How Public is Public Art? A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Racial Subtext of Public Monuments at Canada’s Pier 21

Abstract Much of the literature on public space focuses on physical inclusion and exclusion rather than social inclusion or exclusion. In this paper, the implications of this are considered in the context of two monuments, The Volunteers/Les Bénévoles, and The Emigrant, located outside the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. These monuments, while perhaps designed to celebrate Canadian multiculturalism, can be read instead as signaling Canada’s enduring commitment to white supremacy, Eurocentricity and colonization, when viewed through the eyes of racialized immigrants. Thus the “public space” becomes exclusionary. In the context in which the monuments are situated, the racial subtext cannot be ignored. This article purports that images, text and placement, regardless of intention, have significant implications on public space and public demeanor.


Introduction
Kingwell has argued that to be a public good, something must be both non-excludable and non-rivalrous.1 For Kingwell, it seems perfectly obvious that public space is non-excludable -if people can be excluded from space, then it is not public. Much of the literature on public space, however, focuses on physical inclusion and exclusion rather than social inclusion or exclusion.
In the literature on equity and diversity, the notion of exclusion and inclusion is centered on the psychological state of 'being included', most recently theorized as an individual's sense of belonging combined with a sense of uniqueness.2 Miller views that inclusion is present when "individuals are allowed to participate and are enabled to contribute fully".3 Ferdman and company propose that where inclusion is present "individuals feel safe, trusted, accepted, supported and valued"4 given that interactions between policies, structures, practices and norms provide them with fair and equal access to resources.
In this paper, we consider the implications of this in the context of a particular case study which applies critical discourse analysis to the monuments outside the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. This article has four sections. First, it will introduce the two monuments of interest, The Volunteers and The Emigrant. Then will present the research approach and conceptual framework that is used to analyze the ways in which these monuments construct meaning. The third section is the presentation and analysis of the results. Finally, this article will end with a discussion of the results that explores what the implications of these monuments are in a pluralistic society.
Until 1972, Pier 21 was an ocean-liner terminal and immigration depot for Canadian immigrants from around the world. Located on the country's east coast, Pier 21 is best known as the port of arrival of thousands of immigrants and a place that commemorates Canada's role in the Great Depression, the efforts of the Second World War and the Holocaust,5 associating this space as a place of refuge, hospitality and humanity. However, a critical reading of the space and the public art it contains sends different signals to racialized Canadians. Applying the lens of Kendall Walton's Categories of Art6 and Philomena Essed's theories on understanding everyday racism7, a critical discourse analysis of the two monuments suggests that they can also be seen as monuments to racism and white supremacy. This paper emerged from the experience of a group of scholars who traveled to Halifax, Nova Scotia for Metropolis, a national conference in immigration. They arrived for a tour of the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 but did not make it into the museum. Rather they were provoked by the racial subtext of the public monuments located along the Pier. All four of the scholars were immigrants or the children of immigrants from either the Caribbean or Sub-Saharan Africa. They unanimously found the monuments to be racist, oppressive, and indicative of bigger problems that exist on Canadian soil.
Art, perhaps more than text, has the power to inspire or to oppress. To signal who belongs and who does not. To celebrate the contributions of the diverse immigrants who built the country. It should go without saying that people with different lived experiences will have varying reactions to art in public space and this paper will provide a reading of these monuments through a critical discourse lens.
Thoughtful accounts of public art agree that "public space is closely tied to democratic ideals."8 Their implicit messages inform as well as remind people of the particular society's values and its expectations of their behaviour, "art and politics are linked in particular and problematic ways in memorials just as they are in public space and in public art more generally."9 Often, these signs and symbols subconsciously determine what people believe.10 Public art supports a cultural hegemonic perspective that helps to organize people.11 Antonio Gramsci is known for arguing that "among parliamentary regimes only the weakest are forced to rely on domination; normally they rule through hegemony."12 Monuments specifically have the ability to influence our relationships with countries, groups and identities.13 Erected to commemorate historical events and people, they are often placed at historical sites of importance; "the sculptures maintain the strategy that works to sustain the myth of a racial democracy and a tolerant nation."14 Recently, calls for the removal of public monuments globally have increased dramatically.15 The debates around removal are most prominently featured in the United States where harm is inflicted by monuments to Confederate heroes, "the wave to dismantle all statues attached to the history of colonialism, apartheid and white supremacy is not just a battle for public space but one of identity and belonging."16 In addition to physical environments having an impact on the behaviour of residents and visitors, the environment also has an impact on the way people think and feel.17 There is a history of public monuments being destroyed because of the effect they have had on the viewer. Even in Canada, there are images that are harmful. Some images are hostile, diminishing and certainly not worthy of imitation or placement in the public sphere.18 Further, according to Michel Foucault, "visibility facilitates control and normalization."19 When an art piece is in the public domain, it is understood to be in concert with the governing value structure of that place. Perceiving your oppression to be in line with the values of the municipality, province or country where you live can be startling to say the least. These monuments use structural power to reaffirm who belongs and who exists outside of civilized society.20 In Europe specifically, "black colour symbolism has played a fundamental role in the invention of race that established a radical dualism between that which is sacred and demonic."21 It is the widely held understanding that inferiority naturally lives in skin pigment that has served to alleviate White anxiety about development of the Global South and displacement of Indigenous communities.22 Orientalism and anti-Black racism are coping mechanisms used by Europeans to justify their behaviour;23 in France "this and offensive anti-Black imagery illustrate on multiple levels that we are heirs to centuries of anti-black representations and sentiments that have proximately figured in French visual culture and practices."24 The history of anti-Black racism in North America is more recent and more visceral. Even in Puerto Rico the anti-Black racism is clear through art in the public space. Llorens and Carrasquillo found that Blackness was depicted in Puerto Rican artworks as nonresistant, foreign and barbaric.25 The monuments in the southern U.S. states "are not simply history or heritage; they are quotidian and tangible reminders of Black people's illegitimacy, inferiority, and insignificance."26 As the requests for the removal of Confederate statues become more frequent and more emotionally-charged, the struggle for power is becoming more significant.27 Public art can therefore produce incongruent understandings of colonial relations that some people mobilize through expressions of colonial nostalgia (i.e. Make America Great Again).28 The people depicted in public monuments are inseparable from what they signify. In part, that is the intention of a monument, "symbols perform a bridging function, linking the past with the present. While not always historically accurate, these symbolic linkages often make some reference to a real past or 'symbolic capital'."29

