The McGill Daily (MD): Your work is focused on giving voices to Indigenous people and cultures that have otherwise been silenced. The Birds seems so far removed from what you normally work on, so why did you choose it?

Yvette Nolan (YN): And yet it’s not. It’s about two guys leaving a place and going somewhere new in search of a pure life, and they immediately try to change it to their own image. Wow! That’s just like the colonization story. It was so easy to reinterpret, and Aristophanes had so many cultural references from the time that it was easy to flip them and put in references from our time.

Some things never change; that play is over 2,500 years old and it’s still the same old story. It was really easy to take it to colonization because the Greeks had their relationships with the gods, and we have relationships with divine characters and divinity in this world. As an Indigenous person who is fairly traditional, I decided that we wouldn’t be talking about the gods, and we’ll just bring the Eagle in instead. In my retelling, two men arrive from a place pointed east, and you feel as though they have landed in the west. They arrive there and they want to find a new way of life, except that they are not completely honest about that, and eventually one of them tries to colonize the area. He tries to monetize and commercialize the joint. That’s what we do when we find new territory: we look to see how we can make money off of it.

The birds who had gathered in this place then feel invaded by the two guys. They reject the value system of the colonizers, but because they haven’t figured out what their own value system is yet, they are also a little bit tempted by what these men have to offer. All of this sounds very earnest, but it is actually funny. Because this play was a comedy, and because I stuck with the comedy of Aristophanes, the birds eventually reclaim their territory. It is a decolonizing story, which is something that we talk about in the world now.

MD: How has your writing changed, or not changed, throughout your career?

YN: I’m still writing about women and their place in the world; that sadly hasn’t changed. It’s kind of shocking to me – I spoke with a colleague about being a second-wave feminist and the things that we fought for then that we thought we achieved. At least back then we could clearly say, “this is not fair and we need equal rights,” and we all knew that we didn’t have that.
By letting go of contemporary society in the play, I destroyed the world and started over again. I couldn’t see another way forward. That sounds awfully bleak, but it’s not; it’s about community, values, and how we move forward. There is still an underlying aspect of the patriarchy and power that none of us are acknowledging, which is really wild. We still haven’t gotten to whatever that thing is that we need to unravel or undo; we still haven’t solved it. It’s a mystery to me. It’s good that it’s a long life because you get to think “wow, it’s still the same fight, just in a different form, dressed in a different way.”

MD: Do you find that the performing and/or writing of your work is a way for you to answer questions you have about things we haven’t figured out or reached yet?

YN: Totally. One of the reasons I do theatre is to put order around chaos, as the world is chaotic, and we are trying to make sense of it. In theatre, we are also constantly trying out different stuff, and we are allowed to say things with characters that we might not be able to say as human beings, for whatever reason, whether we are trying to be generous or understanding of everyone’s journey, or we want to avoid conflict. But in the theatre you need conflict. We put people that have very different agendas together and then we see what happens. In watching their relationship, maybe we can crack something open and figure out what is going on. It feels safe because we have agreed to sit in this room together and we don’t have to be the people on stage, but we can have access to what they’re feeling, and we can decide which one of the characters we see as most similar to ourselves. Then, we can see how they interact with everyone else in the story. Maybe that can shift how someone sees the world. I know so many plays that have shifted how I saw the world. They shifted things in ways that I didn’t even understand in the moment, but which continue to inform me as a person now.

MD: How do you situate yourself as an Indigenous activist and artist working within a white-dominated institution?

YN: Here in the academy, we talk about Indigenizing the institutions and it’s not easy! There’s “inclusion Indigenization” and there’s “reconciliation Indigenization,” which translates to people saying that they are sorry and asking Indigenous people to partake in the spoils, but we still have to do this under structures. Then, there’s also “decolonizing Indigenization,” but no one has really thought about what that is going to mean. What would happen if we really changed the structure and the system? For me, it was interesting to do The Birds with a decolonizing agenda inside of the academy and with students at one of the big universities in the country. This place has produced a lot of people who served the colonizing agenda. It’s a little bit like being the sand in the oyster, as it’s about questioning what really people mean when they say “you guys” when talking about inclusion in university. We’re having this little discussion in our play about what exactly that means.

MD: The Change the Name Campaign is significant and ongoing on campus. What are your thoughts on it?

