Several artists and curators have announced that they are ending their association with Art Canada Institute (ACI) following allegations made late last month that the ACI attempted to silence the voices of a group of Arab and Muslim artists.
A group of twelve Canadian artists have accused the online art platform, which is a part of the Massey College at the University of Toronto, of not following its own mission statement. The platform requested the participants of a group photography exhibition to conduct a last-minute “sensitivity review” just a few days before the exhibition was scheduled to go live.
Cancelled exhibition
According to Hyperallegic, before it was cancelled on November 28, the online exhibition Lands Within brought together a dozen Canadian artists of North African and Southwest Asian backgrounds to explore and recontextualize the historically misconstrued region through landscape photography. After months of planning, which included a Letter of Agreement signed in August and an exhibition layout review in early November, ACI’s managing director Michelle Yeung emailed the group’s curator Amin Alsaden on November 23 to inform him that the exhibition would undergo a so-called “sensitivity review.” Yeung said the process was put in place to affirm that the show would not unintentionally alienate or offend readers, according to email communications reviewed by Hyperallergic.
It is unclear whether the sensitivity review is standard practice for ACI, and the institution has not yet responded to Hyperallergic’s repeated inquiries and requests for comment. Documents shared with Hyperallergic describe the review process as an inspection by two readers, who would preview the works of the exhibition opening and submit feedback. It is unclear if these readers would be from within the ACI or outside of the institution. In response, Alsaden pointed out to Yeung that this review was never flagged or agreed upon beforehand and that the exhibition’s content had been thoroughly assessed throughout the development process.
“What is disturbing here is that ACI’s so-called ‘sensitivity review’ apparently targeted this exhibition because of our cultural background,” Alsaden told Hyperallergic. “I am perplexed as to how our birth identities, or landscape photography, suddenly became offensive to them.”
