Icelandic show reveals uncanny resemblance to André Alexis’s ‘Fifteen Canine’
By Stephen Weir
Within the frozen land of Iceland, there’s a quirky little café the place the literary-minded collect to devour train-sized breakfasts and admire a surreal show: greater than a dozen dog-head masks mounted on the partitions. The café, generally known as the White Cat, is tucked away in Reykjavík and provides an odd but magnetic mixture of books, visible artwork, and dialog. Has Trinidadian-Canadian playwright André Alexis, writer of the acclaimed novel Fifteen Canine, discovered a following on this nation that appears to adore all issues Canadian?
“Who let the canine out?!” sang a loud vacationer in a Maple Leaf sweatshirt as he entered the café. The waiter rolled his eyes and sighed, “Oh no, one other Canadian.” Then, recognizing my raised eyebrow, he added, “Sure, we all know all about Fifteen Canine.”
Certainly, the wall of canine heads is greater than ornamental oddity, it’s a conceptual artwork set up titled The Canine Inside, created by Icelandic artist Bjargey Ólafsdóttir. Identified for her surreal and humorous work, Bjargey typically explores the human unconscious and our primal instincts. This set up, a part of her bigger Rófurass: The Canine Inside undertaking, examines the “interior canine”, a metaphor for the instinctive, emotional, and animalistic facets of human nature.
Bjargey works throughout a number of media, images, video, drawing, sound, and efficiency artwork. In The Canine Inside, she makes use of dog-head masks in images and movies, typically putting them on individuals engaged in human actions to blur the traces between human and animal habits. The set up is usually accompanied by sound artwork, barking, howling, and different canine noises designed to impress an emotional or unconscious response in viewers.
The masks themselves, which dominate one café wall, seem nearly lifelike, furrowed brows, floppy ears, and glassy eyes that appear to comply with you. The impact is eerie and thought-provoking. What does it imply to confront the canine inside? Are we taming our instincts or hiding them beneath a masks of civility?
The connection to André Alexis’s Fifteen Canine, wherein a gaggle of canine are granted human consciousness and should wrestle with mortality, language, and love, is unimaginable to disregard. The novel, which received the Giller Prize, is a philosophical fable that additionally delves into the animal facet of human identification. Icelanders seem to have embraced its themes, in addition to its Canadian writer.
Should you’re questioning concerning the play adaptation, Fifteen Canine was just lately staged in Toronto on the CAA Theatre, operating from January 28 to February 16, 2025, as a part of the Off-Mirvish season. Directed by Marie Farsi, it featured a stellar solid and obtained glowing evaluations.
Within the meantime, should you’re in Iceland and end up staring down a wall of canine over breakfast, don’t panic. Simply smile, order a espresso, and embrace the beast inside.
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