EMBASSY CULTURAL HOUSE
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EMBASSY CULTURAL HOUSE

Established in 1983, the Embassy Cultural House was a community-driven gallery and hosted interdisciplinary programs. It closed its physical doors in 1990. In 2020, the Embassy Cultural House was reenvisioned as a virtual artist-run space and community website.
A not-for-profit initiative, the ECH delivers its projects through a dedicated team of volunteers, partners, community contributors and angel investors. Occasional funding through project arts grants also supports the ECH to honour the principle of payment of fees to contributors.

CURRENT PROJECTS

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Year of Glass

The year 2022 was declared by UNESCO as the Year of Glass. In a publication marking the occasion, artists, glass scientists, and engineers write that it is possible to call our special moment in time as the Age of Glass. We are where we are because of glass. Because of lenses that reveal both the microscopic biological world and telescopic universes beyond ours. Because glass can be made into sinewy fibres to power a global, digital network, and because glass can have a protective transparency allowing us to access the world through our television, computer, and phone screens.

As UNESCO celebrates the past, present, and future of glass, this project by the Embassy Cultural House is as an attempt to think of glass as medium and language. Like the spoken word, artisanal glass works too require human breath to manifest. But glass is also an antithetical material. It is both “medium and barrier.” It is visibly invisible. As lenses, windowpanes, and digital screens, by allowing light to travel through it, glass makes visible another world. And by preventing air from entering and corrupting the spaces that it encases, glass can create the illusion of crystalized time. This project is a tribute to the stories that the unique malleability and materiality of glass makes possible to tell.

(Image on the left) From Scot Slessor's Clearly Canadian series.

Year of glass

​​ANONYMOUS WITNESS

Golden Kite collection (2021-2022)

 “Anonymous Witness" is an Afghan artist who remains in Afghanistan, providing visual and artistic insight into the atrocities committed by the government and the suffering of his fellow citizens. The ECH is honoured to highlight him on our website and to throw our support behind his work and his efforts to inform the world about the present situation.

​​Golden Kite collection is a set of digitally created images which illustrates events of the past year (Aug. 15, 2021 to Aug. 15, 2022) in Afghanistan, the damage caused and the resulting crisis.  The collection reflects the social and cultural life of the people, and the economy and politics of Afghanistan from the perspective of an Afghan, here named  “Anonymous Witness”.
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Entezar (Prospect)
On the line waiting for food, job, freedom,
education, passport, visa etc...
View the collection

Stories of Survival:
The Chalatenango Massacres

Sunday, October 23rd | 2:30-4pm | Museum London
421 Rideout St N, London, ON 
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Join us for a screening of The Chalatenango Massacres, a series of documentary films by Juan Andrés Bello, telling the stories of the crimes committed by the Salvadoran army and paramilitary groups against peasant communities at the outset of the country’s Civil War (1979–1982).

Register for the event here.
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Pandemic Gardens: Resilience Through Nature

The Embassy Cultural House presents 
Pandemic Gardens: Resilience Through Nature, the first online exhibition of 2022.

Pandemic Gardens is an international and interdisciplinary group exhibition organized by Ron Benner and Rachel MacGillivray, with the assistance of JoAnna Weil, Jamelie Hassan, and Olivia Mossuto. The exhibition explores artworks, coping mechanisms, community engagements, and the resilience of the human spirit during the pandemic, through the ways in which people have engaged with gardens and nature. 
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On Saturday, June 18, 2022, a billboard was installed at the Fredericton Botanic Garden in Fredericton, NB. A garden was also planted beneath the billboard with the assistance of local children and volunteers.

A publication for this exhibition was released in August 2022. Please enjoy this timely programming by clicking the poster or the link below. 
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VIEW THE EXHIBITION

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The State of Palestine
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The George Floyd Project
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A Guest + A Host = A Ghost

Visit the Hiding in Plain Sight Virtual Tour

Hiding in Plain Sight Exhibition

ONGOING DIGITAL PROJECTS @ ECH

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Afzaal Family Tribute
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name the children

ONLINE TEXTS

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Art As Engagement
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at the ECH by Marwan Hassan
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Patrick Mahon & Jeff Thomas


Embassy Cultural House catalogue now online

It is with great pleasure that we are sharing an online version of the now out-of-print The Embassy Cultural House, 1983 to 1990 catalogue. This catalogue was published in 2012 to accompany the survey exhibit “The Embassy Cultural House, 1983 to 1990" presented at Museum London.

