Education Module for Undergraduate Students

Created by Sofia Cardone

GRADE/SUBJECT: Undergraduate Level, Art History, Women and Genders Studies, Canadian History

 

LESSON TITLE: Identity, Diversity and Representation – Who is represented and included/ excluded in Canada’s history and heritage?

PRE-LESSON LEARNING

Some suggested topics to review prior to visiting the exhibition:

  • Review immigration policies/developments throughout Canada’s history, such as the 1919 Immigration Act, the Chinese Immigration Act of 1923, immigration developments after WWII, immigration policies today.

  • How does immigration inform our understanding of Canadian identity/heritage?

LESSON DESCRIPTION

Students will experience the exhibition Elusive Desires either in-person or virtually. They will look at the art of Lan Florence Yee (they/he) and Ness Lee (she/they) to engage in discussion around representations of Canadian identity and heritage. Students will discuss the social implications of excluding certain bodies and identities from the canon of Canadian art and history.

 

Guiding Questions

  • How has our understanding of Canadian identity evolved over time?

  • Who is included/excluded when we talk about Canada’s identity and history?

  • Do you see yourself/your identity represented through Canada’s History? What/who is missing from our high school history curriculum?

 

Vocabulary

  • Diaspora refers to the dispersion of people from their homeland

  • Gender identity refers to a person’s internal and individual experience of gender. It is their sense of being a woman, man, both, neither, or anywhere along the gender spectrum. A person’s gender identity may be the same as or different from their sex assigned at birth

  • Group of Seven was a group of Canadian landscape painters active from 1920 to 1933. They are regarded as having initiated the first major Canadian 5 art movement, with their works inspired by Canadian landscaping becoming popular in Canada and internationally. The original members were Franklin Carmichael, Lawren Harris, A.Y. Jackson, Frank Johnston, Arthur Lismer, J.E.H. MacDonald, and F.H. Varley. Artists A.J. Casson, Edwin Holgate, and LeMoine FitzGerald also joined the group after its initial formation. Tom Thomson and Emily Carr, two of Canada’s most renowned modern painters, were not formally part of the Group of Seven but were closely associated with the group and were significant to its formation and legacy

  • Heteropatriarchy is a society or culture dominated by a ruling class of heterosexual, cisgender men whose characteristic bias is unfavorable to queer people and women in general

  • Queer is an umbrella term for anyone who identifies as not heterosexual and/or not cisgender (cisgender refers to someone whose assigned sex at birth aligns with their gender identity)

  • Terra nullius (Latin for “nobody’s land”) is a principle used by states to justify that the land does not belong to anyone prior to the state’s occupation of it, and that the state may acquire land by occupying it. Much of Canada (including British Columbia, the Maritime provinces, and parts of Ontario and Quebec) is unceded, or located on territories that were never formally signed away by their Indigenous inhabitants to European settlers

LESSON OUTLINE

*This lesson is designed for an in-person gallery visit, however, if necessary, it may be adapted to a remote learning format. Teachers will be supplied with a slide deck presentation containing images of relevant artworks in the exhibition and carry out the lesson plan outside of the gallery setting.

 

PART 1: EXHIBITION TOUR

(approx. 45 minutes)

 Materials needed:

  • Clipboards

  • Paper

  • Pencils

(One for each student)

Introduction

Begin the visit by giving the class some time (20 minutes) to explore the exhibition independently. Encourage students to focus on looking at the art before reading the labels. The viewing can be guided by the following prompts:

  • What is your first impression?

  • What grabs your attention?

  • How does the art make you feel?

 

While the class looks around, give each student two cue cards. Ask them to write down two questions they have about the exhibition—they can be about a specific piece or about the exhibition. Here, students can consider the larger themes in the exhibition, as well as the title of the exhibition, Elusive Desires. Students will return to their questions at the end of the visit.

Artwork 1: Artwork from the permanent collection?

Ness Lee, a soft place to land, 2021

 

Guiding Questions

  • How does the work make you feel?

  • What puzzles you about the work?

  • How does the work evoke feelings, ideas, and meaning?

  • Knowing what you just learned about the work, has your point of view

  • Changed from your initial reaction of the work? How and why?

