Pamela Masik is a Vancouver artist that has spent the past four years painting the faces of the 69 women who vanished from the Downtown Eastside.
The project is appropriately referred to as “The Forgotten” and is an amazing undertaking that is expected to be displayed in a major gallery in 2011.
Pamela Masik speaks in front of her first painting to be released, "Mona," painted in honour of Mona Wilson, a 26-year-old First Nations woman who went missing in 2001.
I am aware that Ms. Masik has been in touch with City of Vancouver staff and members of City Council regarding the possibility of some of the paintings being displayed around the city (including during the Olympics) so that everyone can remember the tragic stories of these women.
This then elicits a set of questions that I would truly like to seek opinions and debate on (although I won’t hold my breath due to the slow trickle of site comments thus far):
Is a rosy picture of Vancouver the only vision we must offer when welcoming the world into the city?
The paintings are in honour of individuals who happen to be a part of a gruesome story – a story that at times seems straight out of horror movie. Willie Pickton became an international source of horrible attention for our fair city, and his subsequent trial and conviction is still a point of great contention and distress for the families of the women who were not included in the first trial (a second trial is still very much a possibility).
Over the past six years, Olympic preparations and conjecture have regularly delved into how the more controversial parts of Vancouver’s landscape would be a source of embarrassment or scrutiny that the city didn’t need – the Downtown Eastside, land claim disputes with British Columbia’s First Nation peoples, gang violence, our homelessness epidemic, etc.
Now, resolving one or all of these issues would have been ideal in a perfect world, but alas, systemic societal problems are not easily cleared up with a wave of the magic Olympic wand.
A discussion with some friends to gauge their reactions to the possibility of Masik’s paintings being displayed during the Olympics brought an emphatic round a negative responses. There is no reason to display such a dark chapter in Vancouver’s history, this is a tragedy that should not be promoted to the world, it is exploitation for the purpose of self-promotion, the paintings are depressing – all of these were amongst the variety of opinions I received.
But as I passionately argued, every city that hosts the Olympics has its warts, and quite frankly, the sweet has no context without the sour.
Make no mistake about it – these paintings are a beautiful and thoughtful tribute to a group of women who had their lives come to an end in a terrible way.
And as with any tribute, the more that people are given the opportunity to see and appreciate it, the more meaning and stature it inherits.
I believe that a mature city does all it can to put its best foot forward and makes genuine efforts to fix the ills that beset it, but the one thing it does not do is hide from its problems.
Which brings me to my questions:
Is a selection of these paintings appropriate for public consumption during the Olympics? Are the Olympics the wrong forum for such an exhibition?
Are paintings of Vancouver’s past tragedies better suited for a gallery?
Is a tribute of this nature needlessly promoting one of the darkest periods in the history of Vancouver?
I encourage readers to offer their viewpoints, as I am very interested to see whether I am a lone wolf in my support for this project’s potential for a worldwide audience.
And if no comments are offered, I hope that at the very least, this post initiated some thought on how we should showcase Vancouver, and whether a complete picture of the good, the bad and the ugly serves a purpose.
Vancouver Police Department headquarters would make a perfect place for one of these paintings.
ok heres my take:
1) They are not appropriate for the Olympics, when we are trying to bring people together for the aspects of sport, competition and human kind. The politics might be a place for politics, but for honouring murder victims, I am not so sure.
2) Not necessarily…street tributes could be a great idea….just not during the Olympics.
3) It isn’t needless at all it is about timing and that is what makes or breaks this kind of display in the minds of the public.
I like what you have to say…there is no reason to hide from our past.
I used to live in New York, and even after the Giuliania cleanup, people were not afraid to remember victims or tragedies publicly. The Olympics are a showcase for ALL of what Vancouver has to offer, and this is a fitting way to honour these poor women.
It is sad that people want to forget and keep hidden the darker parts of this city. It is precisely because we would rather avert our eyes and not talk about the societal problems inherent to our less fortunate population that the missing women where allowed to continue to dissapear for so long with out any police action.
If the Olympics are about bringing people together than they should be about bringing all people together no matter what there place in society. I think that by having memorials like this one would show that we care for those women and all women in our society and that there lives where important and had meaning. I think that it is appalling to want to shove the memory of these women in to the closet as some sort of blight on our citys image instead of paying tribute to there lives that where ended far too soon.