Sign of the Times

It all started with a post-modern feminist art exhibit…

Or how I found my hidden negative bias

I am in an upmarket shopping mall in a cosmopolitan city in Canada and I have stumbled upon a public art installation.

This is hilarious I think… how clever. What a brilliant postmodernist take! And I laugh out loud.

This is visual satire at its best. And it just keeps getting better as I go along…

But then I take a quick breath. The spry occupant of the wheelchair is particularly cutting satire and has caught me off guard. It feels like the artist has crossed a boundary here. Perhaps I am just being oversensitive — I have recently visited a friend in the Spinal Unit where he has spent several months fighting for his life and adjusting to a new one which will be spent in a wheelchair. He is definitely not spry.

I decide I am not being oversensitive, that the artist has been insensitive and for a moment I think I hate art. I hate what it is becoming. Where is the art? It’s mostly just social science anyway — the goal being to elicit, measure and judge response. In these modern pieces, the art and the artist don’t really exist without the audience — the audience does all the work, is the essential component.

I’m a little worked up now and I want to find the artist attribution so that I can respond — even though I realize that’s yet another level of playing into the game. With some games, there is simply no way to win… I decide I will still feel better if I say something, and even if I change my mind, I want to know the artist’s name so I can watch for them and understand their other work. I go back to the first piece. This one is strong and made me laugh.

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