Am sending this email out tomorrow (do not have internet mail access
at work now) to 30 or so of my photo related friends in Canada. I hope
my somewhat impassioned begging will help earn some donations and money
for the dump families. I will have $500 of my own money, if I can some
how find another $500
somewhere, along with donated goods like childrens clothes, hats etc. I
will be sitting pretty heading back to the dump. $1000 plus goods would
be a nice gift for the "Families of the Dump", my friends in Mae Sot
Thailand.
In the email I also sent information on the 2 upcoming exhibitions and the artist talk. Hope this email does not piss people off, but sometimes you have to take a chance if you see it as an important opportunity to help others.
----------------------------------------
Hi everyone.
I thought I would send one final email with all the exhibition info I have along with a plea to PLEASE help those less fortunate than ourselves. I usually do not ask people for money-donations but the things I have seen in Asia have changed the way I feel about email etiquette. Some things are just too important and you have to push hard to help those in need. After seeing first hand in person, bare foot children run in garbage, people hungry, 10 year olds digging in garbage to raise money for their families, you do not worry about hurting the feelings of rich Canadian friends by asking them for help. I feel radicalized on this subject. So here is my donation plea, I hope it has a positive effect and we can together help the families and the children working the Mae Sot Thailand garbage dump.
Video of my first trips to the dump back in 2013.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBJEVN8yh9Q
Video of some people playing with my view camera
https://vimeo.com/150754772
Another old video from 2013
https://vimeo.com/91131638
Another old video from 2013 with some photos
https://vimeo.com/90368751
Video from 2015 I think
https://vimeo.com/167753575
Another old 2013 video with photos and music
https://vimeo.com/74904611
I return to the “Families of the Dump” in October of 2017, will stay there for 6 months making photographs and making my first documentary film (on the life of one of the extended families). I am going to be buying food, rubber boots, headlamps (for night work) and also donating to a local school as well as helping the dump children buy school uniforms and pay school tuitions. The money and or donations (used toys, hats, children’s clothing) I take with me to Thailand will be given directly to the families by me, or I will transfer them through a group working directly with the families that I have grown to trust. They do good honest work there, have seen them helping people in the dump for the last 4 years. A bit of background: I have been visiting, photographing, donating by myself and with this group since 2013. I have probably done over 50 day long dump visits over that time, multiple trips over multiple years. I now have many friends there, have photographed extensively over a long period of time. The growth of babies to children, children to young teens, a wedding, family outings, the life experience of those living in the garbage.
I am asking for a donation from you of money-small toys-children’s clothing and hats. With $10 I can buy and give 2 pairs of boots (cheap Chinese made) to people who work the garbage. I can buy rice that I leave with the mother of the dump shack to feed her family, I can help a child go to school with tuition fees or school uniforms. The price of 1 dinner out in Canada can help 2 or 3 large families in the garbage dump. Please, please consider donating some goods or some money to help those in need. We can all make the world a better place if we join in and contribute to the lives of the forgotten. You do not have to give lots, a child’s toy, old baby clothes, $5, $10, $20 everything makes a difference, everything can help. I will take 2 – 50lb check in bags loaded with photographic and film making tools but any room I have left over I will used for donated goods. The money I will use to buy things in Mae Sot Thailand where the families live. I can strike the best deals after negotiating prices at the local markets. I can speak a fair amount of Thai to negotiate, and I also have several contacts there to help deliver food etc. to the dump which is outside of the main town.
Here are a ton of links to donation stories I have written on my photo blog over the years. PLEASE TAKE THE TIME TO READ SOME OF THEM. Giving can do so much good for the soul, over the years what I have done for the families has helped me 10 fold inside my own heart.
