Joi T Arcand in Canadian Art Essay - Dirty Words: Interesting
Canadian Art
ESSAYS / MAY 21, 2018
Dirty Words: Interesting
“Interesting” might be a vague, meaningless way to describe art. It might also be at the heart of how art is given value, and is made political.
by Tammer El-Sheikh (excerpts from Canadian Art website)
American cultural theorist Sianne Ngai offers an account of some “dirty words” for art and culture in our time in her 2012 book Our Aesthetic Categories, where she raises the terms “zany,” “cute” and “interesting” to the status of aesthetic concepts like the beautiful and the sublime.
For Ngai, the interesting does indeed have roots in Conceptual art from the 1960s and ’70s, primarily its cool, detached attitude, recursive or ongoing temporality and neutral modes of presentation. However, “interesting” also flirts with boredom and risks becoming “merely interesting,” a phrase Ngai adopts from Michael Fried’s landmark critique of Minimalism, “Art and Objecthood.”
Of course, whether or not we acknowledge the nomination of merely interesting things as art sometimes depends simply on who is doing the pointing. However it comes about, by identifying an object or observation as interesting, we create a space in conversation to test our reasons for the judgment.
In the exhibition’s second gesture, Joi T. Arcand’s neon channel sign ᐁᑳᐏᔭ ᓀᐯᐃᐧᓯ (e¯ka¯wiya ne¯pe¯wisi) (2017) presents language as a medium of communication between Indigenous persons, but also as a potential tool for coalition-building outside of the Indigenous community. The wash of pink neon light from Arcand’s sign is familiar at a glance. One recognizes the look of the sign from shopping malls and commercial strips, or, for contemporary art initiates, it recalls the work of Conceptualists and Minimalists like Dan Flavin and Bruce Nauman. These points of reference draw the viewer in even if the sign’s Plains Cree syllabics remain inaccessible. The translation of the sign, “Don’t be shy,” can be read as an invitation for Indigenous and non-Indigenous viewers alike to assist in bringing about the future Arcand envisions, by engaging in conversations about self-determination, mutual accountability and stewardship of land.
Tammer El-Sheikh is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia University in Montreal. His writing on contemporary art has appeared in Parachute, ETC and C Magazine, among others. This post adapted from the article “Interesting” in Canadian Art‘s Spring 2018 issue, which is themed on “Dirty Words.”