The KKK was a Canadian problem, not just an American one—AGYU’s Invisible Empires reveals a patch of history on January 16th.
For its upcoming exhibition, the Art Gallery of York University installed a massive Ku Klux Klan banner in the vitrine looking out on to the Accolade East colonnade. The artist behind the show describes the reactions of passersby upon installation.
“People tripped over themselves,”says Deanna Bowens, whose controversial archival art exhibition about the KKK, Invisible Empires, goes public on January 16. “I was jokingly asking the gallery, ‘Who’s liable if people trip on themselves?’”
Without context, Bowens admits seeing a Klan banner in a public place would shock most people, but she uses what curator Philip Monk calls a “Klan tactic” to draw people into her exhibition and tell a story usually blurred out of Canadian history, shrouded in denial: the racist organization was alive and well in Canada.
In the early 1900s, the family home of Bowens’ ancestors was burnt to the ground. Never given an explanation, Bowens grew up in the mid-1960s wondering why it happened, suspecting the Klan targeted her ancestors. During the Civil War era, the family fled the Klan, covering 4,700 miles over 10 years on wagon trains and box cars from Alabama, to Texas, to Oklahoma, and finally, to Canada, “the promised land.”
Bowens had believed that when they arrived, Canada wasn’t all they’d hoped it would be, but her Great Aunt’s journal, one of the few family documents she could get her hands on, told otherwise.
“It was four pages of, ‘Everything is great,’” she says. Her skepticism of her ancestors’ unsettling positivity inspired her to tell the untold story of Klan presence in Canada through selected archives; everything from sketches and drawings by Klan members, scores of petition signatures, authentic Klan robes, newspaper clippings about the organization, and more.
Bowens’ doesn’t consider herself an activist, but a thought-provoking archival artist. Her goal with the exhibition is to show that the KKK is not only an American problem, but a Canadian problem too.
“I’ve had more resistance creating this exhibition on the Canadian side than on the American side,” says Bowens. “How can you deny it in the States? In Canada, you actually can.”
More than anything, though, Bowens’ wants to start a conversation about the Klan. The exhibition itself is raw, untampered archival material that is objective rather than subjective. Viewers are meant to form their own reactions to the individual pieces. For example, a photograph of two Klan members—white men fighting—invites the viewer to decide what to make of the scene.
While she strives for no particular reactions to her work, she fears the exhibition will be seen as glorifying or endorsing the KKK just by presenting materials of the organization.
She also says a common misconception about this exhibition is that the KKK’s association with black history means it’s not relevant to other people. Her biggest fear, however,is an apathetic audience.“What I don’t want is for people to go, ‘That was interesting, I’m going to go watch hockey now,’” she says.
Bowens can’t predict audience reaction, yet her art depends on reception.
“It’s a Catch-22: I would be disappointed if the work was defaced, although I would understand it; I would be disappointed if it wasn’t,”she says. She says the reason she wants to start a conversation about the Klan is because no one in Canada talks about it. But silence makes organizations like the KKK more powerful.
“The most basic way of paraphrasing it is Voldemort in Harry Potter—you have an evil entity and most people say, ‘You can’t talk about it,’” says Bowens. “That is the truth about the Klan. It builds on an economy of fear.
“So you have to call it out.”
By Leslie Armstrong, Editor in Chief
Exhibition Highlights
Performance bus
Jump on the performance bus after the exhibition opening and sing songs of freedom, led by vocalists Shelley Hamilton, Reena Katz, and Archer Pechawis. After seeing heavy, traumatic archival material, the idea is to sing on the drive into Harlem. The bus, free of charge, is a one-time deal, leaving the AGYU at 9 p.m. and taking you to a bar downtown. Bowens expects the performance bus to be the most emotional part of the show.
Authentic Klan Robes
To be worn by the Klansmen in the interview reenactment and later by two mannequinsin the gallery, the authentic Klan robes were ordered custom made by a master seamstress. Making the robes was a laborious effort requiring intensive research, and for Bowens, was stressful. “I was afraid that since I was ordering them, it would get traced back to me,” she says. Bowens says the seamstress had the same dilemma, and debated whether or not to make them.
CBC interview reenactment
On opening night, a controversial live CBC interview will be reenacted. Originally appearing on This Hour has Seven Days on October 24, 1965, it was a discussion between two Klan members and a black civil rights activist. On choosing to reenact the scene, curator Monk says, “When something is reenacted in the stage in front of you, it has this other reality. It hits you in the face.It’s much more aggressive. You actually feel, with the use of derogatory language.”
