Monsters, riot grrrl, guerrilla art: What should a show about power look like?

As far as exhibition themes go, "power" sounds like a nebulous one. It's vague. Overlarge, too. In some ways, all art is about power, while in other, more pragmatic ways, art sometimes feels like a futile response to it. Shuffling up to OCAD University's Onsite Gallery in Toronto, I was curious, if a bit cynical, what an art exhibition called Power could say, and say clearly. 

But through the doors, to my surprise, Power is the most madcap, celebratory take on that treacherous terrain: it's all monsters, riot grrrl and guerrilla art. There's a predilection for the grassroots, the DIY and the homemade, with underground comic creators, Lego kitbashers and street artists sharing the bill. The whole affair feels a bit punk rock, which is fitting since curator Lisa Deanne Smith roadied the Rock Against Reagan tour with the Dead Kennedys in the 1980s. The exhibition is poppy and accessible, but it delivers its subtext with a snarl: power is something we make and remake ourselves.

"I think it's really important to find the power within," Smith says. "How do you feed yourself? How do you keep going? How do you know you have power?" 

In the midst of environmental crisis, war and economic stress, with hateful political rhetoric at essentially ambient levels, "it would be easy to feel powerless right now," she says. "I started looking to other people when I was feeling like, 'Oh my God, this is just too much.'" Power includes many of the artists the curator found herself looking to whenever her wells of strength and hope were running low. 

The first artwork you'll see is Rajni Perera's Only enough air for myself. Inspired by a residency the Toronto-based artist did in her native Sri Lanka with her daughter, the work is a giant made of polymer clay, foam and pearls, which draws her energy up from the earth, the fingers on her outstretched hand growing like tree roots in search of nourishment

Then you may encounter Khadijah Morley's dreamlike graphic linocuts, whose symbolism is strong and alluring but mysterious — knowable perhaps only to their dreamer. (The power of our personal mythologies, call it.) 

Or maybe you'll turn toward the centre of the gallery instead and find the drawings of influential cartoonist Fiona Smyth, who, for nearly 40 years now, has carefully and unflinchingly described the many and various experiences of womanhood in her own surreal language.   

Spanning a long wall, Natalie King presents nine large, vibrant canvases, depicting highly stylized figures posed alone and in groups. The artist identifies them as representations of Indigenous queer femmes. They recall Bratz dolls or Sailor Moon characters, and their broader compositions share something with the exuberant sense of self-expression you'd find on a middle schooler's notebook festooned with stickers. 

"In Algonquin Anishinaabe perspectives, power isn't something that's about dominance or control," she says. "For us, it's interconnected with the understanding of balance and reciprocity, and it's rooted in a relationship between individuals … My objective was redefining power as an assertion of self-determination." 

The paintings radiate a childlike sense of joy and love. Her characters appear to hold each other. "It's about a shared and collective power," she says. "It's about serving the community. It's about guiding. It's about supporting."

Nearby, Ekow Nimako's two life-size sculptures inspired by West African religious traditions pull viewers closer, almost by magic. One figure, called Yemaya, wears serpents for arms and sits atop a fish's tail, while the other, Maame Wata, is tentacled. Both water spirits appear as children, redressing their more monstrous features with feelings of innocence and curiosity. 

The sculptor's practice is committed to expanding representations of Blackness, and he does this using a building block that only emphasizes those special powers of playfulness and ingenuity; everything he does is made of Lego. All of Nimako's awe-inspiring, otherworldly sculptures are built from that most familiar, utilitarian and commonplace construction toy. 

Then, from the world of myth to a world of one's own making, artist Jamiyla Lowe transforms a gallery alcove into the living room from her picture book As You Wish, with illustrations reproduced at wall size and a comfortable chair and slippers at the ready. Lowe's book considers "the never ending list of things we wish for," the artist says, as her trademark characters (whom she likens to The Simpsons, but a Black family) contend with boredom and mundanity. The installation feels not only like a portal into the artist's make-believe world but also her own creative space: her home, her desk, her head — this powerful place where she invents her worlds from.

Finally, in the farthest corner of the gallery, you'll find the work of Rocky Dobey, the Toronto-based guerrilla artist who's clandestinely marked Canadian streets with posters, memorials and plaques since the 1970s. For the former ironworker, the city truly is his museum; he helped build its high-rises and has tirelessly commemorated its stories on the ground.

The giant scratched-and-painted copper sheets hanging at Onsite are "gallery versions" of his street plaques. Etched in Dobey's ornate Byzantine style, the largest work, called Checkmate, resembles a game piece, like a rook or a king, as well as the Tower of Babel. "It's commenting on the way the world looks at politics," he says, "as if it's a chess game."

The artist points out the individual bricks he's meticulously rendered, some which appear to drift away from the building and into the clouds. "I believe in what we create," he says, "and the world is created by people, right?" Dobey is an artist who knows intimately that all structures, no matter how large, are built by the hands of people. And he's an artist who takes that power into his own hands, reshaping the street himself. Each one of his plaques is like an invitation that says: You have the power, too.  

"I think there's a lot of hope in this exhibition," says the curator. "I think people look at it and go, 'I could do something.'"

Power. Curated by Lisa Deanne Smith. Featuring Rocky Dobey, Natalie King, Jamiyla Lowe, Khadijah Morley, Ekow Nimako, Rajni Perera and Fiona Smyth. To May 18 at Onsite Gallery. www.ocadu.ca/onsite