Art Metropole

Luis Jacob is a Peruvian-born Toronto-based artist and curator whose work destabilizes conventions of viewing and invites a collision of meanings. He studied semiotics and philosophy at the University of Toronto. Since his participation in documenta 12, Kassel, 2007, he has achieved an international reputation with exhibitions at venues such as: Museum der Moderne Salzburg, 2019; Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart, 2019; Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, 2018; Museion Bolzano, 2017; La Biennale de Montréal, 2016; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York City, 2015; Taipei Biennial, 2012; Generali Foundation, Vienna, 2011; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City, 2010; Kunstverein in Hamburg, 2008; and Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, 2008.

Canadian artists Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge moved to New York City in 1969, and soon were at the centre of the burgeoning conceptual art movement. In 1975, they joined the Art & Language journal The Fox (with Joseph Kosuth and Ian Burn) and picketed the Museum of Modern Art to protest its lack of inclusion of women artists, while critiquing the apolitical minimalism of Donald Judd. This ferment culminated in a major museum show, It’s Still Privileged Art, at the Art Gallery of Ontario in 1976, just prior to the artists’ return to Toronto in1977.

By the late 1970s, Condé and Beveridge drew a focus on various issues that were urgent within the trade union movement. Their method of working dialogically with their subjects was invented for the landmark 1981 project Standing Up, and has been refined in numerous subsequent collaborations. In the past three decades, over fifty solo exhibitions of Condé and Beveridge’s work have been presented at major museums and art spaces on four continents, including: the Institute of Contemporary Art (London, UK); Museum Folkswang (Germany); George Meany Centre (Washington); Dazibao Gallery (Montreal); Centro Cultural Recoleta (Buenos Aires); Art Gallery of Edmonton; and the Australian Centre for Photography (Sydney).

Equally, and congruent with the artists’ commitment to accessibility, their work has been displayed in a host of non-art and public settings, such as union halls, billboards, bus shelters and bookworks. The artists continue to work and live in Toronto.

ArtistsAgainstWar.ca was once the base of operations for a group of 75 Canadians who form a group in 2003 who joined the global artistic outcry dedicated to protesting against the looming war in the Middle East. They were the ones responsible for planning and holding the One Big No peace festival in April 2003 that saw over 20,000 visitors and was organized in under 6 weeks.

As new owners of this domain name, the aim of our (currently small) organization is to carry their torch and continue to promote peace and cultural understanding. The content of the blog will on a variety of related topics including how to use art to stop wars and convince politicians, factors that cause and contribute to war and conflict and how someone can use their talents to promote peace.

The Jewish Women’s Committee to End the Occupation is a voice for peace in the Middle East along with other Jewish and Palestinian women’s groups in North America and Israel.

We in Canada are outraged that the Canadian Government and media again choose a morally unconscionable position and stand by silently while Israel perpetrates a massacre of civilians in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon. It is a repeat of Sabra and Shatilla, of the massacre at Qana in 1996, with the world leaders looking on.

After World War II at the Nuremburg tribunal, Nazis attempted to exonerate themselves by claiming that they did not know about the genocide. It is no longer tenable to claim “I didn’t know” about crimes against humanity. There is ample witnessing and documentation of genocides in Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Rwanda, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guatemala and now in the Middle East.

We know from Israeli historians themselves about the ethnic cleansing of indigenous Palestinians in 1948, and we know from Israeli NGOs and journalists of the current massacre of civilians and destruction of the societal infrastructure and physical environment of the Palestinian people.

The language of propaganda and war is twisted so that aggressor appears to be victim. Language is sadistic when a “military operation” is called “Summer Rain” as a whole people are deprived of water in the intense heat of summer. Language is terrifying when Israel calls the current attack on Gaza “Samson’s Pillars” — Samson in myth was the biggest suicide terrorist of all — purportedly killing 3000 people when he committed suicide by tearing down the temple pillars.

We fear that Israeli crimes against humanity will persist when even speaking about them entails accusations of anti-Semitism.

Will Canada collude with state terrorism or will Canada adhere to the rule of law with respect to the illegalities of occupation and the physical and psychological tormenting and murdering of civilians? We call on Canada to call for an immediate ceasefire, observed by the U.N. and not NATO, and for the immediate restoration of aid to the democratically elected Palestinian government.

In a just world, Israel would make reparations, just as Germany did to Jewish people.

Elizabeth Block
Smadar Carmon
Judy Deutsch
Sue Goldstein
Rachel Gorman
Reena Katz
Deborah Mandell
Jill Rogin
Susan Starkman
Esther Vise
Naomi Binder Wall
Judith Weisman

for the Jewish Women’s Committee to End the Occupation, Toronto.

We believe in the power of resistance.