Hello everyone. Welcome back to yet another Blog Post about the Winter Exhibition. In this winter exhibition we made a Monument about 3 historic injustices in Canadian History. The 3 being Japanese Internment, Komagata Maru, and Chinese Head Tax. You can learn more about these events. 

Here

Here 

Here 

So the whole exhibition was based off of Avatar (the movies) the Driving Question for the Exhibition was: What does James Cameron’s fantasy world of “Avatar” reveal about our own society?” The answer per usual will come in due time. Anyways back to what we built. My group Ben.T, Cole, and I. Built a mobile of sorts with things hanging from it that represented each of these events. 

As you can tell our memorial looks a little rough. That’s because we didn’t plan our time well and only put it together on the day of the Exhibition. In the future I will try to allocate my time better and try to get my group to allocate there time better as well. Here’s another image of the mobile from the bottom. 

Alright now to explain each thing on the mobile because its not very clear. So the two black things dangling at the very bottom are boats. Meant to represent Komagata Maru and how the Canadian Government left them stranded just outside the port. The barn also on the bottom shows the Mistreatment suffered by Japanese Canadians during there interment. On the 2nd layer you can see to sets of bars which are representative of how the Canadian Government attempted to bar immigrants from anywhere from entering Canada. Also on the 2nd layer you can see historical photos from all these tragic events. 

Ok so its a little hard to see but in the blue circle that is money to represent Chinese Head Tax and how they were taxed for living in Canada. The gun circled in black shows how the Canadian Government tried to keep immigrants out with violence. The very top, circled in red represents what the immigrants wanted. Which was citizenship, peace, jobs etc. 

As you can tell its a little rough and some of our ideas are not clear. In terms of improvement, if we had started building it earlier we would have had more time to revise and make it look a lot nicer. A contributing factor to the fact that it was not done on time. Was Cole and I got sick so we had less time to work on it. In light of that, our presentation during the exhibition was spot on, we were able to accurately describe what each symbol meant. 

Now the answer to the driving question which as a little reminder was: What does James Cameron’s fantasy world of “Avatar” reveal about our own society?” In my opinion James Camerons world draws heavily from the inequalities suffered by indigenous peoples during, European exploration and subsequent exploitation of the “New World”. It also shines a light on human greed, and how the humans will do anything to make money. Overall it mirrors the real world to a great extent. 

Thanks for Reading 

Cårter=blōg