Confronting racism: Photos challenge negative stereotypes

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This article was published 20/03/2015 (3857 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For one night only, KC Adams’ anti-racism campaign had a pulse.

The nearly two dozen models who posed for her Perception portrait series were on hand Thursday for its official launch in the foyer of Manitoba Hydro’s downtown headquarters. It’s hoped they’ll give the campaign a life of its own and shed light on Winnipeg’s racism troubles.

The goal is to counter common media portrayals of aboriginal people — as a burden on taxpayers, as victims of crime and poverty, as homeless panhandlers — and instead show them as the normal, middle-class people that many Métis, First Nations and Inuit people are.

Each model has two pictures — one where they’re not smiling accompanied by a negative stereotype, and another where they’re smiling and described as mothers, fathers and business people who are focused on the community.

“This is a huge day for me. It’s very exciting. I didn’t expect this kind of turnout,” said Adams as she surveyed a crowd of about 250 people, most of them non-aboriginal.

“I want everybody who was here to go home and talk to their neighbours, their friends and their families about how we can make this a better city and open this dialogue.”

During the next six weeks, her portraits will be omnipresent downtown thanks to local businesses, the city and non-profit agencies. They’re going to be featured on billboards, on Winnipeg Transit buses and in more than a dozen storefront windows, including in Portage Place Shopping Centre. It’s on Winnipeg Jets game nights when they’ll be the most prominent as they’ll be projected onto the sides of several buildings near the MTS Centre.

One of the models, Leah Gazan, who teaches at the University of Winnipeg, said perhaps the most powerful aspect of Perceptions is it names racism and offers a creative way to start a much-needed discussion about the age-old problem.

“Our secrets keep us sick. When you pretend that something’s not there, it perpetuates a behaviour, but it’s silent. I think by naming it, it’s forcing the discussion out and it’s forcing the city to find solutions to something that we’ve been dealing with for, well, certainly my whole lifetime,” said Gazan, a member of the Lakota First Nation in Saskatchewan

Adams’ methodology was to capture her subjects’ faces as she first insulted them and then asked them to think about their spouses or children.

“I chose to say those racial slurs and get their initial response. They didn’t see it coming… I just told them to look into the camera and think about my words,” she said.

“Then I incorporated their family and told them to think about cuddling with their husband or the first time they kissed their wife. That got the most genuine smile.”

National Leasing is one of the businesses to back Adams. It’s made a financial donation and is displaying some of the portraits in its art gallery. It has invited Adams to speak to its employees.

“It’s an important conversation to have, given the Maclean’s article (that dubbed Winnipeg Canada’s most racist city last fall). We’re really excited to take a stand,” manager Jani Sorensen said. “We believe that Winnipeg has something amazing to offer all of Canada and North America. As a business, it’s our responsibility to make that happen through supporting initiatives like Perceptions.”

A reputation as a racist city doesn’t help anybody, whether it’s local businesses, families or tourism.

“I think a lot of people are saying ‘enough is enough. Let’s take a stand and do something about this,’ ” she says.

Adams, who is Cree and Ojibwa, is under no illusions her artwork is a silver bullet to what ails her city. “I think this is just the start of us tackling these issues,” she said.

geoff.kirbyson@freepress.mb.ca

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