Critical Writing Index

Not Laura Secord

by Jamelie Hassan

So, to Speak, 1999

Montreal: Éditions Artextes, 1999

Commissioned essay for an anthology of texts by Canadian visual artists that discuss the relationship between their artistic practice and the social fabric. Hassan speaks about the conception of Boutros Al Armenian / Mediterranean Modern (1997) following a series of fortuitous journeys, encounters and events that connect memories of Hassan’s maternal grandfather, the house he built in the 1920s, a video documentation of its demolition decades later, an Armenian refugee/”itinerant painter”, and Hassan’s own itinerary as an artist. The video installation weaves together these journeys and chance encounters, histories and stories, and create a space for M.M. Bakhtin’s “loopholes of existence”.

ITEM 1999.107 – available for viewing in the Research Centre

Videos, Artworks and Artists Cited

Boutros Al Armenian / Mediterranean ModernJamelie Hassan