“It’s the name of one of my grandsons and I just wanted to do something with the letter K,” explains London, Ontario-based artist Jamelie Hassan about her Kian project. “It’s about calligraphy as a form of expression.”

What started innocently last year âe” a green piece of Arab script in neon set up on a wall of the Kings University College grounds at the University of Western Ontario âe” exploded into a controversy after a National Post article which quoted King’s College psychology professor Heinz Klatt as describing the kian as a symbol of “Islamic triumphalism,imperialism [and] expansionism.”

“The kian, which is also called a tughra, means Arab benevolent king. In Farsi, it’s ancient oneâe¦ in Celtic it has a similar meaning, too and it’s ‘little prince’ in the African language,” emphasizes Hassan, who received a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2001.

Hassan says the work was meant to deliver a message of a culturally-diverse community. It was up for six months before it became a lightening rod with the Post article in September 2007.

“[The article] dredged up the history of the Ottoman Empire and said the sultan’s signature is really a sword âe¦ What’s wrong with Arabic writing? Do you think it represents terrorist culture?” asks an exasperated Hassan.

The artist has exhibited widely both in Canada and abroad since the 1970s with shows in New York, Barcelona, Denmark, England, France and Alexandria, Egypt as well as the National Gallery of Canada and the Glenbow in Calgary. She has also lectured all over the world from Jordan to India to Finland.

Hassan’s education background is equally wide-ranging: one year in Rome at the Academy of Fine Arts, then a stint (1967 -1968) at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Beyrouth, Lebanon and 10 years later, a term at the University of Mustansyria, Baghdad, Iraq.

Her interdisciplinary works incorporate ceramic, painting, video, photography, text and other media and explore personal and public histories as well as issues of colonialism, women’s roles and political issues.

Though the Kian controversy eventually died down, it did make Hassan a kind of star in her hometown. A post office worker recognized her and told the artist the controversy was without merit. Hassan was shored up by the support she got.

“I’m an activist. I can’t shut up. You want your work to be involved in the dialogue [but] you have to take a lot of care in negotiating what it is to do this kind of work,” admits the artist, who is photograph-shy and preferred not to use her own image for this article.

Hassan says that activism comes naturally. Her parents helped establish the Canadian Arab and Canadian Islamic Associations in North America and were publicly supportive of Algeria during French colonial rule. She recalls heated conversations at the dinner table during the 1950s, and Arabic newspapers were a constant fixture in the home.

Her family has a long history in Canada with Hassan’s father arriving in this country back in 1914. Growing up in Canada, the family’s Arabic background soon became an obsession with Hassan: “Arabs say if you don’t speak Arabic, you’re not an Arab.” She rectified that with several years in the Middle East.

“My struggle for language has somehow become a subtext in my work.”

That fascination culminates in Hassan’s installation piece The Copyist (1995) âe” a low ceramic stand sits on the floor filled with gauze and ceramic fragments along with a pair of woman’s slippers and on the wall behind, copper pieces representing sounds and vowels of Arabic script dance around a black-and-white photo of a sleeping baby boy âe” a picture of Hassan’s child, who was only a few weeks old at the time.

“I was inspired by a woman calligrapher, who copied manuscripts in the attic of her home while she cared for her baby, one foot on the cradle, transcribing Arabic. I discovered this story while in Baghdad about a woman who was doing this job that was usually a male activity.”

The work has a lyrical quality, dream-like and graceful.

Hassan’s time in Iraq also spawned a very direct piece of work – her Baghdad billboard created in 1991 from the first Gulf War. The billboard has a photo of a mosque in Baghdad emblazoned with the words: “Because âe¦ there was and there wasn’t a city of Baghdad.”

Back then, an artist-run centre in Windsor wanted to post it near the Ambassador Bridge but the city rejected the idea in case it insulted American visitors.

“The city council held a debate and said I should change it and if the billboard was going up, I would have to pay for it,” recollects Hassan. “Then a billboard company called and said they were going to put it up for free. It went up across Canada!”

The old billboard remains timely. In 2005, she got a call from the Morris & Ellen Belkin Art Gallery âe” part of the University of British Columbia âe” whose curator remembered the piece and wanted to purchase it.

“It was intriguing. [The curator] was thinking: what is a radical move for us? Jamelie has been against this all her life, why don’t we support her?”


The billboard, posted on the outside wall of the gallery, faces the area where each graduating class congregates every year. Hassan says it has done wonders for the Belkin, which experienced a surge in visitors.

“It’s public art âe¦ and it continues to garner more and more support. I get mail about it all the time.”

So, what does Hassan have up her sleeve next?

While at Carleton University in Ottawa recently, she discovered the university’s art gallery shared a building with the School of Journalism. It was an “a-ha” moment âe” Hassan had already created an installation piece using Arabic script, which she hopes will be exhibited at the gallery there.

“It resembles the script for Al-Jazeera [the all-news network based out of Qatar] but not really because it translates as ‘shame on you’ âe” shame in reference to the Canadian context.”

Canadians are unable to access Al-Jazeera English âe” referred to as the CNN of the Arab world. There were so many restrictions put up by the CRTC, the network decided not to launch in this country.

“It will be quite a test for Carleton âe¦ we’ll see what happens.”

For Jamelie Hassan, shutting up is not an option.

NOTE: A retrospective of Hassan’s works will be on display at Museum London in March 2009.

Baghdad billboard photo is courtesy of the Belkin Art Gallery.

JUNE CHUA B and W picture

June Chua

June Chua is a Canadian journalist and an award-winning filmmaker who has worked as a writer, reporter and producer with the CBC in radio, television and online. Her documentary, using 2D animation,...