YN: The argument is that the campaign represents “inclusion Indigenization.” They tell us that “when we said R*dmen, we weren’t referring to Indigenous people; we just meant the team.” All I have to say is that I don’t care what you meant, because it still hurts my feelings and that should be enough. They say that our feelings should not be hurt because that’s not what they meant. But you’re not hearing me – my feelings are hurt, so now how do we move forward? They say, “well, don’t have hurt feelings.” This is as far as we’re getting; it’s just like the John A. Macdonald statue discussion, which, if we can’t have a discussion about John A. Macdonald statues without death threats and hate mail, then how do we actually move forward? Coming to McGill, I was very aware that it is very white and privileged, and it has this idea of itself, quite rightly, as a place of power and aspiration. This makes it a place for people to challenge themselves to become better, and I suppose that’s why it brings in people like me to be the sand in the oyster. But all places are white; that’s how things have been structured.

I’m also pursuing a Master’s degree in Saskatoon in the Johnson Sheehan School of Public Policy, which is also extremely white. Part of that is historical – as Indigenous people went into postsecondary education, they chose law, education, and medicine, which are places that are going to matter to our people. They didn’t necessarily go into public policy. In fact, there were many places they didn’t necessarily go into because we were being streamed into the places where we could make changes for our people.

But, at some point, we have to be in every aspect of society. So, my school, because it is a young school, only ten years old, it has a strategic priority to bring in more Indigenous people that they’ve been working on. When I meet with my advisor about my thesis, I say that I need an Indigenous faculty member on my committee, and he balks and says that we don’t have any, but then we talk about making that happen. This is talked about out loud, and that’s not to say that it is not white, as it is still very white, but it is in a very different place of recognizing that and understanding the kind of changes required. In one of my courses, there were five Indigenous students out of 18, and to not be the only one in the room makes such a difference! I don’t have to represent all Indigenous people! I’m Algonquin, but she’s Cree, and he’s Cree, and she’s Dené, and she’s Metis, and we all have different identities. That is how we begin to Indigenize our tiny class inside our tiny school – through our growing presence.

The Birds is showing November 28 – 30 in Moyse Hall.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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Play-by-Play of the Game
During the second game of the second set, Carlos Ramos, the chair umpire for the game, issued a code violation to Williams because he had seen her coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, making a two handed gesture from the seats. Coaching is not allowed in Grand Slam events. Williams approached the chair to tell Ramos that she would never accept coaching on court, stating “I don’t cheat to win, I’d rather lose.”

By the middle of the second set, Williams was ahead 3-1, but Osaka broke her serve, narrowing the gap between the two players. In a moment of frustration, Williams threw her racquet on the ground, breaking it, and incurring a second code violation. This was a clear racquet abuse violation, and as with any second code violation, Osaka was given a point. Now the game was 3-2 with Osaka leading 15-0 in the game. Again, Williams argued with the umpire and said that he should apologize for the coaching violation and make an announcement to the crowd that she had not been receiving coaching. Here, she famously called Ramos a “thief ” and a “liar.” For this, Ramos issued a third code violation for verbal abuse and the game was given to Osaka.

It was only after Williams returned to the baseline that she was made aware of the fact that Osaka had been given a game due to the third code violation. In a moment of peak athleticism and sportsmanship, Osaka won the match by holding her serve. The two passed each other and hugged, acknowledging each others’ hard work. As the trophy ceremony began, fans booed, and while Osaka cried, Williams put her arm around her.

In an interview while on the podium, Osaka stated, “I know that everyone was cheering for her. I’m sorry it had to end like this. I just want to say thank you for watching the match.”

Uphill Climb
Serena Williams and her sister Venus are well-known for breaking boundaries when it comes to the conservative nature of tennis. From the start of her career 20 years ago, the cornrows in their hair were considered “controversial.” Even recently, at this year’s French Open, the president of the French Tennis Association was upset by Serena Williams’ form-fitting catsuit and banned it, arguing that “[Williams has] to respect the game and the place.” Williams insisted on wearing the catsuit because it helped her prevent postpartum blood clots. This decision is yet another example of the pervading sexism in the tennis world. Furthermore, Williams undergoes twice as many drug tests as other players on the circuit.

Exhausted after years of fighting against racism and sexism, she commented on the future of her career: “I hope to continue and play here again, but we’ll see. It’s been tough for me here.”