The monuments
Monuments are among the highest honour one can receive, "monuments such as statues play an important symbolic role in people's lives, with each monument being built for specific reasons and intended to serve particular purposes or interests."30

Monument 1: The Volunteers
In 2017, The Volunteers/Les Bénévoles, a monument commissioned by the Halifax Women's History Society was unveiled in Nova Scotia ( Figure 1). This monument was commissioned to disrupt the overwhelming 18 De Gruchy, "Without Apology," 20. 19 Marquez, "Spaces of Appearance and Spaces of Surveillance," 6. 20 Heller, "Breaking Down the Symbols," 36. presence of male monuments in the east coast city. The Society raised around $600,000 to bring this bronze women-centered monument to life.31 The Volunteers, purports to 'honour' the "thousands of women and children [who] volunteered during the Second World War."32 The monument does not specifically depict any three women, it is meant to reflect the essence of any and all women. It features a diverse group of women, including an elderly woman who is knitting with her Mi'kmaw basket full of yarn. This woman is meant to represent the presence of older women in the war effort and the continued influence of Indigenous Canadians in our society.33 It is not clear whether this woman is intended to be a Mi'kmaw woman herself. It also features a volunteer at an "African-Canadian canteen" 34 which acknowledges that during the Second World War Black Canadians could not fight in the same battalions as White Canadians. Finally, the third volunteer is a young girl pulling a wagon full of items intended for recycling, highlighting that even young girls did their part to contribute to the war effort.35 Although the plaque on the monument states that the piece intends to highlight that women in Canada were key to the war effort, instead it cements that Black Canadian women are separate, and that Black women's contributions to the war effort were limited to passive servitude. Llorens and Carrasquillo saw this in Puerto Rico as well, "even when they are made to pay homage… they uphold and transfer longheld stereotypes about Blacks."36 The Halifax Women's History Society did not want this monument to specifically depict three notable women as it is meant to reflect the essence of any and all women. This may also be why the elderly woman and the young child are not assigned a race or ethnicity. Only the second woman in the monument is assigned a race.
Often, society forgives racially charged art that has been around for centuries, claiming that keeping these monuments around will force people to confront a shameful history. This monument was unveiled in 2017, in what many have called a 'post-racial' society, yet the racial subtext is very pronounced in The Volunteers. In this monument, the Black body is trapped in a role of servitude, visible for all to see that body performing in the way that is expected of it.  Adjacent to The Volunteers lies another, arguably more prominent monument of a man on the move, The Emigrant.

