From May 1 to May 18 2014, Montreal celebrated the Asian Month Heritage with Festival Accès Asie under the theme “Earth of Asia, Dome of Montreal”. Inspired by the Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month in the U.S, a group of activists in Toronto developed the idea of a festival celebrating the Asian contribution to Canada’s development and modernization, paying tribute to the diversity that composes the country by giving a voice to Canadian artists of Asian origins. In 1995 the idea made its way to Montreal, adding its own flair to the climate of the Quebecois cultural capital. In 2001 became an institutionalized event as part of the Asian Heritage month of May and today is the oldest festival celebrating the Asian-Canadian heritage in Canada.
This year’s edition offered a large panel of artworks, encompassing everything from oriental dance shows, to exhibitions, live performances, cooking lessons, cinematic experiences, and concerts, gathering an eclectic crowd of Montreal’s art lovers in a friendly atmosphere. It not only provided an opportunity to discover different kinds of arts from a wide range of Asian countries such as Korea, Iran, India, Syria, Indonesia, Singapore, Lebanon, Japan, and Vietnam; but also raised awareness of a broader artistic sense of cultural and political struggles worldwide. Indeed, Festival Accès Asie is the perfect scene to alert the public to specific problems the Asian continent is facing today and also to express the challenges of having an Asian-Canadian identity.
Live Performance – Don’t Leave Me… I Am Still Alive by Khadija Baker
Khadija Baker is a Syrian Kurdish artist who emigrated in Canada in 2001 to complete a MFA in Open Media at Concordia University. In 2013, she visited a Syrian refugee camp by the Iraqi border and was particularly touched by the fate of her people after the chemical attacks that took places in more than one Syrian city since 2011, the year the revolution began. The gap between what she saw there and what she heard in the world media started the idea of an engaging live performance to embody the suffering of innocent Syrian women and children. “We don’t have enough information, and if there is information, it is always covering certain big events. There is a chemical attack, the media goes and shows it. There is killing on a daily basis, we don’t talk about them”, she said.
A year later, Khadija Baker presents this spectacular performance at Festival Accès Asie, mixing visual and audio mediums, such as paint and textiles, along music by the talented saxophonist Janet Lumb. Taken together, Baker completely immerging herself in her these mediums in artwork by being the central motion of the performance. The event took place at Oboro Art Centre, a new media lab, and in presence of Festival Accès Asie’s loyal audience. In a tense atmosphere, Baker traces the story of a little girl she met in the refugee camp, who survived the chemical attack and inspired the title of her work: Don’t leave me… I am still alive. “We do not usually talk about this category of people who are still alive, who need help, who need support for the moment, and are as important as the people we have lost”, she said. Baker concludes by an impressively skilled video realized in stop-motioned picture of hair that traces the story of the chemical attack in order to show audiences the reality the Syrian survivors continue to face.
“My job as an artist is to take you as much as possible to what is going on,” Baker believes. “If I can get you at least to the border of what people who survived are living now, through feelings and imagination, it will be great for me.” And that she did.
If you are interested in learning a bit more about Festival Accès Asie and the presented artists at this year’s 19th edition, visit the following links:
Opening Cocktail:
Ziya Tabassian : http://www.ziyatabassian.com/fr/home.htm
Aditya Verma : aditya.org/
Jenn Doan : http://www.woomemyth.com/
Florence So (pink rubber lady) : http://www.pinkrubberlady.com/
Preview:
Jin Young Kim : http://www.jinyoungkim.net/
Heeseung Ko : http://www.heeseungko.com/heeseung/Heeseung_Ko.html
Jihee Min : http://www.jiheemin.com/
Oriental Danse Competition:
Marina Salonga : http://www.marinadance.com/
Pierre Khoury : no website
Amrita Choudhury : http://www.ananda-amrita.com/
Don’t Leave Me, I Am Still Alive performance:
Khadija Baker : http://khadijabaker.com/
Janet Lumb : http://janetlumb.com/fr
WRITTEN BY ALIX GUIBERT
Video by Alice Guiyoule, Bouchra Laraki, Sophie de Langlois and Alix Guibet
COMMENTS ARE OFF THIS POST