Pushing Boundaries
There has been a lot of debate around the result of this game, creating two very polarized views about the outcome. People either believe that Serena was “acting like a brat” or that Ramos’ decisions were rooted in sexism. However, the results of this match are tied to much deeper and more complex issues.
Ramos is a respected and knowledgeable umpire, but he is also known for being tough. In an interview after the match, Ramos stated, “I’m fine given the circumstances […] It’s a delicate situation, but ‘a la carte’ arbitration does not exist.” However, last year at the French Open, he called a questionable penalty for a time delay against Rafael Nadal. Nadal responded by telling him that he would make sure that Ramos never refereed one of his games again. Despite that threat being much more severe than anything Serena said, Nadal did not receive a penalty.

Misogynoir (sexism specifically directed towards Black women) has been constructed historically through representations of Black women as loud, dominant, and verbally abusive.

The Problem
Most media coverage of Ramos focus on the sexism behind his calls, but not many have emphasized the ways in which that sexism intersected with Williams being black. Misogynoir (sexism specifically directed towards Black women) has been constructed historically through representations of Black women as loud, dominant, and verbally abusive. The “angry Black woman” trope grew into what is now the clear discomfort with and discouragement of women of colour showing their emotions when they are anything other than happy.

That misogynoir sentiment is best exemplified by Mark Knight’s cartoon in the Herald Sun. In it, Serena’s face is distorted, her expression of anger exaggerated. She’s shown as brutal and aggressive, in contrast to a calm white woman in the background — a misrepresentation of Osaka, a woman of Japanese-Haitian heritage. A pacifier at Williams’ feet and the umpire’s infantilising remark “can you just let her win?” all convey the idea that she is throwing a tantrum. His piece is a good reminder of the fact that there is still a distinct lack of empathy and understanding offered towards women of colour when they express anger at the many injustices they experience.

As the pioneer that she is, Williams stated in a post-match conference, “I’m here to fight for women’s rights and women’s equality. The fact that I have to go through this is an example […] Maybe it didn’t work out for me, but it’s going to work out for the next person.” Williams’ strength is not something to be feared, but something to be revered.

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The United States discontinued funding to a United Nations agency that aids Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria on August 31 2018. The U.S. has been a major contributor to the The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for decades; in 2017, the United States donated $350 million to the agency, and was planning to make the same contribution this year. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, offers a multitude of health, educational, and social services to Palestinians. The UNRWA helps attain schooling for over 500,000 children in the area, and grant medical aide to 9 million. The Trump administration also recently cut $200 million in aid to other agencies helping Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. To explain this cut of funding, the U.S. government described the UNRWA as “irredeemably flawed,” and said their business strategy is “unsustainable.” In response to the United State’s decision, the UNRWA stated that “the international […] community, our donors and host countries have consistently praised UNRWA for its achievements and standards.” The U.S. used to supply 30% of its total budget, meaning that the elimination of funding from the U.S. could have disastrous results for millions of Palestinian refugees. In response to the actions of the US., Arab and European countries have promised to continue to defend the UNRWA, and Germany has pledged to increase its aid for the program. In May of this year, President Trump moved the U.S. embassy in Israel to the much disputed city of Jerusalem, a decision critics believe is in line with the funding cut, and an overall shift towards a more pro-Israel stance.

Trans Migrant Sex Worker Vanessa Campos Murdered in France

content warning: death, anti-sex work sentiment, transphobia

Vanesa Campos, a trans Peruvian migrant sex worker, was murdered by seven to eight men while trying to protect a client from being robbed at the Bois de Boulogne (West of Paris, France), the night of August 16. A new protest in honour of Vanesa Campos is scheduled for September 22 2018. 5 men are currently being detained for “organised group murder” and “group thefts with hurt.” Associations, like Acceptess Transgenres (AcceptessT) and STRASS (a French sex worker union), have been protesting the government’s silence, especially that of Marlène Schiappa’s, France’s Secretary of Equality between women and men. They particularly criticize France’s laws on sex work, which penalize clients and push sex workers into precarity. Activists also decry the general treatment of trans people, sex workers, and migrants in French society. On the matter, a representative of STRASS wrote: “our [sex workers’] deaths are normalised. […] A trans woman who dies remains a ‘tranny’.”

