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The Arts Intel Report

June Clark: Unrequited Love

June Clark, Dirge, 2003.

Until Jan 5, 2025
317 Dundas St W, Toronto, ON M5T 1G4, Canada

Growing up in Harlem in the 1950s, June Clark was told she lived in “the greatest, strongest, most compassionate and free country in the world.” The following decade—which saw the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy; the rise of murderous white men in white hoods, the Ku Klux Klan; and widespread unrest across the country—pulled the ground out from under that theory. In 1968, Clark escaped to Toronto, where she lives to this day. In “Unrequited Love,” she takes the American flag as a theme and with rust, tea stains, and found objects works variations on its symbolism and associations: dreams, freedom, and equality, sure, but also capitalist corruption, division, and injustice. She dedicates the show to the football quarterback who kneeled in protest, Colin Rand Kaepernick. —Elena Clavarino

Photo: LF Documentation. 2020/137 © June Clark, courtesy of the artist and Daniel Faria Gallery