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By Richard William Hill
The world upside down, as visualized by artists, is one in which the symbolic order is turned on its head. This publication of a group exhibition surveys the strategy of symbolic inversion used by contemporary artists, while also providing historical context on Western and Indigenous North American traditions of inversion. As an artistic strategy, inversion illuminates and challenges the visual conventions that police social hierarchies. In each inversion documented here the artist turns a hierarchical dichotomy upside down. In most cases the dichotomy does not survive the experience, ultimately breaking down under the strain of its own absurdity and liberating us – if only for the moment – from its tyranny. Among the many artists using a wide variety of strategies are Rosalie Favell, Shelley Niro, Lori Blondeau and General Idea.
Published by the Musée d’art de Joliette in collaboration with the Walter Phillips Gallery, the Banff Centre Press, the Agnes Etherington Art Centre and the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria
World Upside Down
2009
176 pp.; ill.
7.5 x 11”
Bilingual edition French-English
978-1-894773-28-7