EL CONFORT Y EL CONSUMO DE ENERGÍA

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In 2008, I was approached via email to participate in a monumental portrait exhibition by photographer Pierre Maraval entitled, Toronto’s Mille Femmes.195_{Part of the second}

annual Luminato Festival (henceforth Luminato), this project aspired to create a “human landscape” composed of 1,000 large-scale, colour portraits of female arts and culture workers living and working in Toronto.196 Of the thousand Mille Femmes participants, 500 women had the opportunity to secretly nominate a young woman who she felt would “contribute to the future of the arts” in the city so that the exhibition would reflect the intergenerational network of Toronto’s creative women.197 At this time, I was working as the Education Manager for Soulpepper Theatre Company and one of my mentors put my name forward for the exhibition. Feeling humbled, I accepted the invitation to be

photographed and arranged a time for my photo session.198

When I arrived for my photo shoot at the L’Oréal Academy in downtown Toronto, I was intimidated by the posh studio. I was somewhat embarrassed during my pre-photograph mini-makeover, but I must admit that I was a little giddy about the tiny loot bag of Lancôme beauty products that I received.199 _{I remember sitting on a bench,}

waiting to be photographed beside a couple of other women whom I had never met. For this project, each participant was asked to share a word that was meaningful to them,

195 _{See: Pierre Maraval, Toronto’s Mille Femmes (Montreal: Quadriscan, 2008); and Pierre}

Maraval, “Portraits x 1000/ ‘1000 Women Toronto,’” in Pierre Maraval Productions, 2008, http://www.maraval.org/spip.php?article193 (accessed 7 November 2014).

196 _{Janice Price in: Maraval, Toronto’s Mille Femmes, 11.} 197 _{Tony Gagliano in: Ibid., 13.}

198 _{Participants were nominated by their peers and had to meet specific criteria. Participants}

needed to be: from Toronto (or living in Toronto), affiliated with the city’s creative community, and “part of this network woven over time.” See: Heidi Strohl in: Maraval, Toronto’s Mille Femmes, 17.

which would be printed on their portrait. As we sat waiting, we filled out our consent forms and shared our words with one another. If a word had been used several times before, the project coordinator gently urged us to consider other options. When it was my turn to be photographed, I was whisked into a dimly lit studio. After a cursory exchange with Maraval, I was propped up on a stool in front of a bright white backdrop and after a few clicks, I was excused and I returned to work [Fig. 1.1].200

Figure 1.1: Pierre Maraval, Portrait of Jennifer Orpana, Toronto’s Mille Femmes, 2008. Photograph and permission courtesy of Pierre Maraval.

On June 11, 2008, the exhibit, Toronto’s Mille Femmes (henceforth Mille Femmes), opened in the stunning Allen Lambert Galleria located in Brookfield Place, a commercial office building in the heart of the financial district. The colourful portraits hung from the soaring ceiling of glass and steel in the centre of the galleria [Figs. 1.2 & 1.3]. The images appeared to float as they hung from nearly invisible metal wires in a vast, grid-like installation that measured 16 feet high by 328 feet long.201Mille Femmes was composed of a thousand faces—many smiling, some smirking, and some quite

200 _{To view the spaces and the process that I describe here, see this video: Stephen Cocke, dir.,}

The Creation of Toronto’s Mille Femmes, in YouTube.ca, 8 May 2008,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PA53XVjyYzA (accessed 18 November 2014).

201 _{The portraits were digital prints that were printed on pieces of cardboard that were roughly 3}

serious—representing a plethora of arts and culture professions in Toronto. Among the photographic subjects were artists, musicians, writers, dancers, arts administrators, and media personalities. As viewers walked around to examine both sides of the portrait installation, a thousand words washed over them including positive words such as, “passionate,” “flexible,” “optimistic,” “creative,” and “celebrate,” and playful words, including, “feisty,” “ballsy,” and, “disruptor.” The installation inspired viewers to oscillate between recognizing each individual and beholding the scope of this, albeit partial, view of Toronto’s diverse community of creative women. As I enjoyed the exhibit, I felt proud to see my face among so many women whose work I respected and admired.

Figure 1.2: Installation of Pierre Maraval’s, Toronto’s Mille Femmes, (Allan Lambert Galleria, Brookfield Place, Toronto, Ontario, 2008).

Photograph and permission courtesy of Pierre Maraval.

Figure 1.3: Installation view of Pierre Maraval’s, Toronto’s Mille Femmes

(Allan Lambert Galleria, Brookfield Place, Toronto, Ontario, 2008). Photograph and permission courtesy of Pierre Maraval.