http://gerryyaum.blogspot.ca/2015/12/a-cry-of-joy.html
http://gerryyaum.blogspot.ca/2016/05/pink-boots.html
http://gerryyaum.blogspot.ca/2016/05/completely-exhausting.html
http://gerryyaum.blogspot.ca/2015/12/sky-blue-school-donation-day.html
http://gerryyaum.blogspot.ca/2015/11/first-food-donation-buys.html
http://gerryyaum.blogspot.ca/2016/03/555.html
http://gerryyaum.blogspot.ca/2016/03/5-pairs-of-used-rubber-saftey-boots.html
http://gerryyaum.blogspot.ca/2015/12/major-donation-day.html
http://gerryyaum.blogspot.ca/2016/04/todays-donations.html
http://gerryyaum.blogspot.ca/2016/04/more-requests.html
http://gerryyaum.blogspot.ca/2016/03/am-speechless.html
http://gerryyaum.blogspot.ca/2015/12/last-dump-donations.html
http://gerryyaum.blogspot.ca/2017/04/box-of-toys.html
http://gerryyaum.blogspot.ca/2016/03/5-more-pairs-of-safety-rubber-boots-to.html
As for me, I plan on donating upwards of $500. I am getting a $400 artist fee for the “Trumpet” show listed below, and possibly a $100 shipping credit (am begging for that money now). I am also going to get money for an artist talk for the “Healing Process” exhibition, that money is being donated to the dump children as well as a gift from my father. I figure it should all add up to $500+ in help for the families. This is a great thing because it shows how photography, especially social documentary photography can do some real good. In the past several people (including some on this emails mailing list) have told me that photography does not matter, cannot help etc. I felt at the time that was wrong, and it was, the money from the showing of the photos is going to go back to the families in the photos, beautiful baby, so beautiful!!! Let’s show those naysayers that we as photographers and artists can make a positive difference in the lives of others. Let’s help the “Families of the Dump” together J.
Ok end of donation plea. I did my best..
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is the information for the 2 exhibitions and the artist talk. I hope to see you there.
“TRUMPET EXHIBITION” Opening Night June 3 at 8pm. The show runs a month. The exhibition is at Latitude 53 gallery. I am the only Edmonton artist, the rest are from Calgary and Lethbridge. There are also CARFAC activities happening during the day and that weekend. Will be showing 5 20x24 fiber paper darkroom sized prints in 26x30 sized frames.
Here are directions to the Gallery
HOURS: Latitude 53 is open to the general public Tuesday to Friday 11am to 7pm, and Saturdays 11–5 pm.
Thanks to the support of our members, Latitude 53 admission is free.
ADDRESS: 10242 - 106 Street Edmonton, Alberta
DIRECTIONS: Latitude 53 Contemporary Visual Culture is located on 106 Street and between 102 Avenue and 103 Avenue on the West side of the street in downtown Edmonton; we are between NorQuest College and Metro Billiards. We are only two blocks north of the Corona LRT Station and two blocks west of the Bay (104 Street) Station and close to bus routes travelling to all parts of the city.
http://gerryyaum.blogspot.ca/2017/05/the-artists-in-trumpet.html
Trumpet
"With the pride of the artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists the small trumpet of your defiance."
Norman Mailer
The exhibition Trumpet is framed by defiance: a reaction to the political climate in which we find ourselves and our need to be heard. Each artist shown use their work as a megaphone: to give warning, to speak out, to increase the power of their message.
Trumpet sought work by Alberta Artists who use their work to question new political realities, on a local, national, and international scale, and who may have a unique perspective that is under-represented or unrecognized within current exhibition and curatorial practices. The six selected artists - Barbara Amos, Lee Deranger, Kazumi Marthiensen, M.E.D.I.U.M., Alice Schoenberg and Gerry Yaum - question the world order in some way. Their art trumpets. It can be a loud lament about an issue, a call to action, a direct challenge to assumptions and oppressive power structures, a vehicle to further understanding or a way to redefine the world around us.
Barbara Amos raises questions, stimulates new conversations and possibly new actions; she offers a new way for people to engage with the world. Since establishing a studio in the Crowsnest Pass area of Alberta, Amos has sought out and engaged with the environmental groups that are fighting to preserve the trees on the eastern slopes of the Canadian Rockies - an area experiencing the world’s highest rate of deforestation. Amos collaborates with others “in the field” to make political environmental statements. In the gallery, Amos use concepts of beauty (a moment of receptivity) to open us up to new connections and to an exchange of ideas.
