112 CANADIAN A RT • SPRING 2016 canadianart.ca 113
individual practices, I’ve always been so
impressed by their ability to constantly con-
nect people from different fields and places,
as well as their ability to mobilize the com-
munity around causes that matter.”
We drive down a lane in London and
reach the old stable, their “compound,”
made of board and batten, dating back to
1900. The artists bought the building in
1986 , fixed it up and created several units,
rentable to visiting artists and scholars. Their
artmaking seeps into the way they conduct
their lives, welcoming people from abroad
into their home, creating connections. A
row of small square windows alludes to the
building’s former life: the stall openings
allowed horses to poke out their heads.
Above was the hayloft, now living quarters
and studio spaces. The ground-level interior
concrete floor is rimmed by floor-to-ceiling
bookcases. The artists are serious readers of
history and philosophy, though I notice a
row of crime fiction. Vertical wooden beams
have been nicked by horses’ hooves and
bite marks.
Layering history with present-day materi-
als and concerns, Hassan uses traditional
modes of decorative arts (ceramics, calligraphy)
alongside contemporary media (photography,
found objects, video) in her work. I observe
that she’s painted Arabic letters on tiles set
over the kitchen sink, creating a link to her
family’s Middle Eastern past. Partly raised by
her grandmother, by the time Hassan started
school, she was speaking “a garbled mix of
village Arabic and English.” “There is so much negativity in the Arab world
that I wanted to look back at the commonplace, not the fine-art tradition,”
she says. “The word ‘algebra’ is Arabic. We don’t always acknowledge where
these things come from.” She picks up a small model horse from a ledge.
“‘Ma’ is a common Chinese surname and it means ‘horse.’ And horses in
China arrived from Arabic countries.”
Hassan gathers people up into her artmaking enterprises; she is not the
solitary artist working in a studio. Instead, she travels the world, invitedTheir artmaking seeps into the
way they conduct their lives, welcoming
people from abroad into their home,
creating connections.
Hassan-Benner_ sp16_15TSLR.indd 113 02/05/16 6:30 PM