Dancing with Che: Enter Through the Gift Shop

Toronto-based artist Barbara Astman explores the vulgarization and trivialization of iconic revolutionary Che Guevara in a gift-shop intervention and installation that implicates our consumer attitudes through “museum culture” merchandising. We enter through a gift shop that is the exhibition, yet refuses/denies our impulse to buy; nothing is for sale.

Astman created her original Dancing with Che series in 2003, after a trip to Cuba where she was struck by “Che chic,” the proliferation of imagery of the face of revolutionary Che Guevara on a range of souvenirs.

“I kept thinking about Che as a Pop culture icon,” said Astman, “and got beyond his being the revolutionary leader because when you see him on people’s chests and on coffee mugs, it’s almost like seeing Mick Jagger…becoming more of a consumer product. That’s what the North American public wants, so they make these objects to sell. But he’s still seen as a very important revolutionary figure.”

Her own photographs were created by shooting images of herself dancing to Latin music while wearing a Che T-shirt. These black-and-white images were then plastered onto mugs, tote bags, key-chains, playing cards, etc.—merchandise for display, but not for purchase.

Astman’s work is also included in the McMaster Museum of Art current exhibition 125 & 45: an interrogative spirit.

Barbara Astman’s career has spanned more than 35 years of photo-based media, sculpture-objects and public art commissions. Beginning with her earliest photo-self portraiture and narratives, Astman’s work is contemporaneous with and rightfully belongs with a formative generation of foundational feminist art practices in Canada and internationally.

Astman graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1970, and then the Ontario College of Art after moving to Canada. She has exhibited in more than 45 solo exhibitions since 1973, as well as in group exhibitions. A twenty-year survey of her work was organized and toured by the Art Gallery of Hamilton in 1995 – 1996. Her work is represented in major public collections in Canada and internationally. She is represented by the Corkin Gallery, Toronto.

Astman has taught at the Ontario College of Art and Design since 1975, and been involved at a community cultural level, serving on the boards of the Art Gallery at Harbourfront (the forerunner to the Power Plant), City of Toronto Public Art Commission, and the Art Gallery of Ontario. She is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy.

www.barbaraastman.com