Ever since Marcel Dzama got that Vanity Fair spread in September 2005, the culturati’s view of Winnipeg has never been the same. Thanks to those charmingly naïve drawings, collages and sculptures that the define Dzama and his Royal Art Lodge colleagues, Winnipeg is often better known internationally than Toronto or Vancouver. (Granted, those New York Times gushes over Guy Maddin and Karel Funk published since haven’t hurt.)
Still, as well as some of Winnipeg’s artists are known, the city itself remains a bit of a cipher: Is it a cosmopolitan Prairie mecca or a sleepy sports-centric backwater? Is it a multiculti Folkarama fantasyland or an abysmal Aboriginal-abusing ghetto? And do we have to be as eccentric as a Gimli-born filmmaker to get any kind of an accurate picture?
The 27 artists making up “Subconscious City,” a comprehensive new survey exhibition on Winnipeg curated by two of its favourite adoptees, Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan, provide no solid answer to these questions, of course. But with a surprisingly consistent mix of humour, frankness, craft and conceptualist quirk, they do fashion a picture of a place worth both criticizing and loving, fearing and cuddling, analyzing and accepting. (100 Memorial Blvd, Winnipeg MB)