Lee Deranger is a First Nations artist based out of Calgary, whose politics are at the heart of her creative practice. Deranger’s “Reconcile This” confronts a 268 year old “scalp law” that is still on the books in Nova Scotia. She offers the viewer three scalps: one for the British, one for Canada and one for Nova Scotia. Created after 2015’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and exhibited here in the year of Canada’s 150th birthday, Deranger’s “Reconcile This” challenges privileged narratives and assumptions, and reveals the many blind spots in the dominant cultural discourse regarding the relationship between Canada’s colonial history and First Nations and Metis lives and history. This work slaps the viewer across the face; the slap is totally justified.
Kazumi Marthiensen has been exploring and questioning the environmental destruction and crime arising from the establishment of the American military base in Okinawa, Japan. Marthiensen recognizes and addresses the lack of understanding of the post-war experience in Okinawa by offering us a written explanation, a didactic statement that is all the more poignant for its simplicity. This simplicity and attention to detail extends to the work itself, and presents an arresting testament to what is (still) happening on this small island 755 kilometers south of Nagasaki. This work has a stillness, a silence about it, that underscores this under-told story, and exposes the complexities surrounding the defeat of Japan in the Second World War and the resulting American colonialism.
M.E.D.I.U.M. (Metaphysical Explorations, Divination, and Investigations Utilizing Magic) is a Lethbridge-based quartet comprised of Frater Tham, Madame Symona, Char Latan, and Dr. I. M. Auftenhazie. The performative personas are adopted by the quartet to subvert the notion of artistic “ego,” and take “authority,” out of the equation when making art. The collective is very much engaged in the world’s political issues, and use allegory, symbolism and magic to explore (and subvert) notions of what real or concrete truth is. The video and artifacts “Reduce, Reuse, Re-psychic” present us with an alternative “ritual curse and healing narrative” to heal the planet and the creatures upon it, including humans. M.E.D.I.U.M. provides us with new ways to both relate and react to our current political reality, and seek lasting change for the better.
Alice Schoenberg uses her body to create art that attempts to simultaneously divert and analyze the male gaze. As a queer female artist, Schoenberg sexualizes the representation of her embodied self, but retains control of this sexualization. “Miss Dressup,” employs a childlike aesthetic to both expose and subvert the common cultural narratives around sexualized female bodies. These versions of self are not her - they are fragments of version of stories about what it means to inhabit a queer female shape that wishes to define itself on its own terms. Schoenberg’s art provokes a conversation about power, identity, control, sexuality, and how these forces impact our bodies.
Gerry Yaum is a traditional documentary photographer who works outside his culture and his comfort zone. This place of discomfort allows Yaum to do more than observe his subject; he strives to see them on their own terms. By the second or third visit to a place, Yaum notes, the people he photographs “know you are no longer a tourist.” Like the artists in M.E.D.I.U.M., Yaum has adopted a ‘persona’ in an attempt to focus greater attention on the issues and ideas conveyed through his images (Yaum is a pseudonym). As records of lived experience, “the Families of the Dump” series presents a deeply uncomfortable vision of the world, the intention of which Yaum describes as wanting to “slap [the viewer] out of their indifference.” People living in ‘first world’ countries will likely never experience the extreme poverty captured in these photographs. The intent here is to provoke a level of discomfort that will lead us to question not only the present world order, but our own complicity in it.
Trumpet player Christian Scott describes his instrument as a political weapon; "I don't just play the trumpet because it's something that resonates with me: I play the trumpet because it's a means to help free a lot of people that ain't free." Like Scott, to get their message out, the artists of Trumpet ask us to question what we hold to be true. They force us to listen. They are Advocates, Activists, and Artists.
Chris W. C.
May 2017
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
”Healing Process” Opening Night August 3 at 6pm. The show runs a month. The exhibition is at the AGSA, Art Gallery of St. Albert. I am the only Edmonton artist. One of the other people is from the USA, and the third of our group is from BC. Will be showing 7 20x24 fiber paper darkroom sized prints in 26x30 and 28x32 sized frames.
