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Kenneth Tam's Silent Spikes offers a timely look at the cowboy at Contemporary Calgary
Kenneth Tam's Silent Spikes offers a timely look at the cowboy at Contemporary Calgary

Calgary Herald

time2 days ago

  • Entertainment
  • Calgary Herald

Kenneth Tam's Silent Spikes offers a timely look at the cowboy at Contemporary Calgary

It was no coincidence that Contemporary Calgary opted to open the exhibit to coincide with the 10-day run of the Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth. Whether or not the Calgary Stampede inspires revellers to entertain deep thoughts about cowboys and masculinity is unclear, but the imagery should certainly hit home. Tam himself didn't arrive in Calgary to officially open the exhibit until after the Stampede and did not have much knowledge about it. The multidisciplinary artist has chronicled the plight of Chinese migrant labourers in other projects. Tender is the Hand that Holds the Stone of Memory was a 2023 exhibit of sculptures and video installation based on the plight of thousands of Chinese labourers who built the Southern Pacific Railroad through Texas's Seminole Canyon, while Silent Spikes was initially commissioned by Queens Museum in 2021. Article content Article content Tam said he does not know much about the similar history of Chinese migrant workers in Alberta, but it is something that has been explored locally through museum and art exhibits as well. Both Canada and the U.S. drafted discriminatory Chinese Exclusion Acts in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to restrict Chinese immigration. In both countries, the stories of the Chinese labourers who built the railroad have been largely undocumented. Article content Silent Spikes not only addresses this absence in the historic record but also the lack of pop-culture representation of Asian-Americans in the Western narrative and genre. Article content 'A question for myself was 'Who gets to portray this character of the cowboy, specifically through the Western film,' Tam says. 'It's fairly specific as to who gets to embody this character. While it has evolved, it's still a pretty white idea of who this character is. ' Article content Still, Tam says the exhibit is meant to be layered and the various ideas — the cowboy narrative and archetype, the history of migrant workers — do 'not necessarily resolve themselves neatly.' Article content 'My goal through this project and really through all my work is for people to leave with more questions than answers,' he says. 'There is no natural way in which these things are meant to answer each other. There are supposed to be tensions or moments where things don't neatly fit into one another.' Article content

How do we share space socially? Contemporary Calgary exhibit called Presence invites visitors to think about it
How do we share space socially? Contemporary Calgary exhibit called Presence invites visitors to think about it

Calgary Herald

time10-07-2025

  • Entertainment
  • Calgary Herald

How do we share space socially? Contemporary Calgary exhibit called Presence invites visitors to think about it

Article content The final pieces that visitors to Contemporary Calgary's new exhibit, Presence, are two tables filled with the photography of Jayce Salloum. Article content The artist is one of seven participating in the exhibit, but his artwork is the first and last pieces visitors will see. One table offers a collection of dozens of colourful photographs of flowers, presumably from around the world. The next one is full of old tanks and other armaments left behind in war zones such as Afghanistan. Most are abandoned, some have been left in pieces. Some look like they are about to be enveloped back into the desert. Article content Article content At first blush, the two series seem to have little in common. Article content Article content 'These are tanks from various zones of conflict that he has been to,' she adds about the second collection. 'It depends on which way you are looking at it. Are they destructive or are they protective? It's the same with the flowers. They last for only so long, so there is a sense of mortality but also beauty.' Article content Salloum did not attend last week's opening of Presence because he is currently in Gaza. But he has provided hundreds of photographs with a wide array of themes that are grouped together on walls throughout the exhibit. They are from his series location/dis-location(s): gleaning spaces/not the way things ought to be. It also includes sculptures and video. Born in British Columbia, Salloum is the grandson of Syrian/Lebanese immigrants. Article content Article content His contribution to Presence comes with a 28-page booklet that names and, in some cases, offers explanations for the sprawling body of work. Article content 'The way I like to read his work is part documentarian, part anthropologist,' says Anand, a senior curator at Contemporary Calgary who first began thinking of the concepts Presence two years ago. 'This work is called location/dis-location and is a project that started during COVID and is an ongoing series.' Article content The different walls have loose themes. One is based on Indigenous history and includes images of residential schools. Another wall covers human habitation, offering images of construction and deconstruction that explore human impact on the environment. Article content The images run the gamut. They are photos of buildings that have crumbled to rubble. They are images of cluttered marketplaces, nature, the burned earth of a freshly cleared forest in Mexico, an emptied fountain in Taiwan, an encampment in Hawaii where the homeless had recently been evicted, a butterfly caught in a spider's web and angry pink bird at Vancouver's Bloedel Conservatory.

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