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The unthinkable in art 

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Josée Leclerc, chair of the Department of Creative Arts Therapies, was the keynote speaker at the opening of an art exhibit at the McGill Faculty of Law atrium, 3660 Peel St., of work by children affected by the ongoing war in Darfur. The drawings were collected by Jerry Ehrlich, a pediatrician who worked with Doctors Without Borders in western Sudan.

The exhibition, which runs until Oct. 14, is part of a major conference on human rights held at McGill from Oct. 11 to 13. Among the participants are Frank Chalk, history professor and director of the Montreal Institute for Genocide Studies and Human Rights, and Senator Roméo Dallaire, author of Shake Hands With the Devil and a senior fellow at the Institute.

They are being joined by many experts in the field, including Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka, former Secretary-General of the British Commonwealth Sonny Ramphal, human rights lawyer Irwin Cotler, Liberal Party deputy leader Michael Ignatieff, Dutch diplomat Jan Pronk, former McGill dean of law Peter Leuprecht, University of British Columbia President, Stephen Toope, and CBC journalist Brian Stewart.

As an art therapist, Leclerc sees art and the creative process as transformative and in some cases, healing.

However, she told her audience, “Even with my background, the art produced in the context or aftermath of genocides — specifically, in my case, the art of the Holocaust — has challenged my basic assumptions not just about art, but about identity and healing in times of crisis.”

There is some debate about whether genocide can or should be represented artistically, but Leclerc, who is organizing a conference on the subject in Fall 2008, disagrees. She said that most of those who had the courage to make images during or following these traumatic events want their work to be seen as a testimony.