Garry Neill Kennedy: Ya Ummi, Ya Ummi …

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Garry Neill Kennedy, "Ya Ummi, Ya Ummi...," 2018

installation detail

The thirteen large-scale canvases of Garry Neill Kennedy’s Ya Ummi, Ya Ummi ... are the artist’s response to the power of the state over the life of a young man and serve to highlight the injustices that were at the centre of this young man’s arrest, detainment, and interrogation. This monumental work runs 28 metres (91 feet) from end to end. Individual letters are rendered in Chisel font and painted in sober greys and black using latex paint.

In 2002, Omar Khadr, a Canadian, was arrested and charged in the death of U.S. Army Sergeant Christopher Speer and the wounding of U.S. Army Sergeant Layne Morris following a firefight in Afghanistan; he was subsequently taken to the American military prison base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. During his interrogation by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the then-15-year-old Khadr repeated the words “ya ummi, ya ummi”, meaning “oh mother, oh mother” in Arabic. In 2010, under duress, Khadr confessed to the charges in exchange for transfer to Canada, whereupon he sued the Canadian government for infringing his rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. He ultimately settled in 2017, receiving a $10.5 million payment and an apology from the Canadian federal government for the violation of his rights as a detained youth suspect.

Ya Ummi, Ya Ummi ... will be exhibited along with two earlier works that also demonstrate Kennedy’s longstanding concerns about the violation of human rights during the global war on terrorism. Introducing the exhibition are the screen-print Quid Pro Quo (2012) and the screen-print series and wall installation An Eye for an Eye (2014), works based on the illegal detention of Syrian-Canadian Maher Arar in 2002–2003. Kennedy alludes in these works to the exchange of information between the RCMP and the CIA that led to Maher Arar’s mistaken identification as a terrorist, and his subsequent rendition to Syria by the CIA, where he was tortured at the hands of the Syrian government. The colours of the works are based on Arar’s description of his ordeal as posted on his website: fluorescent orange (recalling the jump suit which the CIA forced Arar to wear); black (referring to the electrical cable which his Syrian captors used to beat him); and red, blue, and yellow (the colours of the bruises produced by the beatings).

According to Kennedy, “the Arar case is emblematic of the Canadian government’s collusion with the CIA in the post 9/11 era of high suspicion of persons of Middle Eastern descent and the willingness to suspend their basic rights as Canadian citizens.”

“Kennedy’s text-based paintings and screen-prints make a powerful statement to the viewer. Using simple phrases, the artist cuts to the heart of the matter, compelling audiences to consider the ethical underpinnings of our government’s actions,” said Timothy Long, Head Curator of the MacKenzie Art Gallery. “An outspoken respondent to our country’s moral and political challenges, we are excited to premiere Garry Neill Kennedy’s Ya Ummi, Ya Ummi … at the MacKenzie.”

Garry Neill Kennedy has been a leading figure in the Canadian art world for nearly five decades, as both an innovative arts administrator and a critically recognized conceptual artist. As an artist, his work has focused on how art world practices—most importantly painting—are conditioned by place and implicated within social power structures. Kennedy has exhibited extensively across Canada and abroad, and in 2000 he was the subject of a major four-decade retrospective co-organized by the National Gallery of Canada and the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. In 2012, the National Gallery of Canada published Garry Neill Kennedy: Printed Matter, 1971 –2009, a book by Peter Trepanier looking at printed matter designed by, or in collaboration with, the artist. He is professor emeritus in the Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.