Balloons and plastic masks are definitive markers of celebration. In his installation For My Culture, Brendan Fernandes subverted these synthetic signs of festivity to pose the question: whose party is this anyway?
The pristine gallery space became an artificial landscape in NeoPrimitivism II. Decoy deer stood proxy for their natural counterparts, hidden behind flimsy plastic masks. Modeled from African tribal masks, the white party favours were consumable artifacts. They offered a level of superficial disguise – making the false deer more conspicuous while simultaneously providing camouflage within the white-walled sanctuary. Made of commercial plastic instead of sanctified wood, these artifacts were designed for a different ritual – viewing art. The masks speak of cultural translation: objects taken out of context, drained of color and visually simplified.
Translations of culture occur every time people cross borders and assimilate. By pointing to what is lost during naturalization, Fernandes addressed larger questions of post-colonial identity and the role of art in the transcription of power and purpose.
Visitors to the gallery were playfully implicated in this complex exchange by a box of white balloons printed with linear drawings of African masks. Offered as souvenirs of the exhibition, the balloons were free for the taking, but at what cost? The act of inflating a balloon with helium distorted the image of the mask, distancing the reproduction even further from the original. At the same time, it raised the visibility of the pseudo-artifact, quite literally. Tethered to viewers, the balloons became mobile signifiers of a dislocated idea of ‘Africa’ – casual diaspora that can extended the exhibition beyond the gallery doors.
The title of this piece, Authentic POP, was a reminder of the ephemeral nature of these inflated emissaries, but also made reference to the commodification of culture as exemplified by Pop Art. In contrast to ‘authentic’ experience, Fernandes presented identity as a marketable export – an inoculated version of the self, globally acceptable, but dislocated from its source.
At a post-colonial moment when many people were experiencing a displaced life, the artist questioned the basic premise of ‘home.’ In a short video loop, a repeated lion’s call was translated in subtitles as “Go Home”. But after a complex journey, the viewer could no longer be entirely sure of which home the lion speaks. Is it ‘ours’ or ‘his?’ And once the barrier between the two is crossed, does ‘home’ truly belong to anyone? At the end of the party, the viewer may have started to recognize an uncomfortable truth: in this space, we are all masquerading.
Brendan Fernandes (b. 1979, Nairobi, Kenya) is an internationally recognized Canadian artist working at the intersection of dance and visual arts. Currently based out of Chicago, Fernandes’ projects address issues of race, queer culture, migration, protest and other forms of collective movement. Always looking to create new spaces and new forms of agency, Fernandes’ projects take on hybrid forms: part Ballet, part queer dance hall, part political protest...always rooted in collaboration and fostering solidarity.
Fernandes is a graduate of the Whitney Independent Study Program (2007) and a recipient of a Robert Rauschenberg Fellowship (2014). In 2010, he was shortlisted for the Sobey Art Award, and is the recipient of a prestigious 2017 Canada Council New Chapters grant. Fernandes is also the recipient of the Artadia Award (2019), a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (2020) and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation grant (2019). His projects have shown at the 2019 Whitney Biennial (New York); the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York); the Museum of Modern Art (New York); The Getty Museum (Los Angeles); the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa); MAC (Montreal); among a great many others. He is currently artist-in-residency and Assistant Professor at Northwestern University.
To learn more about Fernandes and his work, visit his website.