Portrait of a Lady: Revisited

The Mississauga Council of Chambers had this portrait of Mayor Hazel McCallion:


Portrait of Mayor Hazel McCallion
In Mississauga City Hall
[Photo by KPA]
Portrait by: Shahid Rassam
Painted: Ca. 2011

It is more ominous and menacing than the portrait I posted in my recent post: Portrait of a Lady: Critique, where I quote my 2005 post on the Mayor:

- [The 2005 portrait by Byron Osmond is] full of simplistic and childish codes.

- Purple hair to show how ‘dated’ McCallion is

- Red to show her ‘strength’, I think he means her power, which not a good thing

- The footsteps around her, courtesy of his young son’s prints, to show that art should be run by someone younger

In this portrait, the artist, Shahid Rassam, says of his work:

"I was very much inspired by the mayor's service to the community over the years...She's so full of energy and I tried to capture that part of her eternal soul in the portrait."

Mayor McCallion comments humorously on this portrait:

I must have been at a council meeting (because I look) very concerned with what was going on," McCallion said as she admired her portrait."

And she generously says to Rassam:

"I understand you live in Toronto," McCallion told Rassam, "but we have a spot for you here in Mississauga."

Look at the glint in the thin slits of her Nordic icy blue eyes, which is echoed in the white pearl earring and the metallic ring on her finger; the glimpse of sharp, white, pearl-like teeth visible through her half-opened mouth; her hand shaped like a claw; the beak-like nose misshapen by the hard pressure of her hand; her wrinkled, tough, leather-like face; the orange of her jacket resembling some cold-blooded lizard's skin; and the wild tufts of her white hair, all making her look like some evil, reptilian creature.

Rasham clearly has some talent, and he knows what he is doing. He may say: "I was very much inspired by the mayor's service to the community over the years...She's so full of energy and I tried to capture that part of her eternal soul in the portrait," but he shows us something else entirely.

"This is the white mayor of a Canadian city, which is now fully multicultural and majority non-white, who needs to be demonized albeit in art, in order that she leaves space for the new keepers of the city: the likes of us."

I say he is deliberately casting McCallion in this manner, because his website shows other portraits, of a variety of brown-skinned posers, for whom he shows a good deal more affection.

We have gone a ways from a portrait of a mayor that is just unflattering (and grumpy-looking) to one that is downright menacing.

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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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