafoura-oidc’); // clear viafoura JWT token
// logout user before sending them to login page via return url
document.getElementById(‘user-local-logout-form-switch-accounts’).submit();
return false;
buildUserSwitchAccountsForm();
console.log(‘=====> bRemoveLastParagraph: ‘,0);
The union representing hundreds of striking Art Gallery of Ontario workers says it’s reached a tentative deal with the museum.
The Ontario Public Service Employees Union says they reached the deal late last night, after 16 hours of bargaining.
The downtown Toronto museum has been closed for a month while more than 400 workers represented by OPSEU – including assistant curators, archivists and food and hospitality staff – were on strike.
They walked off the job after rejecting an offer from the AGO, which the union said failed to address key issues such as wage increases, protections for part-time workers and contracting out positions.
The union didn’t share details about their new tentative deal, which will soon go to a vote among the members, and the AGO did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
No information was immediately available about when the AGO would reopen.
The union has previously said that part-time employees make up more than 60 per cent of the AGO’s work force, and they earn an average of $34,380 per year.
How Technology Can Drive Culture Change in Software Organisations – InfoQ.com
Ontario child vaccinations years behind following pandemic – CP24
Haiti Prime Minister Ariel Henry resigns, transitional council takes power – Al Jazeera English
Silver investment demand jumped 12% in 2019
12 Bizarre Things People Did Just To Make Social Media Content
Global Media Markets, 2015-2020, 2020-2025F, 2030F – TV and Radio Broadcasting, Film and Music, Information Services, Web Content, Search Portals And Social Media, Print Media, & Cable – GlobeNewswire
-
Real eState20 hours ago
Montreal tenant forced to pay his landlord’s taxes offers advice to other renters
-
Media19 hours ago
B.C. online harms bill on hold after deal with social media firms
-
Investment20 hours agoMOF: Govt to establish high-level facilitation platform to oversee potential, approved strategic investments
-
Politics20 hours ago
Politics Briefing: Younger demographics not swayed by federal budget benefits targeted at them, poll indicates
-
News19 hours ago
Just bought a used car? There’s a chance it’s stolen, as thieves exploit weakness in vehicle registrations
-
Science19 hours ago
Giant prehistoric salmon had tusk-like spikes used for defence, building nests: study
-
Tech19 hours ago
Calgary woman who neglected elderly father spared jail term
-
Real eState18 hours ago
Luxury Real Estate Prices Hit a Record High in the First Quarter
