ARTH 373 Issues in Contemporary Canadian Art: Memory

• Mondays, 11:45 am - 2:30 pm
• Instructor: Dr. Felicity Hamer

Memory entails an imaginative renegotiation of the past within the ever-changing present. It can be lost, retrieved, contested, repressed, or inherited – a source of sorrow, shame, comfort, or joy. This course examines artwork, produced in a contemporary Canadian context, that responds to, or connects the beholder to, a variety of personal, collective, or culturally specific forms of memory – to issues of personal and cultural identity, pre-memory/postmemory, bereavement, nostalgia, memory of place, and to contested figures/histories. Students will have the opportunity to explore various expressions of memory through art – from public art/commemorative monuments to mementoes of a more personal nature, such as vernacular photographs – considering the many ways memory can be expressed, created, supported, and manipulated through these objects, practices, and performances. Some artworks/objects become unexpected mementoes whereas others are created with the sole intention of fostering remembrance practices or evoking feelings of nostalgia. How can relationships to such memory objects change over time? And how do we reconcile conflictual relationships to the past and to the way this is conveyed in artwork/commemorative monuments/memory projects?