As a participant of Mille Femmes at that time, I was not concerned with the same things that currently interest me as a scholar of art and visual culture. Issues such as how the exhibit would be framed through discourse, why the exhibit was mounted in the heart of the financial district, or how an exhibition of 1,000 creative women served Lancôme, and subsequently L’Oréal, as a successful marketing piece, were not at the forefront of my mind. I did not think about the potential issues of exclusion that might have arisen based on the complexities of gender identities, which may have impacted who was and who was not represented in Mille Femmes, or about how, through its association with makeovers and beauty products, this exhibition may have perpetuated gender inequalities such as the arguably more pronounced beauty and grooming expectations of female professionals, as compared to those of men.202 Nor did I consider how the framework for participation shaped the conceptual or visual outcomes of the project. I certainly did not spend a lot of time wondering about how Mille Femmes was situated within a context of urban entrepreneurialism or how it served Toronto’s creative city agenda. Frankly, the question of my involvement in this project did not centre on whether I should participate, so much as, whether I had the time. Wrapped up in my own work for the festival on behalf of Soulpepper Theatre Company, I was living in a fog of emails, events, and administrative tasks.203

My personal experience of the exhibit was predominantly shaped by the honour of being selected, the novelty of participating in a massive art project, and the excitement that I shared with my family and friends upon seeing the exhibit. For me, the photographs helped to recognize the often overworked, and sometimes undervalued, women who

202 _{The latter is an issue that has recently exploded in global media. See: Tracey Spicer, “Tracey}

Spicer: This is What I Look Like without Make-Up,” Daily Life, 16 November 2014,

http://www.dailylife.com.au/dl-beauty/tracey-spicer-this-is-what-i-look-like-without-makeup- 20141115-3kfbl.html (accessed 3 December 2014); or Bim Adewunmi, “Male TV Presenter Wears Same Suit for a Year—Does Anyone Notice?” The Guardian, 17 November 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2014/nov/17/male-tv-presenter-same- suit-year-female-colleagues-judged (accessed 3 December 2014).

203 _{For the 2008 Luminato Festival, I curated a community art exhibit, My Wish, My Journey at}

the Young Centre for the Performing Arts and I served as the advisor and co-curator for a youth theatre festival, From the Ground Up, while also managing my portfolio as the Education Manager of Soulpepper Theatre Company.

played, and continue to play, a significant role in upholding Toronto’s arts and culture institutions with their hard work and dedication. For this reason, above my smiling face there was the word, “caryatids,” referring to ancient Greek architectural columns that were carved in the shape of women. In retrospect, my choice reeks a little of a sense of martyrdom as it conjures the image of stalwart female figures who literally bear the weight—they are the supports, the infrastructure, and the faces—of institutions, while maintaining somber expressions of resignation. Nevertheless, working in an industry where the vast majority of my colleagues were tireless women striving to keep everything balanced and to support the soaring creative aspirations of predominantly male

figureheads (the apexes of many organizational charts), it was a word that I felt reflected the “human landscape” of Toronto’s arts and culture sector at this time.204 The sheer number of women who selected words that describe qualities of resilience, perseverance, fortitude, and strength suggests that I might not have been alone in this view.

Nevertheless, like many Torontonians, I was swept up with the excitement of Luminato and I was not fully engaged with what scholars Laura Levin and Kim Solga have since discussed as some of the more troubling politics that existed beneath the surface of the festival.205 In large part, I blindly and happily played a role in the spectacle.

204 _{See, for example: Joyce Zemans and Amy C. Wallace, “Where Are the Women? Updating the}

Account!” RACAR XXXVIII, 1 (2013): 1–29; Rebecca Burton, Adding it Up: The Status of Women in Canadian Theatre (Ottawa: Canada Council for the Arts, 2006); and Amanda Coles,

On Women: A Report on Gender (In)Equality in the Canadian Independent Screen-Based

Production Industry (Canadian Unions for Equality on Screen, 2013). One US museum blog post states, “[T]here are more men than women in directors in museums with budgets over $3M, and female directors earn only 71 cents for every dollar earned by male directors.” Source: Center for the Future of Museums, “Let’s Talk Money: How Much Do You Make?” in Center for the Future of Museums Blog, 2 December 2014, http://futureofmuseums.blogspot.ca/2014/12/lets-talk- money-how-much-do-you-make.html (accessed 3 December 2014). See also: Library of Parliament,“Wage Gap between Men and Women,” in Parliament of Canada, 2010,

http://www.parl.gc.ca/content/lop/researchpublications/2010-30-e.htm (accessed 2 June 2015); and Susan Braedley and Meg Luxton, “Neoliberalism and the Challenges of Everyday Life,” in

Neoliberalism and Everyday Life, eds. Susan Braedley and Meg Luxton,3–21 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010): 13.

205 _{Laura Levin and Kim Solga, “Building Utopia: Performance and the Fantasy of Urban}

In this chapter, I reconsider the role that spectacular community portrait projects played in the 2008 Luminato Festival as I focus on international artist Pierre Maraval’s Mille Femmes and Toronto street artist Dan Bergeron’s Regent Park Portraits. Both of these projects produced visual celebrations of Toronto communities by placing portraits of everyday people in the urban landscape. While each initiative had the potential to inspire a range of positive personal and sociological effects, here I focus on their political and economic power.206 _{I situate the festival within the broader context of urban}

entrepreneurialism and I consider how, in addition to putting the spotlight on Toronto communities, both Mille Femmes and the Regent Park Portraits served as vital marketing pieces for everything from the festival and its sponsors to the city itself. Furthermore, drawing on theories of “the spectacle” in neoliberal era, I discuss how these portrait projects harnessed—and in the case of the Regent Park Portraits, later subverted—the power of the spectacle to visualize support, to redirect detractors, to guide behaviour, and to obfuscate prevalent issues related to the developments of urban neoliberalism in Toronto.