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The newsletter of the Mennonite Heritage Centre Gallery

Gallery hours: Monday – Friday, 8:30 AM – 4:30 PM; Saturday, noon – 5 PM

Surviving Pacifism

by Agatha Doerksen

Opening: November 9, Friday, 7:30pm
November 2, 2001 – January 5, 2002

(NOTE: THE OPENING IS NOVEMBER 9 AND NOT 2 AS INDICATED IN THE LAST NEWSLETTER)

Surviving…

Concern regarding survival is higher in our part of the world at this time than it has been for decades. The shockingly unbelievable image of a jetliner veering into one of the World Trade Center towers, the pilot about to murder thousands, has been burned into our minds from several angles, over and over again. Coming out of a beautiful, clear blue sky and striking one of the most recognizable structures in America’s most important city etches the image even deeper. We all feel vulnerable.

At any given time millions of people in places we seldom hear or care about feel equally vulnerable and are likely much, much more literally at risk than any of us in North America. How have situations such as happened on September 11 been resolved throughout the ages? How many have been resolved or are simply continuing in cycles of violence that ebb and flow but never completely stop? How many are simply justified as necessary government actions in some faraway place?

Agatha Doerksen’s exhibit, Surviving Pacifism, was scheduled to open in the fall of 2001 long before the events of September 11 took place. However, I believe practically no one will view the exhibit without vivid images from September 11 and murkier ones of Afghanistan overlapping what they see and feel while visiting it. Doerksen’s multimedia exhibit asks hard questions made more urgent by current events. Most of us, unlike many others in the world, have had the luxury to face violence only as a diversion to "enjoy" on TV or in the movies. Suddenly we live in fear.

Pacifist responses are without doubt the desire of a tiny minority. A significant number within that tiny minority follow Anabaptist/Mennonite Christian teachings. Doerksen comes from that tradition. Therefore, she wrestles with her reactions and convictions towards violence and injustice looking into a rear view mirror filled with stories bracketed by the struggles that come with choosing to accept or reject pacifism. She asks in her artist statement, "Does several hundred years of a pacifist Anabaptist history offer any redemption or have we become victims - detached and floating in a sea of illusions?"

Surviving Pacifism is not an evangelical call to convert to pacifism. It is an invitation to all, whether from that tradition or not, to wrestle with your responses to September 11, to Rwanda, to Afghanistan, to myriad other conflicts past and present and yet to come.

OPENING

Surviving Pacifism by Agatha Doerksen

Friday, November 9, 7:30pm

A thought provoking multimedia exhibition, an opportunity to reflect, to think and to consider art from a highly imaginative and exciting artist. Special guests will offer prayers for peace from a variety of perspectives.

NEXT

Ruth Maendel. A journey into the mind of a wonderful young artist through her installation art, paintings and photographs. Also, artworks by the children of Fairholme Hutterite Colony.

YEAREND. 2001 is drawing to a close. If you appreciate the work of the gallery, please, remember it as you make your yearend charitable donations. Donations to the gallery are tax deductible.

Surviving Pacifism

artist statement

The exhibition "Surviving Pacifism" explores chaos as a condition of our environment. Like the air we breathe, chaos surrounds us and our survival depends on whether we choose to inhale or not. What is it that guides our response to events and tragedies? What is it that determines whether we become captive, passionately involved or detached? What sustains those who choose passionate involvement? Does several hundred years of a pacifist Anabaptist history offer any redemption or have we become victims - detached and floating in a sea of illusions?

It is 1917 in south Russia. A young Mennonite woman cares for her young sons and manages an estate while her husband does duty in the medical corps of the Russian Army. During a raid on their home by the Makhnovites, bandits of the Bolshevik Revolution, Katherina has her earrings torn off her ears. Clothing, food, jewelry, livestock are taken. Their lives are spared unlike neighbours the night before.

It is 1984. I read in The Statesman, Calcutta's daily, that Phoolan Devi, known as the Bandit Queen has surrendered to police in the Indian State of Madhya Pradesh before a crowd of 8000. A wisp of a woman, not yet 26 years, low-caste and illiterate goes to jail for taking justice into her own hands. Her crime - a saga of revenge for brutal treatment received as an 11 year old bride for leaving an abusive 33 year old husband, theft of family owned property, repeated rape by Thakur men over a period of 3 weeks and more. Wednesday, July 25, 2001, New Delhi, Phoolan Devi, now an MP in the Indian Parliament dies instantly in a hail of bullets outside her home.

The year is 1996. The telephone rings.. I hear a young woman's excited voice - the call is coming across a satellite phone. The voice is familiar. She is safe. "There are people everywhere. They're walking home from the refugee camps. I've never seen so many people. There must be hundreds of thousands. It's been like this for hours!" The place is the border town of Gisenyi, Rwanda and the walk home to Rwanda from Zaire has begun for Rwandans who fled the terror of '94. More than one million Hutus and Tutsis died in this preventable genocide. Western nations chose not to respond to their pleas for help.

A friend writes from California October 15, 2001. "When September 11 happened, I was very upset. But the war that the US is waging makes me even more upset. I know what war is, what it can do and the people of Afghanistan do not deserve it. One night I just sobbed and as I was going to bed I looked in the mirror and asked myself what is it that makes me so afraid? The answer was all that I have seen and heard. No, I have not experienced bombs falling on a village I was in, or dodging bullets. But I have seen the razed homes, the vacant eyes of refugees and displaced people, the scars of bullets and the stories from hell. Then I realised; my fear was that I couldn't survive living through a war. I came back to this part of the world to get away from war, to take care of myself. Well, if I lose my job I can always go to Afghanistan or Pakistan to work. Maybe that is my fate - to bring comfort to others and in doing so bring comfort to myself. The world is not going to be the same for us. We have lost the privilege of security at home, which most people in the world do not experience. It is only a matter of time before another terrorist hit comes. Conventional warfare is not the response to this."

"Surviving Pacifism" is a collection of work that begins with a series of 8 canvas panels that depict the genealogical roots of the Mennonite House of Heinrich Epp from the 16th century. The stories of their literal journey prompted by their pacifist ideals are haunting and sobering. Considering their history, the question for this artist becomes "so how does what has been bred in the bones find expression in the context of the 20th and now the 21st century"?

The exhibition continues with object-laden paintings exploring events and stories that have intersected with one artist's life - a descendent of the House of Heinrich Epp. A multiple series of assemblages are characterised by a fusion of symbolic and conceptual references rooted in Christian and Anabaptist Mennonite traditions. Countless items such as fragments of biblical text, maps, fabric, metal, bones and feathers have been collected from urban industrial landscapes and used in the paintings. Included in this exhibition are a series of photographs taken by Alison Doerksen and Al Doerksen which create a compelling visual commentary on contemporary chaos and modern dilemmas.

Agatha Doerksen

CONTACT

Ray Dirks, Mennonite Heritage Centre Gallery, 600 Shaftesbury Blvd., Winnipeg, MB R3P 0M4; rdirks@mennonitechurch.ca; 204-888-6781; fax 204- 831-5675

Your tax deductible donations to the gallery are always appreciated.