Art and the Philosophy of White Racism

"[The exhibit, titled Conceptions of White is intended for visitors to] grapple with contemporary configurations of White identity."

"The arrangement suggests connections and provokes audiences to question their assumptions and social conditioning and teachings."

"Apollo is a very potent symbol in terms of the research surrounding whiteness and white identity."

Lillian O'Brien Davis, curator walk-through of exhibit 

"The exhibit tells white people to stop talking, enjoy discomfort, check their privilege, and vocalize their ignorance."

EndWokeness social media account

 

An installation being highlighted at the Vancouver Art Gallery, has the purpose of leading visitors to recognize it is framing "Whiteness" as a form of "cultural erasure". Visitors are invited to gauge their visual similarity to a Nazi leader through the Aryan Recognition Tool. The exhibit has been running since September 7. It was featured recently in a post by the U.S.-based conservative social media account EndWokeness.

Lindsey Shepherd, a columnist for True North Centre paid a visit to the exhibition Conceptions of White and its opening piece took her attention with its title "When you're the problem, we're the solution", a series of four stations showing an image of the viewer on a screen, accompanied by instructions such as "stop talking" and "enjoy discomfort". The viewer is invited to "vocalize ... ignorance" by stating "I know nothing" out loud at the "get curious" station.

The Art Museum at the University of Toronto featured a display of Conceptions of White, and earlier than that, the display was featured for a four-month period at the Regina MacKenzie Art Gallery. The curators of the display are John G. Hampton and Lillian O'Brien Davis. The show as well as the Vancouver Art Gallery is financially supported by government, drawing funds from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Toronto Arts Council and the Ontario Arts Council.

 

Gallery attendees then have the opportunity to interact with an AI program on a set of tablets.

 

Possibly the most controversial portion is the Aryan Recognition Tool designed by Toronto artist Jennifer Chan, a tool that has a permanent online presence. Users are invited to submit a facial photo to an artificial intelligence engine which "measures how your face compares to the facial measurements of an average Aryan -- distilled from the most infamous leaders of the Third Reich". A curator description reads: "Aryan Recognition Tool offers a playful yet uncomfortable window into the continuity of thought in facial typologies".

A 2005 setpiece from New York, Love and Loss in the Milky Way consists of a table set with white ceramics, among them a bust of an African woman. A "Whiteness timeline" is included documenting "the circumstances that documented the emergence -- and evolution -- of white as an identity". Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, the founding of the Ku Klux Klan and Canada's 1867 founding are included.

 

Love and Loss in the Milky Way from the Vancouver Art Gallery's "Conceptions of White" exhibit, which is intended to help visitors “grapple with contemporary configurations of White identity,” according to gallery literature. Photo by Vancouver Art Gallery/Instagram

"Canadian White supremacist ideologies and organizations in the first half of the 20th century" includes documents relating to arts donations by former governor general Vincent Massey, that assisted in the founding of the MacKenzie gallery. A reconstruction of the ancient marble statue of Apollo Belvedere held in the Vatican Museums is included. The Apollo statue's brilliant white surface "reflects the greatest number of rays of light", in the words of 18th century German art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann.

According to the Conceptions of White, this 18th century review "inspired Neoclassicists and race theorists to propose a new concept of racial superiority theorizing that European features like light skin are indicative of more highly evolved humans". 

"I learned that as a white Canadian born in the mid-1990s, my identity is defined by slavery, scientific racism, Rudyard Kipling’s 1899 poem “The White Man’s Burden,” colonialism, the Ku Klux Klan, the Third Reich, the “alt-right,” and Robin DiAngelo’s book White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism."

"The last items in the timeline of white terribleness were “2013: Black Lives Matter founded” and “2021: January 6 Insurrection”."

Lindsey Shepherd, columnist, True North Centre

“Check privilege. Learn whether you’re special or just lucky,” the text reads. Upon looking into the tablet, a halo that says “Undeserving” appears over your head.