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Gwen MacGregor is a Toronto-based artist. She is considered one of the pillars of the Toronto visual arts scene, and won the Toronto Visual Arts Award in 2003. She also happens to be a former colleague of mine, where we spent two years on the board of Trinity Square Video, in Toronto.
I've been following MacGregor 's work for a while now. Mostly it is with muted awe at how bad her work is. MacGregor is intelligent, and a truly nice person, so it takes a lot for me to describe her art this way. Here is someone much more forthright and descriptive than I am.
Recently, MacGregor publicly criticized the Koffler Centre for the Arts’ decision to dissociate itself from artist Reena Katz, from whom the Centre had commissioned an exhibition. Although Katz’s exhibition will take place, the Centre pulled its name from print and digital material, and any advertisement for this show. MacGregor's protest is taken seriously, and she's even quoted in the Toronto Star.
Reena Katz is affiliated with Israel Apartheid Week, which views Israel as heaping "barbaric assault on the people of Gaza", and aims to:
[E]ducate people about the nature of Israel as an apartheid system and to build Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns as part of a growing global BDS movement.The Simon Wiesenthal Center has denounced Israel Apartheid Week as:
A worldwide campaign to demonize Israel and intimidate students and faculty who support the Jewish State is underway.Enter Gwen MacGregor, and three other artists who also withdrew their support for, or exhibitions at, the Koffler Centre because, as MacGregor put it in a letter to the Centre:
[A]s an artist I feel very strongly that freedom of expression without fear of reprisal is necessary for the creative process.The Koffler Centre was very generous, and didn't actually withdraw its funds from Katz's exhibition. Nor did it discontinue the exhibition. All it did was dissociate itself from it, allowing none of its logos or its name to appear alongside Katz's exhibition.
This is certainly not restriction on freedom of expression, more like a restraint on the Centre’s associations.
What if MacGregor were to curate works by an artist who undermined Canada’s right to exist, and was part of a group that wanted to exterminate Canada. How would she react?
Once again, this freely uttered "freedoms of whatever" is exactly the problem with discussions that focus on freedoms, as Ezra Levant has done with his battle against the HRCs.
Levant has to be able to discriminate between peoples who will harm, or even destroy, his country, and those who are genuinely practicing their various freedoms of speech or expressions.
And constantly, it is the Muslim groups in Canada who have shown themselves the dangerous ones. Even the Koffler incident was instigated by Muslim sensibilities, although Jews like Katz and liberal Canadians like MacGregor also participated.
One way to avoid such a difficult act of discrimination is not to allow this dilemma to occur in the first place.
By reducing the number of Muslims in Canada, a major strategy for which is restricting, and even stopping, Muslims from further entering into Canada, the real intent of freedom of speech and freedom of expression can recover its civilized presence.
