Yesterday coming home on the 24 bus from Sherbrooke metro, I removed my earbuds to hear the conversation of 3 teenage kids standing beside me. I couldn't quite figure out what language they were speaking. After a few minutes, I realized it was Creole. Haitian kids, then. A rarity on the 24 bus indeed. For the first time, I realized how strange it is that with such a large Haitian population in Montreal I live near none of them. When the earthquake hit, a radio announcer said everyone in Montreal knew someone who was affected. There's a secretary at my work who is from Haiti, so I am no exception. But that's my only point of contact with a huge subculture in my city.
Cultural mixité was on my mind today, therefore, when I visited an art gallery exhibit at Parisian Laundry, in the Saint-Henri hinterlands. Called Migrating Landscapes, it appears to be an illustration of the waves of immigration to Canada. The exhibit itself is not something that I will carry about as a provocative artistic treasure in my mind: blocks of multi-level wood stuck together, topped with elaborate strings of origami or little ceramic pots flowing into one another. I see how it visually describes the convoluted voyages people make to Canada, possibly even within Canada. There were some interactive features and videos of people reading short scripts about roots and identity, but these did not suffice to personalize or humanize the exhibit. It felt like a geological depiction of demographic migratory phenomenon. To me, migration is so intensely personal and wrenching it is almost a sin to emphasize the scientific aspects, especially in artistic productions. What is worse, the exhibit exuded the tired self-congratulatory "Canadian tapestry" tone. Unsurprisingly, it was part of the Canadian exhibit at the Venice Biennale. Yes, it's lovely that many contemporary Canadians originally sprouted all over the globe. To me, what is far more interesting and vital are the relationships and movements that occur once everyone gets here. I would much rather blocks depicting the ethno-cultural diaspora in Montreal, where and how communities mix, and when new communities form based on something other than country of origin. Of course, such an exhibit is not something we'd gladly send to the Venice Biennale. It is too painful to look at the pseudo-apartheid makeup of Regina, or the surprised looks on Plateau busgoers' faces when they hear Creole outside of a taxi rank.
