Camille Turner’s Miss Canadiana - Challenging the Dress Code - Canadian Art

Spread for“Fashionality” by Gabrielle Moser, Canadian Art, Summer 2012, pp 56–7 / photo Christopher Dew

From Camille Turner’s beauty-queen alter ego, Miss Canadiana, to Kent Monkman’s flamboyant First Nations drag character, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, larger-than-life personae animate “Fashionality: Dress and Identity in Contemporary Canadian Art” at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection. The exhibition, on view to September 3, plays on a term that describes the way that personality, identity and nationality are expressed through dress, as seen in works by 23 Canadian artists.

Turner’s fictional beauty-contest winner, Miss Canadiana, appears on plates and mugs commemorating her “homecoming” tour through Hamilton, Ontario. Her evening gown, sash and tiara look more than a little incongruous against the city’s imposing industrial landscape. As a satire on Canadian multiculturalism, the work picks up social resonance with every image.

A number of recent exhibitions about artists’ use of fashion have focused on empty clothing, especially on dress as a surrogate for the body.
I wanted to expand that to look at artists who work with clothing in a number of ways, including design, sculpture and performance. Identity rose to the surface as a key theme in my research, and it became clear that it should be the focus of the show.
— Curator Julia Pine
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Michael Belmore Smoulder acquired by the MacKenzie Art Gallery Collection

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Camille Turner interview Toronto Nuit Blanche 2013