STUDENTS' IDENTITIES & BACKGOUND Include a description of students’ identities as a Grade 6 class (including their cultural identities)
LEARNING GOALS With this lesson plan, you can engage in the curriculum’s Big Idea: “Exploring stories and other texts helps us understand ourselves and make connections to others and to the world.”
More about this artwork: Since 2016, Activist Portrait Series has celebrated activists’ culture and lives and has been a way of understanding the choices made — small and large — in making the world a better place. One where we all have self-determination. One where we all get to be free. Creating these large-scale portraits of activists, revolutionaries, and community mobilizers has been an act of reverence; a celebration of life and choice and of action(s). By using the methods and modes of painting and portraiture, community — specifically Black, Indigenous, Queer and Trans, the disability community — is documented as a lived reality and painted into art history. Lives are rendered visible through this large format and use of a style and medium previously reserved for dignitaries and wealthy patrons. The artistic tradition of painting is impacted by re-enforcing systemic structures such as class hierarchies, racism, and defining which humans are valuable. This body of work attempts to interrupt this process by re-entering the frame around “unintelligible bodies” — those on the margins.
VOCABULARY & CONCEPTS Trans Archive
BODY OF LESSON Introduce Syrus Marcus Ware
Syrus Marcus Ware is an artist, activist, and scholar. As a visual artist, Syrus works within the mediums of painting, installation and performance to challenge systemic oppression. Syrus’ work explores the spaces between and around identities; acting as provocations to our understandings of gender, sexuality and race. Ware is a trans man.
Syrus Marcus Ware says: “Art can help us to imagine things and picture a future that is hard to just articulate using words or even… direct action”.
Watch Queer (Self) Portraits: Syrus Marcus Ware (3:42 minutes) embedded above Ware states,
“What does it mean to paint or draw a portrait of a 12-foot tall black trans woman and have that sort of reverence that’s usually reserved for popes or university presidents?”
“I have chosen to create an entirely separate archive, a different set of ancestry of heroes I would like to see.”
“We spend so much time thinking about what’s wrong and we need to because there’s a lot that’s wrong that needs to change. But, in addition to pulling down walls, we also have to be planting the seeds. All of my work has been about watering the seeds.”
Reflection questions:
Consider Ware’s words in relation to the power of art to honour and represent individuals. Ware states that he is choosing to “create an entirely separate archive, a different set of heroes I would like to see.” Who are your heroes? What do they represent for you?
Why is it important to Syrus Marcus Ware to create large portraits of his heroes?
Why do you think it was difficult for Ware to find his heroes in art or in the archives?
Next, watch Syrus Marcus Ware - Transgender Archives Visitor (3:53 minutes) embedded above
The artist is speaking about how he is interested in archives as a fertile space to learn from and future activism in dramatic and exciting new ways. He came to the archives to learn more about trans people of colour in this part of Turtle Island (North America).
“it’s so important to have spaces like this, accessible and open to the public…there is a lack of intergenerational memory… places like this are important for people to come and find.”
Reflection questions:
Why did Syrus Marcus Ware go to the archives? What did it help him learn? How does he use this information in his artworks?