 

Activity: Make a Body

(Adapted from I Want to Show You a Body: Thinking Through Gender, Bodies and Building Different Worlds by Linda Stupart for Tate London) Give each student a piece of Model Magic clay and ask them to make a body with the clay (alternately, students can close their eyes and simply imagine a body). As they are sculpting a body, ask them to consider the following questions:

  • What kind of body are you making?

  • Do they have a gender? If so, what is it? How do you know?

  • Are they big or small? Fat or thin? Why?

  • Are they naked or dressed?

  • What is their race? Why?

  • How many arms or legs do they have?

  • Are they soft or hard?

  • Do they have hair? If so, where? What does it look like?

  • Are they young or old? Why?

  • Can they see? Hear?

  • Have they always looked like this, or have they had experiences that?

  • Changed their looks?

  • Where are they from?

  • Where do they live?

  • How do they feel? How can you tell?

  • Are they like you?

  • Do you love them?

 

Ask students to reflect on this activity in pairs.

Guide the reflection with the following questions:

  • Why did they make the kind of body that they made?

  • Were they surprised by what they made?

  • How do the ideas in Ness Lee’s work relate to the making of these clay bodies?

  • How do bodies convey emotion?

  • How do bodies take up space? Why is it important for queer Asians bodies to take up space?

  • Encourage students to start challenging their own ideas of what a body can and should look like, as well as the power of taking up space and of representation.

Artwork 2: Finding Myself at the Museum

Discussion about Lan Florence Yee’s work Finding Myself at the Museum (2021).

Lan Florence Yee, Finding Myself at the Varley Art Gallery, 2021

Discussion/Guiding Questions

  • What kind of work do you expect to see in a municipal art gallery/in a gallery named after a member of the Group of Seven?

    • How does Lan Florence Yee challenge these expectations through this work?

    • How do Marissa Largo’s curatorial choices challenge these expectations throughout the exhibition?

    • Who belongs in the Canadian landscape?

  • Think about the location in which the exhibition takes place and what you know about this area and the experiences you have had here. Who would you like to see represented at the Varley?

  • Think of myths about Canada (i.e., of white supremacy, of “terra nullius/nobody’s land”)—how are they addressed in this work?

  • As with Ness Lee’s work, think about the ways that queer Asian bodies take up space. Why is it important?

Artwork 3: Selected Hauntings

Lan Florence Yee, Selected Hauntings, 2018

Allow students to view Selected Hauntings independently again, this time, drawing from what they have learned about Lan Florence Yee, their practice, and the exhibition in general to view and interpret the work. The Critical Analysis Process can be used to facilitate this:

 

Description

  • What is your first impression of the work?

  • What captures your attention? Why?

  • What puzzles you?

  • What does the work remind you of? Why?

 

Analysis and Interpretation

  • How does the work evoke feelings and ideas?

  • What do you think the theme of the work is? Why?

  • What message or meaning do you think the work communicates?

  • Why?

  • Has your impression of the work changed since you first saw it?

  • How and why?

 

Context

  • Who is the intended audience for this work?

  • How do we hear the artist’s voice through the work?

  • What do you think the artist was feeling or experiencing when they created this work?

Reflection

To finish the visit, have the students continue exploring the exhibition and the rest of the gallery as they consider these conversations about gender, race, bodies, and representation. Students can also use what they learned about the artists and their practices to look at and analyse the rest of the works.

 

Guiding Questions

  • Gathering from our conversations, how do you define Elusive Desires? What makes our desires elusive? How do Ness Lee and Lan Florence Yee make Elusive Desires visible?

  • In the centre of the space, the two artists come into conversation through their works. Look and think about the works separately and together in relation to the themes in the exhibition.

    • Look at Lan Florence Yee’s Stuffed Kitsch. What do you know about kawaii culture? About textile arts? What do you think the artist’s intention is in creating soft, kawaii versions of vases from the Ming dynasty in China? What does it say about the concept of authenticity? About heteropatriarchy?

  • Reflect on the questions you wrote down at the start of the visit. What have you learned during their visit? Do you have any new questions or curiosities? Have your questions been answered? Can the questions be re-asked? Share and discuss your thoughts with your peers.