Journalists arrested in Myanmar

Two Reuters journalists, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, are being sentenced to prison for 7 years for the possession of official Myanmar documents. They were investigating the massacre of 10 Rohingya men in the Burmese village of Inn Din. The verdict is being considered a roadblock for the country’s free press and transition to democracy. Multiple governments and International Human Rights groups are calling for the reporters’ immediate release.

The reporters pleaded not guilty to violating Myanmar’s colonial-era Official Secrets Act, which is an offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison. They claim that they were framed by the police: the reporters told the court that two police officials handed them the papers at a restaurant in Yangon just prior to their arrest by other officers. Testimony presented by prosecution witnesses was contradictory. Another police witness testified the restaurant meeting was a set-up to block, or punish, the journalists for their reporting on the mass killings of Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine by Burmese military officials.

UN investigators have called for senior Burmese military officials to be prosecuted for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The State Counsellor of Myanmar Aung San Suu Kyi has remained silent on the issue, and has been criticized for failing to stand up for the free press after having championed the rights of journalists during her own house arrest.

India overturns section 377

The Indian Supreme Court decriminalized the “carnal intercourse” clause under Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code on September 6 2018, in what experts are calling a “landmark decision”. While Section 377 still exists, it can no longer be used to punish consensual gay sex. This law originated from the British colonization of India in the mid-1800s, and continued to be used for prosecution, despite Britain decriminalizing homosexuality in 1967. In a public statement, Chief Justice Dipak Misra described the law as being “irrational, indefensible and manifestly arbitrary.”

In 2008, a High Court in New Delhi overturned the law and decriminalized homosexuality. However, in 2013 this order from the New Delhi High Court was brought to the Supreme Court and ruled unconstitutional, reinstating Section 377. The Supreme Court decided to revisit the legality of Section 377 through the lens of privacy; in 2017 the Supreme Court ruled that privacy was an essential human right and that “sexual orientation is an essential attribute of privacy.” Following this decision, the recent revision to Section 377 focused on protecting the privacy of consenting adults. Currently, gay marriage and the adoption of children by same-sex couples is still criminalized, but many LGBTQ+ activists have been invigorated by the recent developments and are hopeful for future change. Dhrubo Jyoti, a queer LGBTQ+ activist, told CNN in an interview that the decriminalization of Section 377 “not just affirms one’s faith in the Constitution, but it also means that the gloom and the despair in this atmosphere of abuse for many of us, hopefully, for a new generation of queer people, it won’t be there.”

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“I thought that Picasso was not as important as the art from the 35 different countries he collected art from, and the contemporary artists who have reacted to, and been influenced by his work.”

Nathalie Bondil, the general director of the MMFA, explained that, “the front of this exhibit was envisioned in a different way from other museums [who showed this exhibit], because I thought that Picasso was not as important as the art from the 35 different countries he collected art from, and the contemporary artists who have reacted to, and been influenced by his work.”

Upon entering the exhibit, echoes from Mohau Modisakeng’s video installation Passages reverberate around the darkly-lit room. The sound of water sloshing immediately immersed me into a solemn, meditative space. Here, every wall is covered in art, and large blocks of text on the inspiration behind the pieces span every surface.

While Picasso’s work will always be a staple in museums for the audiences it pulls in, the most powerful work in this exhibit actually comes from contemporary Black artists as well as from the African pieces found in Picasso’s private collection.

This first impression was contrasted by the ambiance of the next room. In a bright hallway, Picasso’s early work is placed next to African and Oceanic pieces from his private collection. Extending over the entire exhibit are two timelines: one that provides key dates from the history of European colonization, and another which focuses on Picasso’s life. Through it, as Bondil told me in an interview, “you can understand that […] from his birth in 1881 to his death in 1973, Picasso’s life acts as two bookends for the beginning and end of European colonial rule in Africa and Oceania.” Picasso was born a year before the French colonization of Oceania and four years before the Berlin Conference of 1885, in which European powers divided sub-Saharan Africa into areas of political, economic and cultural domination. In 1960, 17 countries (in addition to the French colonies) declared their independence from European powers. Thirteen years later, Picasso passed away.

