The ECH is appalled by the ongoing violence, rising tensions, and the devastating loss of life in Palestine and Israel. The toll —particularly on civilians, including women and children — has already been far too great. 
 
Please join us for a conversation with Freda Guttman, Montreal-based artist/activist and  Professor Salah D. Hassan, Director of Global Studies in the Arts and Humanities, Michigan State University, Lansing, Michigan on Sunday, May 23 at 4 pm EDT. 

Freda has been a constant voice of solidarity to Palestinian people over a lifetime of activism.  She lives in Montreal and has worked as a printmaker, photographer and  laterally, as an installation artist.

​She has been a longtime supporter of the Embassy Cultural House, participating in the 1984 International Women's Day exhibit, as well as our most recent online IWD exhibit: Go; Rise and Strike in March 2021.

Her work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Canada, the United States and internationally. Guttman has made her art practice and her political activism come together in a series of installations. 

​Among her installations that focus on Palestine/Israel are Diminish Your Cup and Two Family Albums: Canada Park, from 1994 to 2004.  

Join us in solidarity with all those who support a just peace in the Middle East. We are calling for an immediate ceasefire. 
 
As an artist-run project, the ECH condemns the May 15th unjustified ransacking and raid by Israeli Defense Force soldiers on Dar Yusuf Nasri Jacir for Art & Research, an independent art centre in Bethlehem. The raid, which destroyed computers and other office equipment, follows the burning of their urban farm earlier in the week. Attacks against cultural centres and other civil society organizations, including the media, are against international law.

The Embassy Cultural House and the Toronto Palestine Film Festival are pleased to announce a new partnership to collaborate on arts and cultural programming. The Embassy Cultural House (ECH) is looking forward to develop an online art program to coincide with the 2021 Toronto Palestine Film Festival program.

"We are thrilled to partner with the Embassy Cultural House to include a visual arts online exhibition in the 2021 program of the festival. This will add a wonderful new dimension to our activities” said Dania Majid, programmer with the TPFF. 
 
Jamelie Hassan, 2001 Governor General Award Laureate for Visual and Media Arts and co-founder of the ECH said, “Celebrating Palestinian culture and supporting the work of Palestinian artists has been a longstanding commitment for many artists connected to the ECH community. It is with great pleasure that we look forward to future cultural projects with the TPFF.”  

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 re-envisioned as a virtual artist-run space and community website.

​The Toronto Palestine Film Festival (TPFF) is a volunteer-run, non-profit organization dedicated to bringing Palestinian cinema, music, cuisine and art to GTA audiences. TPFF was conceived in 2008 to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Al-Nakba.

The TPFF launched its 14th year with a powerful and futuristic new design by Sama Al Zanoon. Sama is a graphic designer and illustrator based in Hamilton, Ontario. The design is an imagined journey to reclaim Palestinian destinies. This is a fictional space where Palestinians have limitless ability to explore their identity through film, art, and activism. 

​The international arts community mourns the passing of UK curator and writer Guy Brett, who contributed important exhibitions and publications on key Latin American and Asian artists. Guy Brett died at the aged of 78. Among his many writings was the groundbreaking book Through Our Own Eyes: Popular Art and Modern History published in 1986. The book profiled art as overt political action with a focus on resistance to Chilean fascism, support for decolonization in Africa, and the nuclear weapons disarmament movement. All important themes that were also concerns of the ECH community's programming between 1983 and 1990. 

Jamelie Hassan met Guy Brett through Mona Hatoum during a visit to London, UK in 1989. After that meeting, Jamelie and Ron Benner began a correspondence with Guy that resulted in his visit to London, Ontario in the spring of 1992 where he presented a lecture at Western University's Visual Art Department. Guy's interest in indigenious cultural production in Canada aligned with Jamelie and Ron's commitments and after he read the publication Council  Fire by Tom Hill, he especially appreciated his meeting with Tom Hill and a visit to the Six Nations' Woodland Cultural Centre in Brantford, Ontario. At this time,  Jamelie and Ron worked with curator, Peter White, to organize for Guy a tour of other cultural centres in Canada, including  Banff, Alberta, Vancouver, BC, and Saskatoon, SK.

UK-based Palestinian artist, and long time friend  of ECH co-founders Ron Benner and Jamelie Hassan, Mona Hatoum shared this tribute to Guy. "It is very sad to say goodbye to the sensitive and insightful critic, curator and friend, Guy Brett who always championed artists outside the mainstream and focused on experimental and precarious forms from the margins, internationally and specially Latin American and Asian art. A very humble person who was never conscious of his own importance, he was nevertheless highly appreciated and has been referred to as ‘a hidden national treasure’. His quiet, graceful presence and unpretentious intelligence will be greatly missed."

