Our Home and Native Land: Agneta Dolman

Agneta Dolman - O Canada

The painting of the Canadian flag with the title, "O Canada" is one of  thirty paintings in acrylic on canvas that together with an installation of textiles, barbed wire and acrylic on wood forms a body of work with the title "Our Home and Native Land".

The exhibition, with the same title, curated by Catherine Elliott Shaw, MacIntosh Gallery, Western University, traveled to five public art galleries in south western Ontario between 2004 -2006. Catalogue ISBN 0-7714-2488-4 (All rights reserved)

We are proud to include these pieces in the current exhibition, "Canadian Landscapes", in celebration of Canada 150.

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About the Series

The artist, Agneta Dolman's personal journey and experience of being an immigrant from Sweden, to living in Canada as a "landed" resident for three decades and to receiving full citizenship status in 2000 was the inspiration for the work.

The artist had already begun to explore the theme of migration in the 1990 in the solo exhibition "Across the Sea" in 2000 at the at Michael Gibson Gallery. 

Moved by the plight of the so called Boat People of Vietnam the artist used the story of the Flood as a metaphor for loss of home, foreshadowing the present migration across the Mediterranean.

This theme was further developed in the "Our Home and Native Land exhibition that followed . The experience of being a hyphenated Canadian, a Swedish- Canadian, a person from another continent with a different cultural and linguistic background thus continued to be theme in many of the paintings through the inclusion of two opposing elements, for example, the Canadian flag painted in the Swedish colours of yellow and blue or the Canadian maple leaf being inserted into the flag of another country.

Related themes such as the definition of "home" , the meaning of "native", the concepts of "borders" and "homeland security" were examined.

Religious, cultural and genders identities were also explored through the the installation of barbed wire and some fifty pieces of clothing from different parts of the world.

The particular painting : "O Canada"  exhibited at Westland Gallery for the 150 th celebrations reflects the joy of becoming a Canadian citizen at the same time as it is the first painting in a series that attempts to illustrate each line in the Canadian national anthem.