Art Gallery of St Albert
19 Perron Street
St Albert, AB T8N 1E5
P: 780-460-4310
F: 780-460-9537
ahfgallery@artsandheritage.ca
Regular Hours:
Tuesday to Saturday: 10 am – 5 pm
Thursday: 10 am – 8 pm
Admission: Free
http://gerryyaum.blogspot.ca/2017/01/art-gallery-of-saint-albert-agsa-2017.html
Healing Process
The creative process is a healer. Healing Process brings together three artists who each use their artistic practice to explore the illnesses of their loved ones, to shed light on treatment, pain and tragedy, and reconcile their own emotions and understanding of their experiences.
Social documentary photography Gerry Yaum, seeks to tell the stories of forgotten and marginalized people. His deeply personal series My Fathers Last Days documents the final 13 months of his father's battle with pancreatic cancer. Through a series of poignant black and white portraits, Yaum attempts to understand and capture his father's struggle and create a memorial for him.
British Columbia-based artist Sima Elizabeth Shefrin's innovative series the Embroided Cancer Comic Chronicles her journey with her husband following his prostate cancer diagnosis. The embroidered-fabric pieces focus on the couple's day-to-day and life changing events as acquiesce and experience the unexpected impacts of cancer treatment.
Darian Goldin Stahl's intriguing installation, MRI IN USE includes a series of life-sized suspended hospital gown prints. These transparent forms seemingly hover between the gallery space and the viewer. The print-based installation emerged from an ongoing collaboration between the artist and her sister---a clinical bioethicist diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Stahl's work offers a glimpse into the experience of navigating a medical diagnosis and living chronic illness.
------------------------------------------------------------
The Artist talk for the for “Healing Process” is going to happen on August 31. The date thou is not locked in and might change. If you want to attend please email me and I will give you the up to date info when I have it, or keep an eye on the blog, I will post it there as well.
Thanks for taking the time to read my very long email. Together we can work together to make this world a better place, let’s try to do that together as artists and people of good hearts and good conscience.
Best Wishes Gerry
www.gerryyaum.blogspot.com
PS…I opened up a second blog for my film work only. The idea being when I try to submit my documentary film (the life of a dump family) to film festivals etc. I will have a link I can send the committees, juries that details the process of making the movie. Please keep an eye on that blog as well. I will be doing daily updates of my life in Thailand making photos, the film and doing the donation work. If you give, you can see the people you helped, face to face and in person. I will give detailed accounts of how everything donated is used.
www.gerryyaumfilms.blogspot.com
In the email I also sent information on the 2 upcoming exhibitions and the artist talk. Hope this email does not piss people off, but sometimes you have to take a chance if you see it as an important opportunity to help others.
----------------------------------------
Hi everyone.
I thought I would send one final email with all the exhibition info I have along with a plea to PLEASE help those less fortunate than ourselves. I usually do not ask people for money-donations but the things I have seen in Asia have changed the way I feel about email etiquette. Some things are just too important and you have to push hard to help those in need. After seeing first hand in person, bare foot children run in garbage, people hungry, 10 year olds digging in garbage to raise money for their families, you do not worry about hurting the feelings of rich Canadian friends by asking them for help. I feel radicalized on this subject. So here is my donation plea, I hope it has a positive effect and we can together help the families and the children working the Mae Sot Thailand garbage dump.
Video of my first trips to the dump back in 2013.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBJEVN8yh9Q
Video of some people playing with my view camera
https://vimeo.com/150754772
Another old video from 2013
https://vimeo.com/91131638
Another old video from 2013 with some photos
https://vimeo.com/90368751
Video from 2015 I think
https://vimeo.com/167753575
Another old 2013 video with photos and music
https://vimeo.com/74904611
I return to the “Families of the Dump” in October of 2017, will stay there for 6 months making photographs and making my first documentary film (on the life of one of the extended families). I am going to be buying food, rubber boots, headlamps (for night work) and also donating to a local school as well as helping the dump children buy school uniforms and pay school tuitions. The money and or donations (used toys, hats, children’s clothing) I take with me to Thailand will be given directly to the families by me, or I will transfer them through a group working directly with the families that I have grown to trust. They do good honest work there, have seen them helping people in the dump for the last 4 years. A bit of background: I have been visiting, photographing, donating by myself and with this group since 2013. I have probably done over 50 day long dump visits over that time, multiple trips over multiple years. I now have many friends there, have photographed extensively over a long period of time. The growth of babies to children, children to young teens, a wedding, family outings, the life experience of those living in the garbage.