Monument 2: The Emigrant
In 2013, the family of sculptor Armando Barbon donated a monument, entitled The Emigrant, to Pier 21. The monument commemorates the hundreds of thousands of families who were separated in the quest to find greener pastures and migrate to Canada. Pier 21 is the best place for a monument that pays tribute to that sacrifice as it is through this pier that many immigrants had their first contact with the Canadian state.37 The pier opened in 1928, and until 1971 was one of Canada's largest admission centres, welcoming around 1 million immigrants during its 43 years of service.38 This monument features a young man, presumably the emigrant, leaving what looks like a clock tower, a young woman, and two young children. The man is dressed in a full suit, with a top hat on his head and a briefcase in his hand. The clothing and the briefcase connote that the emigrant is a professional on an economic migration journey. The emigrant himself, does not look like a family class immigrant or a refugee who is coming to Canada unsure of what the future holds. The emigrant's clothing and accessories support Canada's desire to shift its immigration program from a more holistic program, to one that seeks to accept over seventy percent of its immigrants through the economic class. The Emigrant although claiming to commemorate the past, indeed provides an example of what the country would like for its future.
The man is standing on a platform that lists the names of the world's five continents. He is facing Europe and at his front-right is Asia, front-left is Americas, while behind him at his rear-left is Africa and rear-right is Oceania. It is worth noting that the text that is unobstructed and visible to passersby are Oceania, Americas, and Europe. The other continents are obstructed by shrubs and a large disposal bin due to its cornered position.

Conceptual framework
This article will use Philomena Essed's39 well-known interdisciplinary theory of everyday racism and Kendall Walton's40 categories of art to conduct a Discourse Analysis of the two Pier 21 monuments introduced above.

Philomena Essed's Everyday Racism
Philomena Essed developed her theory of everyday racism to help researchers to articulate how omnipresent micro-aggressions are a result of systemic racism.41 Her work stems from experiences in the Netherlands and the United States where she found that "repetitive acts or moments of injury and insult, experienced directly and vicariously, devalue, stigmatize, and harm people racialized as somehow inferior in a society."42 Everyday racism theory's comfortability with the evolution of the understanding of what racism looks like and feels like is key to the analysis in the following section. With everyday racism, racism is far from an individual problem, "it involves only systemic, recurrent, familiar practices."43 Essed's theory is particularly exceptional because it acknowledges the validity of experiences as knowledge, "experiences are a suitable 39 Essed, "Understanding Everyday Racism". 40 Walton, "Categories of Art." 41 Keaton, "Au Negre Joyeux," 56. 42 Ibid. 43 Essed, "Understanding Everyday Racism," 3. source of information for the study of everyday racism because they include personal experiences as well as vicarious experiences of racism".44

