FREDERICTON (CUP) — When Hamilton-based artist Andrew McPhail began working on little sculptures made of Band-Aids, he wasn’t convinced anything solid would come from it. At least, not until he heard about a young Muslim girl in Mississauga who was strangled to death by her father for refusing to wear her hijab to school.
He started thinking about the idea of the hijab and the burka and was struck with the poignancy of the young girl’s failed struggle to live as an unmasked individual. He could immediately relate.
McPhail has been living with HIV since 1993 and has often felt his own identity has been defaced by the illness.
The product of this is an exhibit called All My Little Failures, where about 60,000 Band-Aids make up a burka draped over a mannequin. On the surface there’s a sombre message about the exhibit because of its origin, but McPhail intended to inspire a lighter tone with his piece.
“I want people to see the humour in it, and the sort of funny desperation in 60,000 Band-Aids,” he says.
“Everybody has those moments of self-doubt and regret. Part of the humour of the piece is that you can’t do anything about those and that it’s futile to wish to engage them, because the past is the past.”
McPhail, 50, has noticed the issue of AIDS has been drifting from the radar in North America, which he attributes partly to the fact that people are managing with the illness; he’s living proof. But he says All My Little Failures isn’t a crusade to raise awareness.
“I’m certainly not a spokesman for AIDS, but I think it’s a convenient way for people to enter the work because it’s a huge issue,” he says. “I’m just there to tell my own story.”
McPhail has been working on the piece for about three years. While All My Little Failures is currently on display at Gallery Connexion in Fredericton, NB, it will also be shown in a larger form at Toronto’s Textile Museum of Canada in October.