POPPY COVER FOR HOLY ROLLER TANK
In her installation entitled Poppy Cover for Holy Roller Tank, Jamelie Hassan asks us to think about the poppy and our military history. Created in 2010, this work originally consisted of a tank covered with this camouflage netting that has 4000 red silk poppies threaded through the netting. It is an allegory of memory that calls to mind fields of poppies and all that they entail, including Canadian Remembrance Day. The bombs dropped during World War I enriched the soil with lime, which helped the poppy fields to thrive. This is how the poppy came to represent all the souls lost in the name of war.
Materials: Camouflage netting, 4000 silk poppies.
Creative Process
Photography, writing, painting, artefacts and facsimiles mix and intermingle in Hassan’s productions. Her multicultural artistic language is accessible to everyone. Global issues of a social, political and cultural nature, together with the status of women and social justice concerns, are among the themes that she addresses through her artistic practice.
The Artist
Jamelie Hassan was born in London, Ontario, where she continues to live and work. Her studies have taken her to many parts of the world. She attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, Italy, the Academy of Fine Arts in Beirut, Lebanon, the University of Windsor, Canada, and the Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, Iraq. She has participated in many individual and collective exhibitions in Canada and elsewhere.