While Picasso’s work will always be a staple in museums for the audiences it pulls in, the most powerful work in this exhibit actually comes from contemporary Black artists as well as from the African pieces found in Picasso’s private collection. Angolan artist Edson Chagas’ photo series Tipo Passe (Passport Photo), is made up of headshots with traditional Central African masks on people wearing contemporary clothing. Chagas uses symbolically charged masks in a context where they have been removed from their conventional use. By reappropriating the African mask, Chagas critiques the ignorance of Western artists (like Picasso) who had little interest in the meaning of the work they “collected,” and shows how contemporary African people are confronted with multiple, sometimes contradictory, identities.

One of the largest pieces in the exhibit, Zanele Muholi’s Phila I, Parktown from the series “Somnyama Ngonyama,” towers over the viewer, and through heightened contrast, makes the artist’s skin look similar to inflated latex gloves. As pointed out in the museum label, this piece “address[es] themes of domestic servitude, while simultaneously alluding to sexual politics, violence and the suffocating prisms of gendered identity.” This is likely the piece you have seen advertised around the metro, as it was selected to represent the exhibit, but to witness it in full size is truly awe-inspiring.

The last room brings the exhibit’s discussion of decolonizing art to a full circle. The large space has looming dark walls and eerie music and speeches playing from Atlantis Fractured. The artwork here bursts with color as Kehinde Wiley’s Simeon the God Receiver hangs next to Moridja Kitenge Banza’s photograph Authentic, No. 1 from the Authentic photo series. Banza juxtaposes colorful patterns from Africa with colorful patterns that colonizers brought from Holland to show how material goods have become globally intertwined.

Picasso was much more than simply a byproduct of colonialism. He was a predator. Hopefully in the future museums will tackle the challenge of critically approaching white male artists with an intersectional lens.

The heart of the exhibit lays in the works of contemporary Black artists and their reappropriation of techniques and images that were stolen from colonizers. By seeing Picasso’s works placed directly next to the African pieces that “inspired” him, it becomes clear how much the contemporary art world is still rooted in settler-colonial language and beliefs. This exhibit is a must-see for those who want to watch the careful deconstruction of Picasso’s work and the celebration of traditional and contemporary Black art. However, by only looking at Picasso through a lens of race and colonialism, there is a lot to his story that is left out. Known for drawing nude adolescent girls in provocative positions throughout his career, Picasso was much more than simply a byproduct of colonialism. He was a predator. Hopefully in the future museums will tackle the challenge of critically approaching white male artists with an intersectional lens.

Significantly, the MMFA worked with the Montreal-based organization The Woman Power to create a video installation and curate a side exhibit that explores the identity of the women behind the famous painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. As an essential example of the avant-garde movement, the artwork has long been lauded as one of Picasso’s best works; however, it is only in recent years that people have begun to address the problematic politics behind Picasso’s art like his sexism and fetishization of women. To help start this conversation, the MMFA asked The Woman Power to redesign Les Demoiselles d’Avignon into a piece of art that would reflect the identities of the women in the piece.

Chevalier understood that Bondil’s offer to rethink Les Demoiselles d’Avignon was a chance to reinterpret the painting to make it reflect the importance of starting new discussions around the depictions of women of color in media. This was achieved by renaming the piece Les Vraies Demoiselles d’Avignon.

The Woman Power co-founder Joanna Chevalier said the organization found its roots once she became “tired of the art scene in Montreal, [as] it was always thin white women doing dope things, and [she] wanted to see [herself] in it, be a part of it. So, [she] decided to do the same thing but with [herself], just to have that kind of representation, to just have more black women and POC and be seen on a platform.” One of the key goals of the group is to welcome “open conversations, positive dialogue, and doing art mixed with culture to share our story, because people won’t share our story if we don’t do it ourselves.” As a woman of colour, Chevalier understood that Bondil’s offer to rethink Les Demoiselles d’Avignon was a chance to reinterpret the painting to make it reflect the importance of starting new discussions around the depictions of women of color in media. This was achieved by renaming the piece Les Vraies Demoiselles d’Avignon. From there, The Woman Power changed the media of the work by making it a collage that highlights the uniqueness of each woman photographed. Every figure in the piece shows women of color holding fruit and wearing white – a complete rejection of Picasso’s sexualized female figures. Using this “update” of the painting as a conversation starter, The Woman Power has hosted open discussions about the identity politics around being a woman, and especially a woman of color. Through these discussions, The Woman Power adds a much-needed dose of intersectionality to museums and elevates the show from an exhibit to a work of art in its own right.

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