Art of the Deals

As Guy Plamondon, the Canadian cultural affairs consul in New York City, told the Ottawa Citizen, “Americans don’t know us as well as we know them.” Plamondon made the seemingly obvious remark in April 1981 as he launched a new initiative in the Lower Manhattan neighbourhood of SoHo. Known as 49th Parallel, the federally funded centre would feature experimental art, video installations, and even performances. The gallery closed in June 1992, having been plagued by skepticism. Was it a wise use of taxpayers’ money? Was it telling the right stories about Canada? Did anyone care? Indeed, Americans did not seem to know much more about their northern neighbour after a decade of exhibitions, save for perhaps an elite group of New Yorkers. Many other attempts to “show that we have people who compare easily” to their southern counterparts yielded equally slim results.

The use of art to explain Canada and to strengthen its culture was not new, of course. Ottawa had used artists and their works as sword and shield over the decades: sword to carve out an identity and shield to protect us from the American onslaught that surged over the airwaves and across screens. But the reliance on artists as ambassadors seemed especially urgent during the divisive and fraught free trade negotiations of the 1980s. The costs of embracing the United States in a big‑hug deal could be fatal, opponents warned. If tariffs and protective barriers were removed and if markets were opened, Canada could lose what made it unique and, ultimately, sovereign.

Sarah E. K. Smith, who holds a Canada Research Chair in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at Western University, in Ontario, examines the entwined themes of late twentieth-century trade agreements, diplomacy, and artistic production with Trading on Art: Cultural Diplomacy and Free Trade in North America. She explores how Canada presented itself to the U.S. and then navigated an even more complex relationship that included Mexico, after the North American Free Trade Agreement came into effect in 1994. Free trade brought the three nations together, but culture conjoins hearts and minds. Art is grounded in empathy, and the nuances of foreign relations, proponents of artistic soft power believed, would be made less thorny by helping the partners to know one another.

In this timely book, Smith includes numerous case studies to “show that the Canadian government espoused an ambiguous position” through cultural diplomacy. “Even as it insisted that cultural products be excluded from free trade negotiations,” she writes, “it simultaneously mobilized cultural products (including visual art) to project nationalism, strengthen ties with the United States and Mexico, and communicate trade relationships to the public.” Smith’s study would have been strengthened by a framing chapter to situate cultural diplomacy efforts under Brian Mulroney and his predecessors. How did officials forge a coherent strategy and then unleash it across sectors, for example? Without this background, Smith’s discussion is unmoored at times. It’s easy to forget why the artists she presents have relatively limited name recognition and are not the Group of Seven, Painters Eleven, or the Automatistes. And why she considers genres that are marginal at best, including video art.

While the medium was hot, responsive, and easy to produce, little video art from the period has stood the test of time. Among the best works is Lisa Steele and Kim Tomczak’s White Dawn, from 1988. In the playful nine-minute video, an American wakes up to find that Canadian “cultural imperialism” has infected his country and his life, with Bruce Cockburn and Anne Murray ruling the radio. It is a cute but not earth-shattering concept that reminds us of the ubiquity of American media. Yet the inclusion of White Dawn detracts from Smith’s thesis that cultural diplomacy helped to promote “continental integration in free trade’s wake.” Steele and Tomczak, like many other artists, were actively warning against closer ties with the U.S.

Smith is on more solid ground when assessing the shifting relationship between Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. In exhibitions mounted in Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, and elsewhere, Frida Kahlo stole the show. As the star in a wave of “Fridamania,” she raised the profile of Mexican heritage. A strength of this book is Smith’s material on Mexico and how the country positioned itself as a North American nation through trade and culture. “Mexico has switched continents,” quipped one journalist. Curators and administrators alike aimed to promote connection, as revealed through various policy documents and statements that Smith has nicely mined. 

Less present here are the voices of artists reacting to how their works were deployed in campaigns of cultural persuasion. The anti-imperialist and anti-materialist Kahlo might have snarled at how her likeness and paintings were used to foster trade and diplomacy, though such is the fate of artists whose works live on long after them.

If cultural diplomacy is about shaping one’s narrative with others, Canadian diplomats might again reinvest in the long game of supporting all types of artists as the country reels from the current trade war. Trade agreements were updated in 2018 when Donald Trump demanded changes to NAFTA in his first term as president. At the time, many were staggered by the bullying. Now Trump derides as a terrible deal the Canada–United States–Mexico Agreement that his first administration negotiated.

In an age of vulgarity, bad faith, threats, and lies, Canadians have not immediately turned to artists to tell the Americans who we are. Flags are flying, elbows are raised, and pride is on display, on and off the ice. Yet Ottawa’s all-of-government approach in fending off the U.S. seems to be missing a cultural arm, or even a finger. While the achievements of cultural diplomacy are difficult to assess, Smith reminds us that it is another means of engaging Americans and convincing them that Canada is an autonomous nation with its own culture beyond beavers, health care, and poutine. Artists can help share our story in ways that supersede the almighty dollar — as truth tellers who reveal the complexity of what it means to be Canadian.