Please read  recent obituaries on Guy Brett:
Constantly curious, uninterested in the market-led view': pioneering curator and writer Guy Brett has died, aged 78

• Guy Brett, Influential Curator and Critic Who Expanded Art History, Has Died at 78

​The co-founders of the Embassy Cultural House formerly located in London's Old East Village are launching a group exhibition titled Hiding In Plain Sight on Oct. 30. Renowned artists Jamelie Hassan and Ron Benner joined "Afternoon Drive" to talk about the history of the cultural house and about the virtual exhibit. Listen to the radio interview here. 

​Hamoody Hassan, London, on King Ganam via CBC.ca:
“The King was a fantastic musician & great character who played in my dad's bars. He rolled into town in a Caddy with his beautiful wife. He was fun & funny. A source of great pride for a young Lebanese boy.”
 
The glories of the Embassy Cultural House (ECH) have been hiding in plain sight since (at least) Aug. 29, 1957.

The official dates in its story are 1983-1990, when the Embassy Cultural House flourished in what had been the Embassy Hotel restaurant area. Then, in 2012, a Museum London exhibition celebrated the ECH.

Now, in 2020, a virtual ECHcentric exhibition with a marvelously inclusive group of creators launches on Oct 30, at 2 PM EST with some of its artists and journalist Sarah Kendzior participating. That exhibition is called Hiding In Plain Sight.

But the Embassy Cultural House was already there, in its own way, on that summer day back in 1957.

On that date, King Ganam made an appearance before an overflow crowd of 14,000 fans at the then-new Covent Garden Market. He also visited his friends, and fellow Lebanese Canadians, the Hassan family, at their Erie Avenue home.

The Saskatchewan-born star known as "Canada’s King of The Fiddle" had come to London for a homecoming of co-stars Gordie Tapp and Tommy Hunter. All three were stars of CBC-TV’s Country Hoedown, a huge hit show with Ganam as its leader.

Back in 1957, Ameen Sied (King) Ganam found a calm space with the Hassans, owners of the Embassy Hotel. Future artist and ECH stalwart Jamelie Hassan was taking violin lessons and King played on her little fiddle, sounding the first notes of the Embassy Cultural House.

Ganam’s connection with the Embassy Cultural House was hiding in plain sight decades later when Museum London included artwork by Toronto artist and musician Reid Diamond (1958-2001) in a 2012 ECH-themed survey exhibition curated by Robert McKaskell (1943-2020). Inspired by hearing of King Ganam’s connection with Jamelie Hassan and her family, Diamond created a work of art using a jukebox that included King Ganam music. This work is now in Museum London’s collection.

Too many people mentioned here King Ganam, Reid Diamond and Robert McKaskell are gone.

All three were part of the Embassy hotel story or the Embassy Cultural House story or both those stories. As the ECH reveals a thrilling new iteration, let’s play some King Ganam and remember them.

James Stewart Reaney, October 26, 2020 

The Embassy Cultural House is pleased to announce its first open-call invitation to participate in a virtual group exhibition: Hiding in Plain Sight.

This exhibition is inspired by the book "Hiding in Plain Sight" published in 2020 by St. Louis-based journalist Sarah Kendzior.  In her book she describes US President Trump's administration as "a transnational crime syndicate masquerading as a government."  There are many other governments in the world at this time that also fit this description. They are all connected.
 
The Embassy Cultural House will present this virtual exhibit organized by Ron Benner.  An image of the artwork in any medium can be submitted along with the accompanying information - artist's name, title of artwork, date & medium. 

Participating artists and contributors include:
Jessie Amery, Ron Benner, Andreas Buchwaldt, 
Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge, Stan Denniston, 
Michael Fernandes, Mireya Folch Serra, Fatima Garzan, Michelle Gay,  Wyn Geleynse, Alberto Gomez and Dot Tuer, 
Dave Gordon, Freda Guttman, Jamelie Hassan,
Fern Helfand, Susanna Heller,  S F Ho, Tricia Johnson, George Kubresli, Suzy Lake, Patrick Mahon, Doug Mitchell, Kim Moodie, Catherine Morrisey,Olivia Mossuto,
Kim Neudorf, ​Shelley Niro, June Pak, Doris Purchase, James S. Reaney, Jayce Salloum, Roland Schubert, Jean Spence, Dan and Mary Lou Smoke, Diana Tamblyn, Zainub Verjee, Christine Walde, Paul Walde, Jade Williamson, and Winsom Winsom .

Deadline for all materials for this ECH online exhibit is: October 21, 2020 

Zoom Launch Date: Friday, October 30 at 2 PM EST
Please send submissions to [email protected].