Falling Men, the latest exhibition by Canadian artist Shane Rhodes, was inspired by the 1940s and 1950s Canadian copyright-free comic book cowboys. The cowboys, as the exhibit’s title suggests, are depicted in a state of physical and moral falling. In Rhodes’ words, “these figures are free of context, free of mythology.” Branded into our memory, they leave lasting impressions and questions. How does art represent history/histories, and are these representations accurate? What detrimental impact did colonialism have, and how do we define settlement? How can art interrogate our past and, in a sense, edit these stories back into truth?
In an email, Rhodes said, “Originally created in a time when the cowboy was the uncomplicated hero of white settler stories, they are now relics of a desperate white supremacy and markers of the myths settlers told and continue to tell themselves to rewrite their history.”
I spoke with Rhodes about Falling Men and how art challenges our interpretation of history.
Falling Men at the Manx Pub. Photo: Shane Rhodes.
Why did you choose cowboys from comics that depicted the Wild West frontier as a theme for Falling Men?
I’ve been engaged over the past ten years, looking at different narratives around settlement and colonization, at the different aspects of narratives that settler societies tell themselves as a culture to justify the things that they’ve done. The Western is a key narrative that has been present since the 1800s. These seem like stories of the Old West, a period that has no relationship to today. Yet every year, we see brand-new Westerns being made. They are stories that still have significance for us because we are a settler society. Part of what the Western does is tell the story about how that settlement happened in a very favourable light and makes the cowboy out to be a hero on the frontier, one that brings justice to a lawless land or that is taking land. Land is always a key part of the Western. Playing with these images is important—not showing them as heroic cowboys, but showing them as they are, as falling men, knocking them off their pedestal. I think we see them more as what they are: past heroes that might be falling now or that are falling and have been falling for a long time.
How does Falling Men relate to Ottawa?
Ottawa, like any other place in Canada, has its own relationship to settlement and, as the nation’s capital, to colonization, to the British Crown, to the continuous efforts by the government in terms of reconciliation or residential schools or assimilation. This is what Ottawa represents for all of Canada. At First Nations in Alberta, or in BC, they don’t talk about the decisions of the federal government, they talk about Ottawa, and it becomes the representation for everything that has been done. Ottawa is the nexus of the colonial history of Canada. Being Eastern Canadians, we look at this imagery from the Wild West and say, well, that’s not here, that’s obviously something from Alberta or the prairies or the lawless West in the United States. But it has a real significance to Ottawa.
Falling Men at the Manx Pub. Photo: Shane Rhodes.
What influences your art and inspires your creativity?
The movement around pop art is interesting. A big part of this project was research. I read thousands of comic books to find these images. And that’s work that you don’t really see. Certainly, collage work, as I work a lot with found material. And then that’s part of what collage is: thinking about how you’re going to use that found material to create something new or put it in a new context. Indigenous artists in Canada and around the world are doing similar things. They look at previous representations of colonization or settlement. They challenge those narratives and see how to take them out of context. How can you make new art out of that? How can you use art right now to interrogate our past?
How would you describe the artistic movement that we are now living in? How does Falling Men fit into this construct/context/movement?
We’re in a period of chaos. There are so many different influences that people are working with right now and so many different movements. Some of the more popular movements of art are a lacuna around looking at things like colonization and settlement. You look at pop art produced by white guys in the 1870s, in the 1980s, or even right now, and it’s all about creating things that have no connection to the reality or to the history that we’ve come from, or that we’ve created here in North America. And for me, it’s that lack of introspection, that lack of interrogation… Something important is missing from a lot of contemporary art. That is the ability or that desire, even, to look at history and what is the foundation of the land we live on.
Falling Men at the Manx Pub. Photo: Shane Rhodes.
How are your artwork and poetry connected?
My poetry is very visual. I design my own books, and I do a lot of visual illustrations throughout. There’s not a huge boundary between visual art and poetry. It’s just a way of telling stories. Especially now, we’ve got at our disposal tools that make the integration of text and image easier. When you bring them together, you energize both mediums and have a new way of telling a story.
Why is the Manx your preferred venue?
I’m a poet and I’ve launched several books at the Manx, and it has had an omnipresent presence in Ottawa as a place for the arts and for artists. It’s a great place to show this to people who are interested in looking both at the images and thinking about what they mean.
Shane Rhodes’ Falling Men is on display at the Manx Pub (370 Elgin St) until early March. To learn more about the artist, visit his website.
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