The Romantic Gaze and its Colonial Subjects

Here's a collection of images from an installation in the Special Collections display cases in SFU's W.A.C. Bennett Library, organized by a group of SCA students in Denise Oleksijczuk's Spring 2019 class, "CA 314: Art and Visual Culture in Romantic-Era Britain."

Framed by the question, "When you hear the words the 'romantic gaze,' what are the images that come to mind?," the students argue that:

Romanticism functioned as an artistic and cultural ideology of colonialism, since the land was neither empty nor divinely created by God for European settlers. But there were also artists who rejected the colonial project and created art that instead emphasized mundane realities of life, in contrast to the idyllic scenes of romanticism.

Drawing from the Special Collections archive to explore this argument, the exhibition critically juxtaposes artifacts that demonstrate a European "romantic gaze" and an "alternative gaze" that emerges more intrinsically from the real-world lives of the land's original occupants.

The Romantic Gaze and its Colonial Subjects is on display until April 19, 2019, and can also be looked at online HERE.