I am asking for a donation from you of money-small toys-children’s clothing and hats. With $10 I can buy and give 2 pairs of boots (cheap Chinese made) to people who work the garbage. I can buy rice that I leave with the mother of the dump shack to feed her family, I can help a child go to school with tuition fees or school uniforms. The price of 1 dinner out in Canada can help 2 or 3 large families in the garbage dump. Please, please consider donating some goods or some money to help those in need. We can all make the world a better place if we join in and contribute to the lives of the forgotten. You do not have to give lots, a child’s toy, old baby clothes, $5, $10, $20 everything makes a difference, everything can help. I will take 2 – 50lb check in bags loaded with photographic and film making tools but any room I have left over I will used for donated goods. The money I will use to buy things in Mae Sot Thailand where the families live. I can strike the best deals after negotiating prices at the local markets. I can speak a fair amount of Thai to negotiate, and I also have several contacts there to help deliver food etc. to the dump which is outside of the main town.
Here are a ton of links to donation stories I have written on my photo blog over the years. PLEASE TAKE THE TIME TO READ SOME OF THEM. Giving can do so much good for the soul, over the years what I have done for the families has helped me 10 fold inside my own heart.
http://gerryyaum.blogspot.ca/2015/12/a-cry-of-joy.html
http://gerryyaum.blogspot.ca/2016/05/pink-boots.html
http://gerryyaum.blogspot.ca/2016/05/completely-exhausting.html
http://gerryyaum.blogspot.ca/2015/12/sky-blue-school-donation-day.html
http://gerryyaum.blogspot.ca/2015/11/first-food-donation-buys.html
http://gerryyaum.blogspot.ca/2016/03/555.html
http://gerryyaum.blogspot.ca/2016/03/5-pairs-of-used-rubber-saftey-boots.html
http://gerryyaum.blogspot.ca/2015/12/major-donation-day.html
http://gerryyaum.blogspot.ca/2016/04/todays-donations.html
http://gerryyaum.blogspot.ca/2016/04/more-requests.html
http://gerryyaum.blogspot.ca/2016/03/am-speechless.html
http://gerryyaum.blogspot.ca/2015/12/last-dump-donations.html
http://gerryyaum.blogspot.ca/2017/04/box-of-toys.html
http://gerryyaum.blogspot.ca/2016/03/5-more-pairs-of-safety-rubber-boots-to.html
As for me, I plan on donating upwards of $500. I am getting a $400 artist fee for the “Trumpet” show listed below, and possibly a $100 shipping credit (am begging for that money now). I am also going to get money for an artist talk for the “Healing Process” exhibition, that money is being donated to the dump children as well as a gift from my father. I figure it should all add up to $500+ in help for the families. This is a great thing because it shows how photography, especially social documentary photography can do some real good. In the past several people (including some on this emails mailing list) have told me that photography does not matter, cannot help etc. I felt at the time that was wrong, and it was, the money from the showing of the photos is going to go back to the families in the photos, beautiful baby, so beautiful!!! Let’s show those naysayers that we as photographers and artists can make a positive difference in the lives of others. Let’s help the “Families of the Dump” together J.
Ok end of donation plea. I did my best..
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is the information for the 2 exhibitions and the artist talk. I hope to see you there.
“TRUMPET EXHIBITION” Opening Night June 3 at 8pm. The show runs a month. The exhibition is at Latitude 53 gallery. I am the only Edmonton artist, the rest are from Calgary and Lethbridge. There are also CARFAC activities happening during the day and that weekend. Will be showing 5 20x24 fiber paper darkroom sized prints in 26x30 sized frames.
Here are directions to the Gallery
HOURS: Latitude 53 is open to the general public Tuesday to Friday 11am to 7pm, and Saturdays 11–5 pm.
Thanks to the support of our members, Latitude 53 admission is free.
