fiddleheads

...not that these are, in themselves, green tightly curled fronds, but this sculpture was somewhere out beyond my right elbow in the Art Gallery of Ontario's restaurant, whilst I was consuming a most delectable springtime omelette involving goats cheese and, yes, fiddleheads. It seemed appropriate to be looking out onto these metallic spirals. My thanks to Jennifer to suggesting this as a place to have lunch: great food, great company.

And it was a wonderful gallery, too. I was really struck by an exhibition on the work of Wangechi Mutu, who does extraordinary collages - some large, some postcard size - of African women's bodies, their pieces cut out of magazines and collaged together, ornamented and colored and modified by intricate ink designs (and the occasional patches of earth, or stuck-on pearls). She takes, and refuses, two stereotypes: the hypersexualized black body of porn magazines, and the image of the Ethnic African Woman, complete with big earrings, cloth headdresses, etc. - cuts out some of the images, refuses to use the most titillating pieces, and refashions African women, cyborg-like, so that they are powerful, difficult, dangerous, beautiful: it's feminist art for the 2000s. And I loved the video, as well: "Cutting" - her, as an Africam woman, silhouetted against a hilltop at dawn, her machete clanging down, repeatedly, on a pile of wood - a timeless scene. Only, of course, it wasn't - that was the twist: she filmed herself undertaking this labor not somewhere in her native Kenya, but near Presidio, Texas, close to the Mexican border - so this is about the transnational repetition of hard daily labor by women, not something taking place at an exotic distance.