Kendall L. Walton's Categories of Art
Kendall Walton's theory of the categories of art contends that how art is experienced by its audience depends on the amount of information that the audience member has access to.45 For instance, without the experience of being a person of colour with the experiences of exclusion, oppression and isolation, implicit messages can be inaccessible to a consumer of public monuments. The untrained eye, "won't know to which features of the work they should attend, and while they might be able to appreciate some of the work, some of the nuances of the [piece] will be lost on them".46 Museums and collections have the luxury of offering context to their art, offering what Walton calls a standard of perspective.47 Art that exists in the public realm is not offered that luxury, "once produced the work must stand or fall on its own; it must be judged for what it is, regardless of how it came to be as it is."48 Walton argues that "what aesthetic properties a work seems to have, what aesthetic effect it has on us, and how it strikes us aesthetically often depends on which of its features are standard, which variable, and which contra-standard for us."49 In an era where the people depicted in public monuments are being investigated and publicly criticized, audiences have become more critical of what occupies public space. Walton suggests the same, "in which categories we perceive a work depends in part, of course, on what other works we are familiar with."50 Since the 1970s, multiculturalism has come to define the Canadian attitude when it comes to immigrants and non-white people. Multiculturalism, although an Act of the federal government, does not clearly articulate a sense of principles, "rather the term denotes an assortment of policies and practices that act as an ideological frame. The only discernible principle is liberal tolerance."51 There is cultural significance in the depiction of Blackness in The Volunteers. The monument is representative of multiculturalism and tolerance. Tolerance is not inclusion; it permits a presence, but not a voice. This depiction works to normalize Black women as servants. The representation of Black women in The Volunteers is a physical reminder of Canada's tolerance and its struggle with inclusion. This constitutes bad art because it is harmful in that it subconsciously reinforces the place of Black women, to be trapped in the role of subjugation.
Halifax has a complicated history with race. It is home to Africville; a place where a large population of Blacks who have called Canada home for generations were forcibly removed from their settlement.52 Africville was home to the descendants of Black Loyalists who fought alongside British loyalists in the War of 1812, "Blacks who settled in Halifax more than 200 years ago were promised land grants and adequate food, clothing and shelter, but instead, many experienced destitute conditions."53 It is through this principle of liberal tolerance in Halifax that public institutions were emboldened to "characterize Black space as existing outside civilized society, and as ultimately obsolete"54 leading eventually to the removal of hundreds of people from their preferred, historical settlement.
The cultural significance of the text and the placement on The Emigrant monument is also noteworthy. Positioning of the text suggests that some continents are forward-thinking (continents in front of the emigrant) and others are backwards (continents behind the emigrant). This reflects a hierarchical world system that sees some continents as worthy of emigrating from and others as worthy of immigrating to. The placement of the monument implies that there are continents that are of interest, and those that are not. Notably, the Global South55 is not visible. The Orient is not visible. The Occident is centered. Consider that the installers of the monument could have placed the monument to ensure all aspects/sides of the statue are visible or could have turned it 180 degrees and display the monument so that Africa and Asia were visible rather than Oceania and Americas. The position of the emigrant could have also shifted to direct him toward the word Africa or Asia; reflect on what the symbolism of that would have been. Essed's everyday racism remains relevant here, she states that "ethnicism is an ideology that explicitly proclaims the existence of 'multiethnic' equality but implicitly presupposes an ethnic or cultural hierarchical order."56 The economic, ethnic and hierarchical orders are all key messages of this monument.
Regardless of the intentions, these examples of public art can be read as highly exclusionary. In some contexts, "the statue removal can be read as the work of subjugated peoples to decolonize a space previously colonized by a structural ideology of white supremacy."57 Since public art is meant for public space and public space is intended for everyone's use and enjoyment,58 it is important that we continue to support groups as they resist symbols of generational structural racism and respect their refusal to be Othered and unwelcomed in the places where they were born and raised.59 Regardless of the intentions of those who established these monuments to celebrate immigration and diversity, they can be read through a post-colonial lens as doing the opposite, of excluding rather than including racialized minorities particularly those from Africa. In his text, Edward Said states that, "European culture was able to manage-and even produce-the Orient politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically, and imaginatively during the post-Enlightenment period."60 These two monuments can be read as a manifestation of how racialized people are Othered. The victors get to write history, and as such Europeans will always tell the version of the story where they are out front, facing forward and their greatest rivals are facing-if not walking-backward. According to Said, the Orient is "the place of Europe's greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the other."61 Importantly, there are a number of public monuments in other parts of the country that celebrate the stories and experiences of diverse populations in a way that preserves their dignity and integrity. A few examples include The Tower of Freedom Underground Railroad monument in Windsor, Ontario; the Women are Persons! monument in Ottawa, Ontario; and the Migration monument in Hamilton, Ontario. The monument in Windsor commemorates people of colour with a migration history, it includes elements of lifestyle, religious beliefs and elements of that time into the piece to truly highlight the experience.62 The monument in Ottawa pays tribute to women, but rather than explicitly describing what women did, they depicted the way the women felt, with a focus on their spirit of entitlement and humanity.63 Finally, the Migration monument in Hamilton is illustrative of a group of people, perhaps a family, moving together 54 Nelson, "Razing Africville," 54. 55 Global South is a contested term that refers to parts of the world that are majority non-white. Including Africa, Asia and South America. 56 Essed, "Understanding Everyday Racism," 6. 57 Heller, "Breaking Down the Symbols," 36. 58 Kingwell, "The Prison of "Public Space"." 59 Heller, "Breaking Down the Symbols," 36. 60 Said, "Orientalism," 11. 61 Ibid., 1. 62 Windsor Mosaic, "Monument -Tower of Freedom." 63 Canada, "Women are Persons!" in warm clothing. This monument reflects more the harshness of the Canadian climate and the difficulty involved with migrating across a terrain like that of the Greater Hamilton Region. What all three of these monuments also make clear is that it is important to have representation from the groups who are depicted and will be impacted by the monument. In Windsor, the descendants of Black settlers who came to Canada through the Underground Railroad formed a committee to commission their monument. In Hamilton, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress Hamilton Branch presented the City of Hamilton with the Migration monument. The art was commissioned entirely by the community of immigrants who are portrayed by the illustration.