ADDRESS: 10242 - 106 Street Edmonton, Alberta
DIRECTIONS: Latitude 53 Contemporary Visual Culture is located on 106 Street and between 102 Avenue and 103 Avenue on the West side of the street in downtown Edmonton; we are between NorQuest College and Metro Billiards. We are only two blocks north of the Corona LRT Station and two blocks west of the Bay (104 Street) Station and close to bus routes travelling to all parts of the city.
http://gerryyaum.blogspot.ca/2017/05/the-artists-in-trumpet.html
Trumpet
"With the pride of the artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists the small trumpet of your defiance."
Norman Mailer
The exhibition Trumpet is framed by defiance: a reaction to the political climate in which we find ourselves and our need to be heard. Each artist shown use their work as a megaphone: to give warning, to speak out, to increase the power of their message.
Trumpet sought work by Alberta Artists who use their work to question new political realities, on a local, national, and international scale, and who may have a unique perspective that is under-represented or unrecognized within current exhibition and curatorial practices. The six selected artists - Barbara Amos, Lee Deranger, Kazumi Marthiensen, M.E.D.I.U.M., Alice Schoenberg and Gerry Yaum - question the world order in some way. Their art trumpets. It can be a loud lament about an issue, a call to action, a direct challenge to assumptions and oppressive power structures, a vehicle to further understanding or a way to redefine the world around us.
Barbara Amos raises questions, stimulates new conversations and possibly new actions; she offers a new way for people to engage with the world. Since establishing a studio in the Crowsnest Pass area of Alberta, Amos has sought out and engaged with the environmental groups that are fighting to preserve the trees on the eastern slopes of the Canadian Rockies - an area experiencing the world’s highest rate of deforestation. Amos collaborates with others “in the field” to make political environmental statements. In the gallery, Amos use concepts of beauty (a moment of receptivity) to open us up to new connections and to an exchange of ideas.
Lee Deranger is a First Nations artist based out of Calgary, whose politics are at the heart of her creative practice. Deranger’s “Reconcile This” confronts a 268 year old “scalp law” that is still on the books in Nova Scotia. She offers the viewer three scalps: one for the British, one for Canada and one for Nova Scotia. Created after 2015’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and exhibited here in the year of Canada’s 150th birthday, Deranger’s “Reconcile This” challenges privileged narratives and assumptions, and reveals the many blind spots in the dominant cultural discourse regarding the relationship between Canada’s colonial history and First Nations and Metis lives and history. This work slaps the viewer across the face; the slap is totally justified.
Kazumi Marthiensen has been exploring and questioning the environmental destruction and crime arising from the establishment of the American military base in Okinawa, Japan. Marthiensen recognizes and addresses the lack of understanding of the post-war experience in Okinawa by offering us a written explanation, a didactic statement that is all the more poignant for its simplicity. This simplicity and attention to detail extends to the work itself, and presents an arresting testament to what is (still) happening on this small island 755 kilometers south of Nagasaki. This work has a stillness, a silence about it, that underscores this under-told story, and exposes the complexities surrounding the defeat of Japan in the Second World War and the resulting American colonialism.
M.E.D.I.U.M. (Metaphysical Explorations, Divination, and Investigations Utilizing Magic) is a Lethbridge-based quartet comprised of Frater Tham, Madame Symona, Char Latan, and Dr. I. M. Auftenhazie. The performative personas are adopted by the quartet to subvert the notion of artistic “ego,” and take “authority,” out of the equation when making art. The collective is very much engaged in the world’s political issues, and use allegory, symbolism and magic to explore (and subvert) notions of what real or concrete truth is. The video and artifacts “Reduce, Reuse, Re-psychic” present us with an alternative “ritual curse and healing narrative” to heal the planet and the creatures upon it, including humans. M.E.D.I.U.M. provides us with new ways to both relate and react to our current political reality, and seek lasting change for the better.
Alice Schoenberg uses her body to create art that attempts to simultaneously divert and analyze the male gaze. As a queer female artist, Schoenberg sexualizes the representation of her embodied self, but retains control of this sexualization. “Miss Dressup,” employs a childlike aesthetic to both expose and subvert the common cultural narratives around sexualized female bodies. These versions of self are not her - they are fragments of version of stories about what it means to inhabit a queer female shape that wishes to define itself on its own terms. Schoenberg’s art provokes a conversation about power, identity, control, sexuality, and how these forces impact our bodies.
