CUAG Audio Description Tour for Drawing on Our History

Audio Description Tour for Drawing on Our History *with chapters*

CUAG has developed an audio description tour for "Drawing on Our History," designed for gallery visitors who are blind or who have low vision. It is intended for in-gallery use, but can also be used remotely. "Drawing on Our History" is a celebration of CUAG’s 30th anniversary, bringing the works of eight contemporary artists (invited by past guest curators) into an open conversation with a wide-ranging group of historical and contemporary drawings selected from the University’s collection and made by Canadian and international artists. The tour provides an overall description of the exhibition, and descriptions of ten works from the CUAG collection, including the newest acquisition, “Medusa” by Ed Pien. It also features descriptions and interviews with three of the invited contemporary artists: Gayle Uyagaqi Kabloona, Mélanie Meyers and Marigold Santos. In gallery, there are tactile reproductions of several art works, and a tactile path for independent navigation. This tour was produced by CUAG, and designed with insights from members of Ottawa and Carleton’s blind and low vision community.

Chapter 38: Credits

This audio description tour was written by Fiona Wright and recorded and edited by Nicole Bedford. Thank you to Rich Hillborn and Ludmilla Dubuisson for being the voices of the descriptions, and to artists Melanie Myers, Gayle Uyagaqi Kabloona and Marigold Santos for their input.  Thank you to the members of Ottawa’s blind and low vision community who consulted on this tour in the early stages, as well as Carla Ayukawa. Thank you to Walter Zanetti for making the floor tracks and to Patrick Lacasse, who installed them.  Thank you to the curatorial team: Heather Igloliorte, Alice Ming Wai Jim, Anna Khimasia, Alexandra Kahsenni:io Nahwegahbow, Kosisochukwu Nnebe, Danielle Printup, Heather Anderson and Sandra Dyck. Artworks were generously loaned by the artists, private collectors, TD Bank Corporate Art Collection, Patel Brown, Cooper Cole, Norberg Hall and The Next Contemporary. The exhibition is supported by The Joe Friday and Grant Jameson Contemporary Art Fund, The Reesa Greenberg Digital Initiatives Fund and The Mame Jackson Experiential Learning Fund.

Chapter 37: "Aujourdh’ui l’echo de l’orage resonne"

This chapter describes a pastel on paper drawing titled Aujourd’hui l’echo de l’orage resonne by Rita Letendre, created in 1982, and measuring 47 by 67 cm. It is one and a half minutes long.  Can you feel a storm after it passes? Maybe in the smell of the air, or the temperature change. In Aujourd’hui l’echo de l’orage resonne, or “today the echo of the storm resounds,” Rita Letendre focuses on sounds and reverberations. She has used pastel, a chalky pigmented material, to create an abstract composition of horizontal bands of vivid colour, blurring or almost vibrating as they transition upwards from rich blue to yellow to pale green to orange to red to black to blue and then back to red. Is her inspiration the sky after a storm, or is it the artist reflecting on the aftereffects of a more personal, emotional storm? As she has written, “My paintings are completely emotional, full of hair-trigger intensity. Through them, I challenge space and time. I paint freedom, escape from the here and now, from the mundane…The world isn’t only what we see or what we experience.”  What are the textures or colours you attribute to emotions, both intense and tranquil?  You’re done the tour now! Turn right and follow the path to the bottom of the stairs, where you began. Thank you for joining us.

Chapter 36: Curatorial label for Marigold Santos

This chapter is the text written by curator Alice Ming Wai Jim. It is two minutes long.  Alice writes: Marigolds thrive in the arid climates of Marigold Santos’s desert landscape paintings, one of which appears in the background of her studio depicted in the ink drawing shroud (arid interior I). The scene also affords us a glimpse of the artist’s take on the asuang (aswang), a traditionally terrifying shapeshifting creature of Filipino folklore. Multiple configurations of this powerful, amorphous being populate Santos’s drawings and ceramics. Her reimagined asuang figures appear in numerous poses and positions — their shrouds at times made of thick dark masses, mystical woven textiles or braided voluminous hair, or exchanged for largebrimmed veiled hats of different styles. The asuang mythology arose from the Babaylan — pillars of society as shamans and healers in pre-colonial Philippines — whose meaning and purpose were inverted by the Spanish colonizers. Reconfigured again, Santos’s asuang figure is hybrid in state and status, negotiating strata and longing, becoming land; these are not uncommon preoccupations today, during eras of migration and diaspora. The blemishes or ink spots, or perhaps striae or scars, all over their bodies are more than skin deep. They tell stories, the narratives that make a life legible to oneself and to others. A form of permanent body adornment, tattooing was a prevalent cultural practice passed down in all ethnic groups of the Philippine Islands before they were colonized in the sixteenth century. Super enlarged tattoo motifs of the artist’s design monumentalize this living art form as a cutaneous archive of ancestral knowledge that Filipinos are reviving today as a vibrant, decolonial practice.   Please move to the next stop. Turn right and follow the path for 4 metres. Then turn right and continue for 7 and a half metres. The drawing is on your left. This is the last stop of the tour.

Chapter 35: Interview with Marigold Santos

This chapter features an interview with artist Marigold Santos. It is two and a half minutes long. Hi Marigold, what is the inspiration or story behind your work in Drawing on Our History? The works in this exhibition come from various moments in my practice from the last 5 years or so. They range in material and application, from works on paper to ceramics, paintings, and includes my tattoo practice, which is another form of mark making and drawing for me. This particular collection of works reflect on, and speak of, the body, embodiment of experience, self-hood, empowerment, and diaspora. The imagery consists of figures reconfigured from folklore, objects pulled from sensorial memories like touch, taste, and smell, and textures and patterns that come from my heritage and the landscape of my childhood.  Why do you choose to use Tagalog in some of the titles of your work? My family immigrated to Canada in the late 80’s and I was just a child. I spoke Tagalog and did not understand English. We learned how to speak English very quickly, but my siblings and I stopped speaking our mother tongue in and outside of the home from that point on. Even though I can understand it quite fluently, I have difficulty in speaking it. Titling my work in Tagalog is a way for me to return to and honor my mother tongue in fragments. It is also a way for my work to reach folks who do understand Tagalog, and to create entry points into the work for them.  Why are you drawn towards being an artist? Making art for me, has always been about communicating something – whether it is communicating something I am curious about, asking questions of, researching, or experimenting with, communicating is the undercurrent for me. I communicate through my work, and I think through my work. I also transform and evolve as a person through my work. My art practice is a way for me to continue to critically ask questions and make joy.  Go to the next chapter to hear the curatorial label for Santos’s work.