Israeli-born artist Michael Blum creates a welcome fresh take on Canada's French/English divide in a new exhibition, Our History/Notre Histoire.
"I see my job as an artist as always picking what's being pushed under the carpet and here, obviously, the identity issue is something that keeps on coming back and is constantly pushed under the carpet and I thought this is really where the problem lies here and it's an interesting thing to dig," he told CBC.
Our History/Notre histoire is set up like two mini museums, one for Canada and the other for Quebec. On the Canada side are inventions like the plastic garbage bag and instant mashed potatoes. The Quebec side includes a rock that Blum calls La roche sacré, the holy rock on which Quebec culture was founded.
Humour, he said, is his preferred way of approaching sensitive issues like Quebec / Canada relations.
"I think it’s the only way to do it because when you tackle a very serious topic. You have to find a strategy that is not frontal. And it’s not any kind of humour — it's sometimes over the top, it's whimsical, sometimes it's even goofy to make it clear that this should not be taken seriously," he said.
What can be taken seriously is the book Blum has published to go with the exhibition. It features answers from 86 prominent Canadians who responded to a survey Blum put together that asked questions such as 'How would you explain the difference between Canada and Quebec to a foreigner?'
The exhibition runs at the UQàM gallery through October 4, 2014.
Admission is free. The gallery is located at the corner of Berri Street and Ste-Catherine Street East.