Culture

O Canada in Lips: Joyce Wieland

Consider this combination of feminism and patriotism in Joyce Wieland’s famous O Canada lithograph of women’s mouths singing the national anthem.  To make this print, Wieland put on greasy lipstick and pressed her lips onto a clean lithography stone, forming the syllables of O Canada.

[Above: Joyce Wieland, O Canada  1969, a lithograph in red on wove paper, National Gallery of Canada ]

-O Canada Animation (1970):  The 71 mouths forming the words to the national anthem are embroidered in red lips and white teeth on cotton.

One of the country’s first, and best known, feminist artists, Wieland was indefatigable from the 1960s onward in the two endeavours that brought her fame:  avant-garde feminist film-making and her experimental art.  She is a Canadian art icon.  She died in 1998 at the age of 66.

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