The late Robert (Bob) McKaskell curated the survey exhibit, and the catalogue was edited by the late Melanie Townsend. The catalogue also includes essays by historical curator Michael Baker and Toronto-based artist, educator, and activist Rebecca Deiderichs. The Museum London public program included a sold-out concert of an improvizational jazz performance by Eric Stach and local musicians.

With special thanks to Museum London, the estates of both Bob McKaskell and Melanie Townsend, all the contributors and supporters of the catalogue, and Colour by Schubert for making this publication available online to a broader public. Click here to read the catalogue online.
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In memory of curator and writer Bob McKaskell, 1943–2020

​In Memory of Bob McKaskell

It is with a heavy heart that we share the sad news that our good friend Bob McKaskell
, independent curator and writer, died on June 30, 2020, from cancer.

He divided his time between Port Dover, Ontario, and Oaxaca, Mexico. While in Oaxaca, he decided to study Spanish, and he had just initiated a program of curating exhibits of Oaxacan artists in his apartment located in the centro historico of Oaxaca. He was a great cook, an excellent gardener, and his pursuit of knowledge was startlingly wide reaching. Anyone who knew Bob understood that his sometimes stubborn nature contributed to his ability to intensely focus in a very particular and detailed way to whatever subjects grabbed his interest.
 
Bob taught contemporary art history for many years at Western University. He was a huge supporter of both Canadian and international artists and had a commitment to challenging art practices, including conceptual art, performance works, and independent artists' projects. While in London, he was involved in programming at the Embassy Cultural House, the Forest City Gallery, Museum London and the McIntosh Gallery. He also worked at the Winnipeg Art Gallery and and the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, where he built strong friendships and made contributions to the arts community across Canada.
 
We have so many fond memories of Bob. Especially close to our hearts is the survey exhibition he curated Embassy Cultural House - 1983 - 1990  at Museum London in 2012.



EDITORIAL TEAM

ONLINE FOUNDER
Tariq Hassan Gordon

COFOUNDERS & CURATORIAL ADVISORS 
 
Jamelie Hassan 
& Ron Benner

ADVISORY CIRCLE
Samer Abdelnour, Marnie Fleming, Wyn Geleynse, Fern Helfand, S F Ho, Lorraine Klaasen, Judith Rodger, Ruth Skinner, Mary Lou and Dan Smoke,  and Lucas Stenning 

COORDINATING EDITORS
Tariq Hassan Gordon & 
Olivia Mossuto

WEB DESIGN & SOCIAL MEDIA 
Tariq Hassan Gordon, Ira Kazi, Olivia Mossuto, Niloufar Salimi,  JoAnna Weil 

VIRTUAL TOUR
Andreas Buchwaldt

PRINT PUBLICATIONS
Blessy Augustine, Shelley Kopp, 
Olivia Mossuto

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
Andreas Buchwaldt, Blessy Augustine, Anahí González, Ira Kazi, ​Shelley Kopp, Ashar Mobeen, Niloufar Salimi,  Jenna Rose Sands, JoAnna Weil & Michelle Wilson. 

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OUR STORY
Artists Jamelie Hassan and Ron Benner and jazz musician Eric Stach founded the Embassy Cultural House (1983-1990) located in the restaurant portion of the Embassy Hotel at 732 Dundas Street in East London. Other former members of the board were: Debrann Eastabrook, Henry Eastabrook, Sharron Forrest, Wyn Geleynse, Janice Gurney, Jean Hay (1929 - 2008), Doug Mitchell, Kim Moodie, Gerard Pas, Peter Rist, Wanda Sawicki, Jean Spence and Jennie White. In 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Embassy Cultural House was re-envisioned as a virtual artist-run space and website. 

This project is supported by the Ontario Arts Council and the London Arts Council through the City of London's Community Arts Investment Program.
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Thank you to our partners

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E M B A S S Y  C U L T U R A L  H O U S E . C A

​London, Ontario is on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabeg, Haudenosaunee, Lenape, Attawandaron and Huron-Wendat peoples, at the forks of Deshkan Ziibi (Antler River), an area subject to the Dish with One Spoon Wampum and other treaties.

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  • Home
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  • Background
    • Past Programming >
      • Exhibitions 1983-1990 >
        • Index of Curators
        • Index of Photographers
        • Index of Visual Artists
      • Film 1983-1990
      • Music 1983-1990 >
        • Index of Musicians
      • Performances 1983-1990 >
        • Index of Performers
    • Embassy Hotel History
  • About