Discussion and future research
From 2019 to 2021 Canada aims to welcome about one million immigrants to the country. In the last census of population, the largest immigrant source countries were found in Asia and Africa. Decolonization starts in the public realm. There is evidence to suggest that decolonizing our public spaces will allow us to evolve and begin to recover from the social exclusion, cultural imperialism and genocide that has historically been a key characteristic of Canadian society.
The depiction of the Black woman as a servant is not a mistake and reinforced that Black Canadians specifically, and Black bodies generally, are seen as only capable of, and perfectly happy to, serve. Race is one of a few central points of difference between those who traditionally have power and who do not in Halifax.64 A visit to the Halifax Women's History Society website easily illustrates how the Society is not diverse and how, "the meanings of public memorials are subjected to the will of those with the political and economic clout that see to it that their own understanding of events is the one represented literally and symbolically in the media and by the memorial."65 The depiction of continents of the Global South as backward and unimportant, although subconscious, is incredibly powerful. Global anti-Black racism is not just a product of our past, it is an active constituent in the production of our future as, "we often take into account what [others] may think of us and try to perform roles that are expected of us."66 Leaders need to develop ideologies that appeal to a broad range of groups within the society in order to achieve cultural hegemony.67 These ideologies become perspectives, and public art is created through these perspectives. Since cultural hegemony is not possible without domination, the public art produced through this process will very likely be oppressive, bad art. It is the responsibility of public art curators and other officials to put in place processes to create inclusive public spaces. Approaches could include better research to frame the goals of particular projects, diversifying selection panels and planning teams, outreach to diverse artists, and more engagement with communities often excluded from the elites that typically make these decisions. By intentionally ensuring a wider variety of perspectives are considered, more inclusive spaces will be created. After all, "what interests the public is not identical to the public interest."68 Public space in Canada, should aim to be, more public.69