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114 CANADIAN A RT • SPRING 2016 canadianart.ca 115

by curators to create installations, pulling in local translators and artists

and volunteers, often with the goal of bringing Muslims and non-Muslims

together in a cultural and intellectual dialogue.

In fall 2 014, Hassan installed an ambitious piece, called Nur (meaning

“light” in Arabic), on the ceiling of the library of the Great Mosque of

Xi’an in China. The mosque escaped being toppled during the Cultural

Revolution. With the help of Benner and local workers, she mounted 60

panels into the ceiling of the library, each panel painted by Hassan with

Arabic calligraphy taken from the verse of light, as it appears in the Qur’an.

In addition, she brought mosque lamps from Cairo to hang in the

entranceway of the library. The piece visually engaged with the historical

Hui (the predominant Chinese Muslim group) in Xi’an, a city notable

for being the beginning of the Silk Road. The Silk Road was not only a

route used for transporting goods, but also allowed for the movement of

scholars and artisans, leading to the spreading of cultures and language.

The mosque building combines Islamic inscriptions with Chinese motifs,

a historic cultural mash up that recalls a phrase Hassan’s father often

repeated: “Seek knowledge even unto China.” She writes: “Nur expresses

the inner and outer of being, the private and the public, the solitary and

the collective, and reflects an imperative to pursue knowledge across great

distances and landscapes.”

At Museum London, Benner and I step through a photographic curtain

picturing a grasshopper pump and enter what appears to be the interior of

a truck’s trailer. Metal sheets cover the walls of the enclave. Empty boxes

that once contained peppers from Mexico and Florida sit on the floor.

Photographs show images from the journey between the Ontario Food

Terminal in Etobicoke and the southern origins of these peppers. The

installation is titled In Digestion (1992–95). Where does our food come

from, who grows it and how does it get here? Tire shards on the floor mark

decades of highway travel. A large photograph at the end shows the Sonoran

Desert with trails cut into the land: ancient shell-trade trails. A line of corn

seeds connects the heap of shells to the entrance of the trailer. Shells

migrated from the Pacific coast and can be found in indigenous cultures

throughout the Americas. The trail of corn seeds came from the Delaware

Nation of Moraviantown. One day a small boy examining the installation

put a conch shell to his ear. His mother asked him what he heard. The boy

listened, and declared, “Trucks!”

Benner’s As the Crow Flies garden can be viewed from the second-level

restaurant of Museum London. Taking over a derelict fountain in 2005 ,

the piece evokes the journey from the Port Stanley/London area heading

straight south to Peru. A row of masts hold up photographic “sails” displaying

points along the way in a straight line over oceans and land—as the crow

flies. Tropical plants bunch up around the south end of the garden while

local plants seed the north end. A pair of mallard ducks scoot around the

lily pads. “Lake Erie is a giant eye that looks south,” Benner notes. A frag-

ment of photo from one of the sails has shredded off the mast and floats

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