Other Conundrums

Book excerpt: Other Conundrums, copublished with Vancouver's Artspeak Gallery and the Kamloops Art Gallery, is an extraordinary collection of essays on Canadian artists of colour by Monika Kin Gagnon, one of Canada's most respected art writers and curators. The essays explore the history of cultural production in this country with an emphasis on race, cultural difference, and cultural hybridity. Using specific artists and exhibitions as a starting-point for Gagnon's discussions, these essays, and the artists she writes about, are firmly grounded in Canadian cultural events, artistic projects, and theoretical ideas concerning race and culture which have circulated in often disparate contexts for the last decade. The book makes a distinctively Canadian contribution to ongoing dialogues on issues of race and culture that have originated from artists, writers, and theorists from the US and Britain, and provides an important and relevatory context to the work of Canada's artists of colour. The book includes numerous colour and black and white images, and a foreword by award-winning writer Larissa Lai (When Fox Is a Thousand). Chapters include overviews of the work of such artists as Shani Mootoo, Paul Wong, Jamelie Hassan, and Dana Claxton. Other Conundrums is an essential snapshot of contemporary issues surrounding race and identity as revealed in visual art.