The A Word

Sugar Bombs, featuring Diyani Achjadi and Brendan Tang, curated by Kristen Lamberton, has been getting gobs of attention as it’s made its way across the country, and is currently at the Mendel: but unlike some shows that have been pimped to an extremis (i.e. Through and Through and Through), Sugar Bombs deserves it. I was fortunate enough to talk to the artists and curator, and this is one of those shows that brings you back many times. I should mention that the image on the left, on the A Word blog, is of me making “art critic hand” at the very considerate curator, Kristen.

The side gallery is filled with objects constructed by Tang and the walls have large didactic “illustrations” by Achjadi: but their works enhance and augment each other, sometimes re inforcing the specific ideas that are most immediate, other times allowing for subtleties in one of the pair’s works to come to the surface. I have not seen a two person show that was so successful since Lissa Robinson / Joseph Anderson doing Misfits. Tang’s works straddle a variety of ideas and forms, with a “starting point” of stereotypically “Asian looking” vases and vessels that are then “modified” with MANGA like additions: some are colourful, some are vaguely threatening (several look like I.E.D.s that might have been used during the Cultural Revolution), some are very sexual, and all – as I told Brendan – make me want to steal them.

This is a sign of very good art, if it makes you wish to commit larceny for sheer love of it. But it also speaks to the meticulous and humorous nature of Tang’s constructions. But as I said, this pairing is smart and engaging, so allow me the obligatory plagiarism of the curator’s words: “The artworks in Sugar Bombs invite us into an imaginative terrain where innocence and beauty meet violence. Achjadi’s inkjet prints and Tang’s conceptual ceramic sculptures juxtapose childlike playfulness with worldly tensions. They feature candy-coloured rockets, imploding robots, and pink hued military parades. These elements direct our attention to the presence of militarism in popular culture, questioning its role in the construction of collective and personal identity. Borrowing and combining aspects of diverse cultures, from France to Indonesia, the works in Sugar Bombs critique racial and gender stereotypes and militaristic patriotism, signaling a possible reconfiguration of identity.”

At the opening, Achjadi spoke of growing up in Indonesia, under the Surhato regime, and the experiences there that contributed to her culture shock when coming to Canada (such as that we don’t have drill, or other militaristic activities as components of our education system). Her images are part of a body of work titled “the Further Adventures of Girl” and are reminiscent of propaganda we’d associate with movements such as the aforementioned Cultural Revolution, but also Socialist Realist art or even the heavy handed moralistic tropes of Norman Rockwell. The flatness and sparseness of detail is effective, as it doesn’t compromise the story being told, and even helps it, as the universal nature of the figures plays on old notions of conformity and the dangers in not submitting (and submitting) to a “groupthink”. “Clad in a simple red dress and mary-janes, Girl is accompanied by identically-dressed clones, towering over a dystopic miniaturized world punctuated by bubble-gum explosions. Invoking political rallies and celebratory marching bands [this series also is] borrowing from the visual language of propaganda and children’s books…” in the words of the Achjadi.

The gray gallery walls help enhance the vivid quality of Achjadi’s images, and Tang’s objects are beautiful, if perplexing: what these modified objects would be used for – as they seem to imply notions of industrialization and technofetishim – is unclear: a nice play on the essentially useless nature of art.

Once upon a time we could pretend that we were “two” founding nations: now that’s been expanded, with reluctance at times – whether by the PMO or unreformed separatist Jacques Parizeau – to “three”: but we’re more than that, here, despite pathetic attempts to turn the clock back. Sugar Bombs is interesting in that these works are very Canadian, in exploring where we’ve come from, and where we might be going, with all the baggage you bring with you, and all the baggage you get pressed on you, upon arrival. Its sweet, and its disturbing: an appropriate name, then, in Sugar Bombs.