{"id":33219,"date":"2019-09-13T03:59:54","date_gmt":"2019-09-13T10:59:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=33219"},"modified":"2019-09-10T13:50:51","modified_gmt":"2019-09-10T20:50:51","slug":"marriage-no-fairy-tale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2019\/09\/13\/marriage-no-fairy-tale\/","title":{"rendered":"Marriage no fairy tale"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cKiss! Kiss! Kiss!\u201d by Lilian Broca is part of the exhibit Brides: Portrait of a Marriage, which is at the Italian Cultural Centre\u2019s Il Museo until Sept. 30.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

In most romance novels and fairy tales, a love story ends in a wedding and the couple lives \u201chappily ever after.\u201d In real life, it\u2019s not that simple. Marriage has its challenges.<\/p>\n

The show Brides: Portrait of a Marriage, which opened at the Italian Cultural Centre\u2019s Il Museo in Vancouver this summer, examines some of the aspects of marriage that fairy tales purposefully omit. The show incorporates the works of several local artists in different media: textile art by Linda Coe, photography by Grace Gordon-Collins, drawings by Jewish community member Lilian Broca and a tapestry by fellow Jewish community member Barbara Heller.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always wanted a show about brides,\u201d Angela Clarke, curator and director of Il Museo, told the Independent<\/em>. \u201cWe have weddings at the centre almost every week. There is so much energy, so many emotions. But the Roman goddess of marriage, Juno, was not a happy woman. Hers was not a happy marriage, and the controversy attracted me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brides is part of the museum\u2019s Gendered Voices series, and looks at marriage from a woman\u2019s perspective.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis exhibition places the institution of marriage under the looking glass,\u201d said Clarke. \u201cEach participating artist tackles the deep psychological complexity and immense social pressure involved in a traditional marriage. Historical perspectives and family dynamics, personal reflections and the impact of feminism are explored in the show.\u201d<\/p>\n

Each artist contributed her own personal outlook. Coe\u2019s fabric panels belong to her Dirty Laundry series. Colourful and sophisticated-looking hangings were all created from fabric snatches that were once parts of women\u2019s dowries, used and reused for several generations before they ended up in the artist\u2019s stockpile.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe eight fabric panels represent eight stages of a woman\u2019s life,\u201d explained Clarke. \u201cEach one incorporates relevant texts from Renaissance romance novels and etiquette manuals. In the 16th century, such manuals were very popular in Italy, especially among the middle classes. They were written to instruct young brides in the proper comportment, in the ways to become a successful bride and mother.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition, those eight panels reference the eight requisite parts of a romance novel, from the Middle Ages to the modern Avon romances. \u201cThose stages have names, the same names as the panels,\u201d Clarke said. \u201cNo. 1, Stasis (infant). No. 2, Trigger (young girl). No. 3, Quest (betrothal). No. 4, Surprise (courtesan). No. 5, Critical Choice (bride). No. 6, Climax (wife). No. 7, Reversal (matron). No. 8, Resolution (widow). Every love story published these days must follow this structure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Heller\u2019s tapestry and Gordon-Collins\u2019s photographs explore wedding dresses and the commodification of weddings. The tapestry shows a bride in a beautiful dress, but her face is blurry, unimportant, and the dress becomes the focal point, a uniform, a symbol.<\/p>\n

The photos, in the photogram or X-ray style, lack faces altogether, only the wedding attires of four generations of women of the artist\u2019s family can be seen.<\/p>\n

\u201cGrandmother\u2019s wedding tunic was modest, especially in comparison to the artist\u2019s daughter\u2019s wedding dress, much more opulent and sensual, and designed for one-time use only,\u201d said Clarke. \u201cHere, we can trace how, through the generations, the weddings grow into an industry, and the wedding accessories become commodities.\u201d<\/p>\n

While neon-bright colours dominate Gordon-Collins\u2019s images and Coe\u2019s collages shimmer with the patina of gold, Broca\u2019s contribution to the show is a sequence of stark black and white lithographs, all from her Brides series.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy mother passed away in 1989,\u201d Broca said, as she explained the roots of her series. \u201cI was devastated by her death, although it was a blessing after suffering for years from cancer. Soon after her passing, I started dreaming about her as a young bride. I decided to draw my dreams.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her drawings reflect the dichotomy between the happily-ever-after concept and the fact that most marriages in the past were arranged, and not unions of love.<\/p>\n

One of the drawings, \u201cKiss! Kiss! Kiss!\u201d depicts a bride sitting in a chair, regarding a frog in her lap. A few more frogs \u2013 potential princes? \u2013 wait at her feet, expecting her to choose between them.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew my bride would not kiss that frog,\u201d said Broca. \u201cSo I added several other potential grooms. Some small, others big…. Still, I had a feeling she would resist them all.\u201d<\/p>\n

The work \u201cUpon Reflection\u201d is even more powerful. It shows a bride in a gown and veil looking into a full-length mirror. The image in the mirror depicts the bride, face and posture serene, as befits the occasion, but Broca has left the image of the bride herself white and, from within it, there is the drawing of a woman, the bride, trying to escape.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat woman, upon reflection, discovers how much she doesn\u2019t wish to be married, to be tied down. What happens next is up to the viewer\u2019s imagination,\u201d said the artist.<\/p>\n

For Broca, black and white was the only possibility for the series. \u201cIt was the most appropriate way to describe what I felt\u2026. After the first two or three drawings, I began to realize that many brides were not happy at the altar \u2013 I showed them. Only a very few happy brides appear in my drawings. Not because happy brides are a minority, but because happy brides are difficult to portray without slipping into a less-than-powerful mode. I may be wrong, I may be able to do it today, but, at that time, it didn\u2019t seem possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clarke knew about Broca\u2019s series and wanted to include it in its entirety in the show, but that wasn\u2019t possible. \u201cWe couldn\u2019t include so many that Angela wanted because they had been sold,\u201d said Broca. \u201cWe couldn\u2019t borrow them. The owners live in the U.S. and Eastern Canada. As it is, the two works in the exhibition were borrowed from local owners.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brides is at the Italian Cultural Centre until Sept. 30.<\/p>\n

Olga Livshin<\/strong> is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at olgagodim@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cKiss! Kiss! Kiss!\u201d by Lilian Broca is part of the exhibit Brides: Portrait of a Marriage, which is at the Italian Cultural Centre\u2019s Il Museo until Sept. 30. In most romance novels and fairy tales, a love story ends in a wedding and the couple lives \u201chappily ever after.\u201d In real life, it\u2019s not that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33220,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[989],"tags":[9290,2466,7095,9291,4748,9289,811,4749,7094,3021],"class_list":["post-33219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-visual-arts","tag-angela-clarke","tag-art","tag-barbara-heller","tag-brides","tag-il-museo","tag-illustration","tag-italian-cultural-centre","tag-lilian-broca","tag-tapestry","tag-women"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}