Scotiabank Nuit Blanche
Scotiabank Nuit Blanche took place on October 2, 2010, running for 12-hours, from sunset to sunrise, at locations across Toronto.
Scotiabank Nuit Blanche's mandate is to make contemporary art accessible to large audiences, while inspiring dialogue and engaging the public to examine its significance and impact on public space. Scotiabank Nuit Blanche is both a "high art" event and a free public event that encourages celebration and community engagement for all Torontonians and visitors alike.
As in previous years, Scotiabank Nuit Blanche installations transformed city spaces and neighbourhoods into temporary exhibitions, encouraging unusual or forbidden spaces to become sites of contemporary art, newly open for discovery and rediscovery. In addition to these sites, more traditional art centres, including galleries and museums, also opened their doors to the public.
CCIJ and Scotiabank Nuit Blanche
An estimated one million people living in Canada are said to have experienced torture and war trauma, such as the human rights abuses and crimes committed in Rwanda, Bosnia, Sri Lanka, Burma, Argentina, Chile, Iran and Iraq, to name just a few. Most survivors continue to suffer enormously, including after they have returned home or safely resettle in another country like Canada. At the same time, Canadian government figures indicate that as many as 2000 alleged war criminals and human rights abusers are now living in Canada, often in the same communities as their former victims.
CCIJ supported the 'Fragments and Sightings' installations in an attempt to raise public awareness of a significant issue that is largely invisible in Canada, despite its impacts on the lives of Canadians. The ultimate goal of CCIJ's participation in Scotiabank Nuit Blanche was to generate understanding of the need to support efforts by survivors to seek justice. CCIJ works to create a strong role for Canadian courts to contribute to global accountability efforts against individual perpetrators of mass atrocities.
The Installations: Sightings and Fragments
by Julie Stewart, Allan Kosmajac and Diane Misaljevic
www.fragments.ca
This large-scale photographic exhibit spoke to the trauma associated with victim/ perpetrator encounters that occur frequently within the GTA, including on mass transit vehicles. Photographic images of survivors' eyes were installed on TTC subway car and platform walls speaking to the potential (and real) encounters between survivors and perpetrators and conjuring the dread of anticipation many survivors experience long after they otherwise settle into a new life in Toronto.
Download the Poster
Fragments was a site-specific modern memorial to the tens of thousands of Toronto residents who have experienced atrocities. More than 500 object artifacts belonging to survivors including relevant articles of clothing, personal photographs, identity cards, prison or medical reports documenting violations, were displayed at Lamport stadium on King Street in a rowed queue of podiums. These objects represented the fragmented memories of survivors. A pre-recorded soundtrack of the spoken names of known murdered or disappeared persons played as looped audio on the stadiums sound system. The audio piece also incorporated read or written personal or representative testimonies of violations by a handful of survivors.
Artist Biographies
Julie Stewart is a lawyer and filmmaker, practicing in aboriginal law, human rights, and entertainment law. She holds a BFA in Film Studies from Ryerson University, and is currently completing her Masters of Law at the University of Toronto. She has received recognition for contributions as a documentary filmmaker and has a passionate interest in the use of the 'image' as a tool for justice. She is also a member of the Canadian Centre for International Justice's Toronto Working Group.
Diane Misaljevic is a multidisciplinary artist based in Toronto. She holds a BFA in Photography Studies from Ryerson University. Her installations and photographic work have appeared in various site-specific exhibitions in Canada, Bosnia, and Croatia. She has traveled to the former Yugoslavia numerous times, chronicling the aftermath of the civil war. Diane recently completed a new installation with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Toronto Arts Council titled Trespassing. This latest work reflects on the collective history of Sarajevo.
Allan Kosmajac came to Toronto from Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1991, and studied Photography at Ryerson University. His large-scale photographic works and multidisciplinary installations are testament to the destruction of cultural memory and a haunting visual archive of the siege of Sarajevo 1992-96. Allan has created several site-specific public works integrating art and architecture throughout the Balkans and Toronto. He recently completed a new installation titled Faith in Facts supported by the Ontario Arts Council.
