DEANNA BOWEN at Vtape (401 Richmond West), to April 2. 416-351-1317. Rating: NNN
Deanna Bowen, a Toronto artist whose video and installation work has touched on gender and racial identity, power relations and religion, turns to genealogy in her 20-minute video Sum Of The Parts: What Can Be Named.
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Her African-American great-grandparents left the Southern U.S. to settle on an Alberta farm around 1900. It’s not well known that black communities like those inhabited by the artist’s forebears existed in western Canada at this time.
Bowen distills the story into a script that she reads to the camera, which follows her at close range as she moves around the frame. Names from documents appear and disappear against the dark background. It’s clear that she has a deep connection to information she imparts in a restrained, dignified recitation of births, deaths, marriages and migrations, interspersed with historical events that put the family story in context.
Though Bowen eschews melodrama, there are still dramatic moments, as when she pauses to let shockers sink in: the possibility that her half-Cherokee great-grandmother was the daughter of a black woman slave and her aboriginal master or the fact that Wilfrid Laurier tried to pass a bill to keep black immigrants out of Canada.
Like Candice Breitz, Bowen seems to be moving from art video toward a documentary mode. Though I can’t complain about works that are more accessible, it’s hard to know whether to approach this video as gallery fare or something that might air on TVO.
She’s filmed relatives here and in the U.S., some of them still living in the same Alabama town where their ancestors were enslaved. Though that interview footage is not part of this video, the project may become a full-length documentary. Let’s hope the current wave of celebrity-focused genealogy TV shows sparks interest in her unique take on this important material.
art@nowtoronto.com