Gerry Yaum is a traditional documentary photographer who works outside his culture and his comfort zone. This place of discomfort allows Yaum to do more than observe his subject; he strives to see them on their own terms. By the second or third visit to a place, Yaum notes, the people he photographs “know you are no longer a tourist.” Like the artists in M.E.D.I.U.M., Yaum has adopted a ‘persona’ in an attempt to focus greater attention on the issues and ideas conveyed through his images (Yaum is a pseudonym). As records of lived experience, “the Families of the Dump” series presents a deeply uncomfortable vision of the world, the intention of which Yaum describes as wanting to “slap [the viewer] out of their indifference.” People living in ‘first world’ countries will likely never experience the extreme poverty captured in these photographs. The intent here is to provoke a level of discomfort that will lead us to question not only the present world order, but our own complicity in it.
Trumpet player Christian Scott describes his instrument as a political weapon; "I don't just play the trumpet because it's something that resonates with me: I play the trumpet because it's a means to help free a lot of people that ain't free." Like Scott, to get their message out, the artists of Trumpet ask us to question what we hold to be true. They force us to listen. They are Advocates, Activists, and Artists.
Chris W. C.
May 2017
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
”Healing Process” Opening Night August 3 at 6pm. The show runs a month. The exhibition is at the AGSA, Art Gallery of St. Albert. I am the only Edmonton artist. One of the other people is from the USA, and the third of our group is from BC. Will be showing 7 20x24 fiber paper darkroom sized prints in 26x30 and 28x32 sized frames.
Art Gallery of St Albert
19 Perron Street
St Albert, AB T8N 1E5
P: 780-460-4310
F: 780-460-9537
ahfgallery@artsandheritage.ca
Regular Hours:
Tuesday to Saturday: 10 am – 5 pm
Thursday: 10 am – 8 pm
Admission: Free
http://gerryyaum.blogspot.ca/2017/01/art-gallery-of-saint-albert-agsa-2017.html
Healing Process
The creative process is a healer. Healing Process brings together three artists who each use their artistic practice to explore the illnesses of their loved ones, to shed light on treatment, pain and tragedy, and reconcile their own emotions and understanding of their experiences.
Social documentary photography Gerry Yaum, seeks to tell the stories of forgotten and marginalized people. His deeply personal series My Fathers Last Days documents the final 13 months of his father's battle with pancreatic cancer. Through a series of poignant black and white portraits, Yaum attempts to understand and capture his father's struggle and create a memorial for him.
British Columbia-based artist Sima Elizabeth Shefrin's innovative series the Embroided Cancer Comic Chronicles her journey with her husband following his prostate cancer diagnosis. The embroidered-fabric pieces focus on the couple's day-to-day and life changing events as acquiesce and experience the unexpected impacts of cancer treatment.
Darian Goldin Stahl's intriguing installation, MRI IN USE includes a series of life-sized suspended hospital gown prints. These transparent forms seemingly hover between the gallery space and the viewer. The print-based installation emerged from an ongoing collaboration between the artist and her sister---a clinical bioethicist diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Stahl's work offers a glimpse into the experience of navigating a medical diagnosis and living chronic illness.
------------------------------------------------------------
The Artist talk for the for “Healing Process” is going to happen on August 31. The date thou is not locked in and might change. If you want to attend please email me and I will give you the up to date info when I have it, or keep an eye on the blog, I will post it there as well.
Thanks for taking the time to read my very long email. Together we can work together to make this world a better place, let’s try to do that together as artists and people of good hearts and good conscience.
Best Wishes Gerry
www.gerryyaum.blogspot.com
PS…I opened up a second blog for my film work only. The idea being when I try to submit my documentary film (the life of a dump family) to film festivals etc. I will have a link I can send the committees, juries that details the process of making the movie. Please keep an eye on that blog as well. I will be doing daily updates of my life in Thailand making photos, the film and doing the donation work. If you give, you can see the people you helped, face to face and in person. I will give detailed accounts of how everything donated is used.
www.gerryyaumfilms.blogspot.com
