From car-made carapace to Peterborough's Artspace, Elinor Whidden treks the Canadian landscape
Okay, I have a confession. I love car rides. Any vehicle really. Oh, I own a bike. A sweet low-rider called Hot Rod with a sparkly banana seat. But it's not for transportation. Rather, those joyride 'I need to feel the wind' moments where I hop on, pedal wildly down Aylmer and yell 'weeeeeeee!' for about half an hour, and then return home without having broken a sweat.
Mildly conflicted by the clash of my personal transportation tastes and my ideological views about 'this oppressive fucking capitalist, individualist car culture', I was more than a little excited for Voyageur, the installation exhibit opening this past Friday at Artspace, and to meet 'the badass artist who sculpted a car'.
Rolling into town a week prior, Canadian artist Elinor Whidden was joined by a giant U-Haul carting the tremendous weight of Whidden's amassed sculptural scrap metal luggage. No stranger to our city, Whidden obtained her Bachelor's degree in Canadian/Environmental Studies from Trent in 1998 before deciding to go to art school.
From the skeleton of a 1995 Ford Taurus, Whidden transformed a once mid-sized automobile into "a simulacrum of a canoe, its paddles, and dogsled and several rucksacks." To imagine the work is impossible. I would say to experience the work up close is almost as fantastical a feat.
But according to Artspace Programming Director Fynn Leitch, the people of Peterborough have not been able to pre-emptively resist patronizing the space – an observation quite apparent on opening night.
Arriving an hour late and sure I'd missed the good stuff (the artist talk...the mingling...and let's not forget the cheeses), I had taken George Street by gallop only to be greeted by a hefty crowd of 20-30 already weaving through the suspended metal MEC-ca of Whidden's crafting.
Of these, many weren't sure whether they could touch the pieces hung dauntingly throughout the white walled main gallery space. But a daring, or perhaps tipsy few couldn't resist interacting with wonder and uncertainty with what was in fact, pieces of an old car.
Portage: FORD TAURUS, seen (underestimatedly) depicted in this article, became the sculptural assemblages to trek through Niagara Falls in the summer of 2006, on the backs of a team of nine 'voyageurs.' These current-day Courers de bois (late 17th century French term for voyageur) took the original eight-mile portage path of explorer Robert Rene de la Salle and Father Louis Hennepin, who in 1678 were the first white men to see Niagara Falls. "I chose this route as a metaphor for the opening up of the Western Frontier," Whidden explains during her talk. "Once white men were able to travel up through the great lakes, linking the old world to the new, and new age of trade travel and progress began."
Learning that Elinor Whidden is a Trent alumni, I eagerly loitered by the olives waiting until the buzzing crowd subsided in order to ask some burning questions. As soon as we sat down and started talking, I was reaquainted with the reputation Trent has had in attracting some sharp minds.
Arriving at Trent in 1995 in the Biology program, Whidden found herself drawn toward Canadian Studies and "attempts to construct a national identity in a post-colonial time." She, like many raised on camping and trekking experiences in their youth (including Camp Wanapitei, and an epic 50-day adventure to James' Bay, Labrador, and Yellowknife) admits to having a strong romanticized view of the Canadian landscape.
"Oh, I thought I was going to be a scientist. I went into the program to make my parents happy." But at 19 - a few revelations and program changes later - Whidden found herself taking post-colonial theory classes and declaring, "oh my god, we're all gonna fucking die. And I'm a racist!"
Grappling with her identity, privilege, and relationship to the land has been an undercurrent ever since her Trent years, she admits, speaking of the experience as the original incubator for her work, showcased in Peterborough some 15 years later.
Roadtrip, the 20 minute accompanying video piece to Portage (playing on loop adjacent to the main gallery), is an integral aspect of to the movement present in this exhibit. Throughout the film we are seated in the passenger seat to Whidden's driving narration, on a wet, dimly lit highway, somewhere in Ontario. As overlapping integrations of footage from the portage of the Ford Taurus play lowly audibly, Whidden chats with her listener about her humourous relationship with owning a car, and the phallic fill from driving stick.
"Shifting gears for me is like owning the penis I was denied at birth", she laughs. Tenderly describing the memory of happening upon a felled transport truck on a highway, like a cowboy tearing at the sight of a fallen horse, Whidden conjures the fabric of the macho car commercial magic for us, while illuminating our contradictory connection with a romanticized notion of the "open road".
When driving, she is alone. But the process of trekking an entire car through an eight-mile trail requires the community of nine. Whidden makes it clear that choosing a Ford vehicle was no accident. The influence of Henry Ford's desire to "put a car in every driveway," is presented in the probed notion of Progress in Whidden's fondling of modernity, in a world now paved in "hierarchal interconnectedness that is dependent upon speed, mobility, and immediacy."
Her time studying at the University of Buffalo meant finding the frustration of a campus inaccessible by foot or bicycle, describing living in an American city as "a uniquely car-oriented experience"; an experience which ultimately inspired Whidden to start carrying cars.
Whether you are the 'glass is half distopic' kinda guy, or prefer to sway to the utopical beat of wit over worry, these assemblages will hang in the air for you exactly the same way that bricks don't.
Eitherway, a visit to Elinor Whidden's exhibit Voyageur may just bring out the lonely wanderer in you.
Voyageur will be exhibited at Artspace, 378 Aylmer Street North until December 16th.
