In a sprawling retrospective, artist Joyce Wieland's true patriot love suddenly feels like prophecy

Powerful art can feel prophetic. Works created decades or even centuries ago can shed light on contemporary issues with frightening clarity. So while the retrospective Heart On, which opened last week at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, is a worthy tribute to late Canadian artist Joyce Wieland, it also feels like an uncanny take on today's breaking news — with the Toronto-born Wieland serving as a kind of oracle.

Feminism, environmentalism, nationalism — the themes that most marked Wieland's career — are front and centre throughout the 100 works, spanning four decades. Then, there are more specific, strangely prescient anxieties on display: Arctic sovereignty, American imperialism, even plane crashes and plastic waste show up, between flags and phallic symbols, in her signature mix of materials, which includes quilts, embroidery, found objects and film strips.

On one wall, stuffed plastic letters spell out "Man has reached out and touched the tranquil moon," a particularly poetic quote from Pierre Trudeau that might have visitors considering the men currently trying to colonize Mars. 

In a work from 1973, a page of lipstick prints declares "The Arctic belongs to itself," a message as pressing as today's calls for "Land Back." 

Nearby, a pair of chain-linked quilts read "I Love Canada" and "J'aime Canada." They were made in 1969, the same year the country was officially declared bilingual. Today, however, the work strikes a new chord as the nation faces threats of being made the 51st state. The relevance only intensifies for visitors who lean in closer to read the tiny embroidered message at the centre, written in English and French, that says: "Death to U.S. Technological Imperialism." It's enough to spark a diplomatic incident  — or would be, if it didn't have so much competition these days. 

"It's great for the show that it's all still so relevant," muses Georgiana Uhlyarik, the Fredrik S. Eaton Curator of Canadian Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario and co-curator of the exhibit alongside Anne Grace, curator of modern art at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. "But it's also kind of sad.… She envisioned a better future."

This woman's work

Heart On is the culmination of four years of research by Uhlyarik and Grace, who not only curated key pieces of Wieland's work, but travelled to Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal, consulting with communities that studied her, supported her work and some that knew her personally. 

"We wanted to tap into the knowledge of her living collaborators," says Grace, especially since Wieland didn't have children. Born and raised in Toronto, Wieland was orphaned at a young age and raised by her siblings. She would study graphic design in school, an unconventional field for women at the time and an influence that became apparent in her more vibrant pop art works. She was employed in package design, then animation, where she met her future husband, acclaimed Canadian avant-garde filmmaker Michael Snow.

The couple moved to New York in the 1960s, and, as is so often the case, it took leaving the country for Wieland to reflect on her Canadian identity, which contrasted with American attitudes (her aforementioned Warhol-esque plane crash paintings spoke to a media obsessed with disaster long before the 24-hour news cycle). 

It was in the U.S. that she developed her experimental film practice — what she called her "filmic paintings" — which continues to enjoy a following worldwide. Several are dropped into the exhibit, mixing with her other media rather than sequestered in a viewing room. She also commissioned friends to help craft what is perhaps her most famous work: a pair of quilts from 1968 that read "Reason over passion"  and "La raison avant la passion," taking aim at another Trudeau quote. The piece would go on to play a starring role in Margaret Trudeau's autobiography, in which she describes, during one particularly "frosty argument" with her husband, ripping the letters off the French-language quilt that hung in their residence and throwing them back at the PM.

After moving back to Canada in 1971, Wieland continued a studio practice, and made a somewhat mainstream feature film, The Far Shore, inspired by artist Tom Thomson. Her life and career were cut short by Alzheimer's, and she passed away in 1998 at the age of 67. 

Soft power

So where does that leave her legacy? Is she Canada's answer to, say, Louise Bourgeois, Frida Kahlo or Tracey Emin? "It's a bit like a secret club," says Uhlyarik, of Wieland's fandom, which includes a new wave of young artists who describe themselves as "obsessed" with her. 

It's a strange, particularly Canadian position: Wieland is unquestionably an icon of the 20th-century art world, yet she's far from a household name. But then, who is (Tom Thomson, Emily Carr and the Group of Seven aside)? Perhaps this is the perfect time to add a few more names to the Canadian art canon, now that we're all trying to shop local?

It should be noted: Although she struggled to navigate an art world dominated by men, especially with her blatantly femme brand of feminism, Wieland did get her flowers in her day. She was named to the Order of Canada in 1982 (a year after then ex-husband Snow). She was the first living woman to get a retrospective at the National Gallery in Ottawa with the 1971 exhibition True Patriot Love. The show — which held space for deep thoughts, domestic arts and dirty jokes — drew protests for its government funding, as well as the ire of critics, who called it a "cheap patriotic claptrap" and "a burlesque of national symbols."

"She had a complete disregard for hierarchies and was fearless in her approach to materials," says Grace. "Her strongest political works were made with a sewing machine or embroidery needle. And remember, this was decades before craftivism."

Today's museum visitors may need this reminder, time and time again. If much of Wieland's work seems familiar to people who don't know her name, it is because she was a pioneer. Long before Subversive Cross Stitch kits, yarn bombing and the current reappraisal of fibre arts, she was playing with the tension between craft and credibility, subverting stereotypes and demanding nuance. And doing it with authenticity and care.

"She seduces us with shiny plastics and soft materials, things that seem simple on the surface and reveal something more subversive," says Grace. "They encourage us to look closely and think deeply."

It may also be the exact approach needed at this time. Heart On leads a crash course in the most pressing issues of the present moment. Couched in soft, seductive textures and Instagrammable pastel walls, the exhibition calls us to confront patriotism and our complicated past.

The cost of not doing so may be too high.  In Wieland's own words from 1971: "Canada can either now lose complete control — which it almost has, economically, spiritually and a few other things — or it can get itself together." 

Heart On runs through May 4 at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts before moving to the AGO in June.